God supernaturally revealed His love to me in a Saturday night prayer meeting. It was March 23, 1968, and I was eighteen years old. All of a sudden, I knew that God passionately loved me. I understood that He carried my picture in His wallet and had an 8x10 of me on His mantle. God’s unconditional love was no longer an abstract concept to me—it was real! For the next four and a half months, I literally experienced God’s supernatural love transforming my life.
I was so excited that the very next morning I stood up in front of my denominational church and told them, “God loves me! He doesn’t just love me from a distance, but God passionately loves me. He’s pleased with me and even likes me!” It would have been better if I had cussed. They would’ve been more merciful on me if I had gone out and committed adultery. At least that could be forgiven. But they equated my testimony of God loving me passionately as me claiming to have some great virtue. Since they didn’t understand grace, they thought God’s love was based on performance. They interpreted what I was sharing as me thinking I was better than them. So the criticism came immediately.
Someone walked up to me and asked, “Who do you think you are? You said you’re filled with the Spirit.”
“God did fill me with His Spirit. That’s what it felt like to me. In Ephesians 5:18, Paul told us to be filled with the Spirit.”
“Yeah, but that was Paul. Who do you think you are? Are you putting yourself in the same category as Paul?”
“I’m just telling you what happened.”
Satan was using this seminary professor and all these educated people who did this for a living to criticize me. He was trying to get me—an eighteen-year-old boy—to value man’s opinion more than what God had revealed to me.
I was so overwhelmed with God’s love that I hardly slept at night. I’d sleep a few minutes, and then I’d be awake thinking about how God loves me. Then I’d read the Word until I passed out again. I didn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time for four and a half months. I don’t remember ever sitting down to a meal that entire time either. Who could eat or sleep knowing that God loves them? I was excited!
There I was, valuing the fact that God loved me. When another voice came, would I value it the same? If I had begun placing value on that, then my value, worth, and reverence for what God had said would have started coming down and I would have begun losing the revelation of it. This wasn’t because of some great strength of my own. I didn’t even know how hungry for God I was before He touched my life. But once I experienced His awesome love and acceptance, I knew that nothing would ever excite me more. I immediately put God above everything and disesteemed anything else.
When these people—whom I respected and had tried to please and gain their acceptance—started ragging on me, I just turned away. I said, “Look, I don’t care what you say!” I maintained the same relative worth and value on the things of God. Because of this, God’s supernatural, unconditional love that He had given me didn’t diminish.
I was a freshman math major in college at the time, but once I fell head over heels in love with God, I lost all interest in both math and college. In fact, I got to where I hated it. I went to school every day for two and a half months, but never made it to a single class. Somewhere along the way, I’d start talking to somebody about the Lord. That’s what I loved to do—tell others how God loved me and how He loved them also. I wanted them to know that God could change their life too. Although the bell would ring, I couldn’t let this person I was talking to go to hell just because of that. So I’d just keep right on sharing with them and miss class. Then I’d talk to somebody else and another bell would ring. This went on for two and a half months!
After awhile, I thought, Why am I paying money to go to school if I don’t like it and never make it to class? So I prayed about it and the Lord told me to quit. Now, that’s not for everybody. You might need an education to do what God is calling you to do. But I didn’t need to be a math major to do what I’m doing today.
Things got really bad once I announced my decision to everyone. Quitting school meant I was giving up $350 a month in social security payments from my father’s death. Since this was during the height of the Vietnam War, I had a deferment for as long as I stayed in school, but if I quit, I instantly had an all expense paid trip to Vietnam. Everyone kept telling me, “This isn’t smart. It’s not what you’re supposed to do!”
My mother didn’t understand it. She wasn’t mean or against me, but she couldn’t believe that this was God. (My dad died when I was twelve, so Mom and I had a special bond—and we still do to this day.) Satan tried to get me to value my relationship with my mother more than I valued God, but for me, nothing in my life competes with God. My mother didn’t die for me. She didn’t go to hell and rise from the dead for the forgiveness of my sin. I love my mother, but I love God infinitely more.
“But Andrew, I could never make a distinction. I love God and my mother (spouse, children, friends) the same.” No, you can’t do that. Your love for God ought to make your love for your parents, spouse, children, and friends look like hate in comparison. (Luke 14:26.) I’m not saying to actually hate them. You should love them, but your love and intimacy with the Lord should far surpass it.
We run into problems when our relative worth for these things and God are too close. We value relationships, the recognition of others, and our career. These things are okay in their proper place, but what if loving, following, and speaking for God costs you relationships, career, or acceptance? Would you do whatever the Lord asked you, or would your relative worth of these things and God be too close?
There is nothing of relative worth to me that even comes close to God. My wife knows I love the Lord far more than I love her. I also know that she loves Him much more than she loves me. Instead of this detracting from our relationship, it’s a plus. If Jamie only loved me according to how I treated her, she would have left me a long time ago.
I’ve put my wife through the wringer backwards. It’s been tough being a minister’s wife and going through some of the things we’ve been through.
I was visiting with a minister once who had committed adultery, spent time in a mental hospital, was an alcoholic, and used drugs before he was born again. Although he’d been through some really terrible things, the Lord changed his life and turned him around. After telling me about his background, he asked me to give my testimony. So I told him about some of the poverty, hardship, and pain we’d gone through. I shared how my wife went two weeks without a stitch of food—a forced fast—while eight months pregnant. This guy stood up and declared, “My God, you were more ungodly than I ever thought about being. That’s the worst testimony I’ve ever heard!” In many ways, that’s true.
If Jamie just loved me for who I was, she would not have stayed married to me for very long. It’s her commitment to God that keeps her loving me, and it’s my commitment to the Lord that keeps me loving her. Loving God doesn’t distract from our relationship—it improves it.
Most people are codependent upon their little world they’ve created. If something were to happen and it looked like they’d lose their marriage, kids, wealth, home, respect, fame, or whatever, they’d come crashing down emotionally. Why? They place such value and importance on these things.
When I first received the revelation of God’s love, my mother didn’t understand. The Enemy was tempting me to look at what this experience was costing me. I lost the recognition of my church. The people I looked up to were criticizing and rejecting me. My own mother went two weeks without talking to me. It wasn’t that she hated me. She just flat didn’t know what to say.
Finally, I took her out to eat and forced her to say something. Mom broke down crying and said, “I’m just so ashamed by what you’re doing!” What she said wasn’t positive, but negative. Satan was trying to get me to value that relationship above what the Lord had said. But by His grace, I always believed my relationship with my mother would work out, and it did. Things turned around after the Lord appeared to her in a dream. She worked for me twenty-one years until she finally retired for the last time at age eighty-eight. Mom is a real blessing. But whether it would have worked out or not, I wasn’t going to let it affect the value I placed on what God did in my life.
At one time or another, the Lord has touched you in a significant way. Then Satan came at you in a myriad of ways in order to get you to place value on something other than God. He attacked that Word and the worth you placed on it in an attempt to get your identity off of what God said. If you’ve lost the manifestation of your joy, peace, healing, or revelation, it’s because—somewhere along the way—you quit glorifying God.
After dropping out of college, I was immediately required to take a preinduction physical for the Army. I passed. Then a recruiter came to my house, opened his briefcase, pulled out a bunch of papers, and started telling me all the benefits of volunteering over being drafted.
I looked at him and said, “I could save us both a lot of time.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, the reason I was sent to this preinduction physical and classified 1A is because I quit school.”
“That’s right.”
“God told me to quit school.” He smirked. “Therefore, it’s His responsibility. If the Lord wants me drafted, I’ll be drafted, and if He doesn’t, I won’t.”
Breaking out in laughter, this recruiter told me, “Boy, I can guarantee you that you’re going to Vietnam.”
That made me mad. Since this guy didn’t value God the way I did, he was saying the equivalent of, “Who is God compared to the United States government? Our government is stronger than God. He can’t keep you from being drafted.” If I had accepted that value, then immediately I would have begun to lose some of the joy and peace from what God had done in my life.
This fellow was thirty-something years old and representing the United States government. I was just a nineteen-year-old boy. But I stood up, put my finger in his chest, and said, “Listen, buddy. If God wants me drafted, I’ll be drafted. If He doesn’t, then neither you nor the United States government nor every demon in hell can draft me.” He just stood up, gathered his things, and walked out the door. In the morning, I had my draft notice. I bet that guy processed and hand delivered it to my mailbox himself. I didn’t care. I believed what I told him was true.
“But Andrew, I’m not sure I’d do something if it meant I’d be drafted and required to go to war.” Well, I placed such a value on the truth that God loved me that I was willing to die for it. The cost didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care. I’d rather die and go be with the Lord than live my life separated from Him. I didn’t give a rip about going to Vietnam. That’s why I can truthfully say that since 1968, I’ve never lost the joy of what God did in my life. My very worst day since then has been better than my best prior to it. God is good!
I’ve had terrible things happen in my life, but they’ve just been momentary flashes. Any discouragement or depression I’ve felt has never lasted more than an hour or so. Since 1968, there hasn’t been a full day that I haven’t had peace and joy. Why? I place value and worth on the fact that God loves me.
As a kid in Arlington, Texas, we often played a game called “Wolf and Sheep.” The “wolf” had to capture the “sheep” and put them in jail. While the wolf was away, other sheep could come and set the prisoners free. The sheep had a home base. Often, home base was a tree. Whenever the sheep were touching home base, they were safe. The wolf couldn’t do anything to them and had to leave.
God is my Home Base. Whenever something bad happens, I just retreat and say, “Lord, You love me. Father, You value me. You’re pleased with me.” I start thinking about how much God loves me and it makes every problem I have just melt away in comparison. Satan can’t touch me when I’m valuing God’s love for me.
I’ve spent a huge amount of time glorifying—esteeming, placing value and worth on—what God has done in my life. Because of that, it’s only grown stronger and better.
The reason you’re a leaky vessel is because you aren’t valuing what God has done in your life above all else. You’re esteeming other things equal to, close to, or greater than the Lord and His opinion of you. You need to get to a place where you can honestly say, “God, You’re more important to me than anyone or anything else. Nothing will compete with You.” Intentionally glorify God and disesteem everything else.
Jesus disesteemed the shame that accompanied His crucifixion.
For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross, despising the shame.
Hebrew 12:2
Jesus chose to focus on the joy. Most of us would have had such short-term thinking in that situation that we wouldn’t have seen any joy in it. But Jesus looked ahead to the resurrection. He knew the cross wasn’t going to be the end. He knew that He would triumph over Satan and liberate the human race. The Lord looked down through eternity and saw you and me. He saw our bondages, hurts, pains, sicknesses, diseases, and poverty. He said in His heart, “I’m going to die to redeem them. I’m going to bring them joy.” He chose to magnify and glorify that, and to disesteem the shame, rejection, and physical suffering. He chose to disesteem the fact that they were going to strip Him naked, mock Him, and insult Him. He chose to minimize those things and maximize the other. He’s the One who placed that value on it.
You are the one who determines the value of everything in your life. You choose how you esteem or disesteem anything and everything. Once that lady in North Carolina put a relative value on her divorce, she decided receiving the Lord was much more important. Then she began to magnify and glorify that. You’re the one who determines that you can’t live with or without all these things—but you can always change your determination.
