Robert's Story  

 
The Journey Begins

I was born and raised in the home of a loving couple, second-generation pastor/teachers. I grew up knowing right and wrong, mercy and justice, privilege and responsibility. My parents were non-legalistic and authentic in their passion for God and for people. I made some initial steps to have a relationship with Jesus at the age of five. But by age 13 some things had gone awry. I had been introduced to porn, had a toxic mouth, and a fair amount of anger to God for perceived injustices. I was sitting in another church as my dad preached revival services at age 13 when the Lord clearly spoke to my heart and said “You’re running from Me. You know, I love you, and I’m going to keep pursuing you with my love until you relent and let me have you. I’m not giving up on you.” And I broke. I surrendered my life to Him that night. I developed a deep thirst for the Word and an aptitude for discipling new converts. At age 15 I was filled with the Spirit at youth camp, recieving the power to live a life of holiness, and spiritual gifts like teaching, pastoring, prophecy, discernment of spirits, with more to come later. I also responded at that time to a call to ministry at a youth convention. With my limited understanding at that time I would have said I was being led into youth ministry. I simply had no vocabulary to understand or articulate what God had in mind. During this season I served as president of my youth group, shared my faith at school, and worked as a DJ as a Christian radio station. My experience of worship, prayer, and ministry were all viewed through the lens of my denomination: evangelical, white, rural American Christianity. Yet I knew Whose I was and generally that He wanted to take me on an adventure of serving Him.

Light and Life Levels

While studying for ministry at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion Indiana, around my sophomore year, I started noticing a growing gap between my “light level” and my “life level”. My “light level” was growing, with an understanding of Biblical theology, ministry practice, and a Biblical Worldview and corresponding understanding of world history. But my “life level” of implementing what I knew about the Lord was decreasing rapidly. Character flaws began to surface - rebellion, deception, lust, prayerlessness, etc. I also began to experience intellectual doubts about my faith. This led to my temporarily suspending my university studies and enrolling in a spiritual boot camp for missionaries - a DTS with Youth With A Mission in Lausanne, Switzerland. At that time I allowed the Lord to address and correct the character flaws He was showing me, and began to learn to listen to His voice. My private intimacy with the Lord began to soar, and I stumbled on to the addictive practice of corporate intercession - a group of people receiving instructions from the Lord in how to pray for someone or something in particular. A group of us began praying for Eastern Europe, and the leadership confirmed many of the words we were getting and let us branch off and do our outreach there. I became enthralled with the notion that God would communicate to me and break my heart with the things that break His, and even give me detailed instructions on where to go, who to talk to, and what the future held. As I shared my faith with Estonians, Poles, and Czechs I became energized with the understanding that God could use insignificant me to minister cross-culturally as I walked by faith.

The Calling

I returned to IWU a changed man - sensitized to the voice of the Holy Spirit, committed to obedience to His promptings and living a self-controlled life of holiness. I joined a small core of guys in interceding for the nations, and we felt compelled to pray for the collapse of Communism in Czechoslovakia. Months later we sat transfixed in front of the TV as freedom swept the Eastern Bloc, including the velvet revolution in Czech. I was in awe that prayer and fasting could shape history! I finished my degrees in History and Christian Ministries and worked with youth and church planting in Los Angeles and New Orleans before working with a church plant in Munich Germany with Wesleyan World Missions. After six months in Germany I signed on as a TESOL teacher in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia for a year and developed a real love for post-communist young adults, which solidified my calling to that region. During that year I carried on a long-distance relationship with my old college friend, Amy. While praying and fasting for her work as a gifted and talented teacher in a Texas public high school, the Lord let me see her as He did. He whispered to me that this was my future wife. See how dangerous it is to pray and fast and get God's heart for someone?! I asked her to marry me at Christmas, and by the following June we were wed under a blue Ohio summer sky, beside a lake and Swiss-Chalet styled church! After a honeymoon and training time in Hawaii, we began to pursue our mutual call to the post-communists of Eastern Europe.

The Slovak Years

We started our married life in Bratislava, Slovakia, where we pioneered the English Language Center to pre-evangelize young adults in this newest European capital. We learned the necessity of prayer, and the magnetic attraction of authentic Christian Community. After three successful years running the school, we learned the joy of obedience to God as we put that ministry to rest, and through it’s death, allowed for the birth of new vision. I became the base director around this time, and brought the ministry under the YWAM umbrella. With more input and direction from regional YWAM leaders at a Leadership Training School in Budapest in ‘96 we began to flourish and to develop Family Ministries, utilizing camps and seminars to strengthen marriages and release families into ministry of their own. After seven years in Slovakia, God began to speak to us about Sabbatical - a fancy word for resting and regrouping.

Dry Dock - New Port

The word the Lord gave us about sabbatical was that we were a damaged and listing battleship in need of dry dock repairs and refitting. He directed us to Alexandria Virginia for a year of burnout recovery and reassessment. Then, just as we were ready to head back, the Lord said “Stay in the D.C. area. I have things to teach you about prayer and spiritual warfare.” He told us there was a new port He’d be giving us to base out of for future missions. He opened the door for five years to pastor at a large non-denominational church near Dulles airport, including 2.5 years reaching and discipling post-modern young adults through CrossCurrent ministries, and 2.5 years developing prayer counseling ministry to mainly post-divorced older singles at SinglePointe. All the while I have been pursuing the discipleship of our family, personal and corporate intercession gifts, and one-on-one coaching and mentoring skills.

Spiritual Lessons

The subtext to the factual timeline of where God has led me geographically, is where He’s been leading me spiritually and emotionally. He’s been expanding my understanding of the Kingdom - that it can grow among Charismatics and Catholics, Evangelical Americans and Europeans, Koreans and Kyrgistanis, huge mega-churches and humble house churches. It can grow within the organized church, but also through Spirit-filled believers in the arts, education, government, media, and other arenas. He’s shown me how off track I can get when I neglect intimacy with Him, and how vital it is to have relationships of genuine accountability. He’s tested my integrity and my willingness to yield to spiritual authority. When I get task based and focused on "doing", I relate to my wife poorly, I minister in the flesh, and make parenting blunders. When I let "doing" flow out of "being" in God’s presence, I relate and minister life to others. My emotional lows have usually been related to this aforementioned busy state I get into when I’m too busy to pray. My highs are when I’m connecting personally to Jesus and networking with other Spirit-directed people. In our marriage we tend to even each other out through highs and lows.

Transition Goals

Transitioning well is one of my life messages. Whether it’s a country in ideological transition, young adults transitioning to adulthood, or couples transitioning to family life, my life message is that God can be trusted to guide and teach lessons to everyone through transitions. I encourage people to shift out of gear, put it in neutral, assess how God has moved in the past, get a sense of long term direction, and then put it in the appropriate gear. I am living my life message. I’ve been disengaged from singles ministry emotionally for about a year. During that time the Lord fulfilled a desire I’d had since the fall of 2000 when I attended the Call on the Mall in DC (a day of fasting and prayer for the nation) - to pray alongside author and prayer activist Lou Engle. Lou came to DC in late 2004 to pray for the elections, and wound up launching a prayer community called the Justice House of Prayer. So since before the election I’ve been standing with my family in front of the Supreme Court with red tape on my mouth that says “Life“ to identify with the 50 million children who‘ve died since ‘73, and to prevail to a Higher Court to rule over the judiciary of America. I’ve been putting into practice what I know about governmental intercession. I’ve recognized several threads coming together that I didn’t know could be woven into one piece: Family, Pro-Life work, Prophetic worship and intercession, and Community. I’ve been exposing my kids to some of the spiritual DNA that I want them to really own, and figuring out how I can find the kind of spiritual fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters who can assist us in calling forth their full potential. And I’ve been dreaming. I’ve been dreaming about equipping families of Eastern Europeans and Americans and all different nationalities to disciple unreached nations and peoples. I’ve been dreaming about our special needs son, Daniel, being a path, and not a hindrance to that dream, through physical healing, but also better parenting skills on our part, and then identifying with other families with special needs kids. And I’ve been asking God to unite Amy and I more than ever in a common call and vision, and guidance on a next step. It has been a joy to hear God in stereo, with Amy as my left earpiece, and to together arrive at God’s guiding us to go back into missions, by first joining with IHOP in Kansas City to be trained in how to do 24/7 houses of prayer. The next step? Equipping the young and old, Westerners and non-Westerners, singles and whole familes to take it to the nations!


Questions 4 U

How has your family experience helped or hindered your faith journey?

What wrong decisions have you made that separated you from God?

How aware are you of the pursuing love of God for you?

Has there ever been a moment when you surrendered to God's love and accepted what His Son Jesus did on the cross to reconcile you with himself, as I did at age 13?

Have you ever read the Bible, asking God to reveal Himself to you?

After asking Jesus to take over your life, have you ever asked His Holy Spirit to fill you and give you his fruit (character traits) and his gifts (spiritually empowered abilities)?

Have you had an intellectual crisis of faith in your life as I did?

Does your "Light Level" and "Life Level" ever get out of whack as mine does? How can that disparity be bridged?

Have you ever heard the voice of the Lord speak to you?

How has he spoken to you? Through forceful thoughts and impressions, through meditation on the Bible, through dreams or "mental movies"?

How can you tell the difference between your own thoughts, thoughts from God, and thoughts from the enemy?

Is it possible that God wants to act in human history, and that by our fasting and praying out his thoughts back to Him we can be small bit players in the panoramic flow of human history?

How aware are you of God's guidance through times of transition?

Do you need someone to come along beside you and help you sort out what God might be leading you out of and in to, and what lessons He might be trying to teach you? If so, you need a "coach". Maybe Amy or I could help.

Do you have a life focus - a clearly defined sense of purpose that you are straining to attain with your life?

Is it possible for whole families to be given assignments from God, and to achieve them together?

If one of our assigments is to pray for a Godly judiciary system in America, and another is to see prayer communities flourish all over the world, what might yours be?

Have you ever learned to "hear in stereo" with a friend or spouse, discerning together what you couldn't discern on your own?

Have you ever discovered the "surround sound" experience of corporate intercessory prayer?

What would the world do if the Church of Jesus Christ were actually little clusters of people known of as "houses of prayer"?

What's your story?