Page 123 - Evidence of Things Unseen

perfect mirror of the buffeting I was receiving. By the evening I was so exhausted from the
fight that when I prayed to God for relief the tears began to flow and I begged for His mercy
and deliverance. I knew that He had me in a place of tremendous sifting, and I felt I could
not bear anymore.
I sent out an e-mail in the evening to the Heart4God list, and I asked for the saints to
pray for me. The response was immediate as within fifteen minutes I felt the storm in my
soul abating, and I received an inpouring of e-mails from saints who said they were praying
for me. I believe the number of people who responded with an e-mail to this one mailing
was greater than anything I had previously written and sent forth. What a tremendous
mercy this was.
When I had prayed that evening, the thought came to me once more that I had not
spoken to my former neighbor about his relationship to God, but I once more put the
thought away, not wanting to believe that it had anything to do with my trials. Yet the next
day as I was listening to the Lord He spoke it to me again. He said that He wanted me to
speak to my neighbor about his soul and that He would not release our provision until this
had been done. I wanted to convince myself that this was the voice of Satan seeking to
torment and confuse me, but I really could not imagine Satan telling me that I was to
witness to my neighbor.
What finally persuaded me was the realization that it was a fear of man that had kept
me from speaking to my neighbor, and I knew that Yahweh did not want His children to be
enslaved to any fears. I considered that, whether God was telling me to speak to this man,
or not, I could not do wrong by facing this fear and refusing to be cowed by it. I could only
err by continuing to be ruled by fear.
I gathered my family together and I shared with them what I was now convinced the
Father had been speaking to me. I shared how I had allowed a fear of man to go uncontested
in my life, and that I had failed to speak to our neighbor when the Spirit had prompted me
to do so. I asked them to pray for me as I was going out right at that moment to drive the
30 miles to where our neighbor lived, and I was going to fulfill that which God required of
me. My wife and children prayed for me, and I then got in the car and drove in complete
peace over to this man’s house. I knew he would be home, and he was, and he invited me
in and we spent about an hour and a half speaking about his relationship to the Lord.
I felt something significant had occurred in this, and that I had broken free from some
chains that had long been binding me. The torment from this particular stronghold had
been shattered. However, there was another fear that the Father also desired to loose me
from before His sifting would be complete.
The Father showed me that I had also been fearful of bearing reproach in the name
of Christ. Fears of my landlords thinking that I was an infidel, or reprobate, or a sorry fellow
for not holding a wage earning job were buffeting me. Then there was the church and our
extended family. They had heard me profess that the Father had called me to trust Him for
our finances, and how could I defend myself if the Father chose to delay in manifesting His
provision? Who would believe that I was truly walking in the will of God? Would not all
men number me among the transgressors?
It wasn’t that such reproaches were new to me, for I had experienced a great number
of them before. Yet I had never come to a place of being content with the reproaches I
received. They had always galled me, and left me with gaping wounds that were slow to
heal. As the Spirit spoke to me He began to bring me understanding that it was His will that
we willingly bear reproaches in our obedience before God, and that the Father would