Preface
This book is my testimony to God’s grace and mercy through the blood of Jesus Christ. I put my faith in Jesus as my Lord and Savior in December 2012. God has been teaching and growing me through the Holy Spirit ever since. I’m thankful for the new Life God gave me. I pray that those who are lost in this world will come to salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I also pray that those who are already born again will hear God’s wisdom in these pages.
We’re called to be a light in this dark world. Through this book I hope to share the light God has given me with everyone who reads it. The title of this book, A Housetop Revival, comes from Matthew 10:27–28.
27“What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. 28Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:27–28 NASB 1995)
Shortly after I accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior of my life, I joined a home church at my neighbor’s house and began to read the Bible. When I read this scripture it lit up my heart. I had to write it down. God would bring me back to these verses time and time again. The two verses would become the catalyst to writing this book. This scripture tells Christians to share their testimony with the people God brings into their lives and not to be afraid of anyone who would oppose the word of God. What’s the worst thing that could be done to us? Kill us? Well, this scripture tells us that the body is merely a vessel for that which we really are, our spirit. God is the only one who can stand in judgment of our spirit. As Christians we are covered in the righteousness of Christ and do not fear the judgment of our Father. God’s promise of salvation is to all who believe Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross for our sin. He was resurrected three days later. He now sits in righteousness at the right hand of God. This promise can never be taken away from us.
No matter what we suffer now, the Glory of God is a far greater reward and motivation than anything this world can offer us. Our testimony of what God has done in our lives is a powerful thing. In my search to understand that, the Holy Spirit led me to Revelations 12:10–12.
10Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. 11And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death. 12For this reason, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time.” (Revelation 12:10–12 NASB 1995)
Jesus came to break Satan’s hold on the world. Jesus shattered the death sentence handed down to mankind through the sin of Adam and Eve. Jesus lived in perfect obedience to God, something mankind can never do. It is His perfect obedience that made Jesus the perfect sacrifice for everyone’s sin. When a person repents of their sin and puts their faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as atonement for that sin, they inherit eternal life and a testimony to the saving power of the blood of Jesus. This testimony is a constant reminder to Christians of Satan’s broken power over them. They are born again and an adopted child of God. Their sin is covered by the righteous blood of Jesus. We are redeemed and promised a home in the New Jerusalem to come, with Jesus our Lord forever! Hallelujah!
I pray for those who fear for their future. Those who have no hope left in this world. Jesus is the hope you’ve been looking for in this world. This moment, right now, is the time to find that hope. Jesus can be your hope, the light to touch the darkest parts of your life. We cannot live in perfect obedience to God. We can never meet God’s expectations. This is what living in sin means. Jesus was born to meet those expectations for us. Jesus was born to deliver us from our sin by taking on the sin of everyone past, present, and future when He died on the cross. Our hope is His promise to return in judgment of evil to restore God’s kingdom and bring peace for eternity. Jesus was born to save you, the individual who is reading this right now!
8But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”–that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, 9that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:8–9 NASB 1995)
God is calling you to Him through the conviction of the Holy Spirit. If you feel that burn in your chest, confess to God you are a sinner who falls short of His obedience. Confess your need for a savior who fulfilled God’s obligations. Jesus tells us,
28“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30 NASB 1995)
Open your heart, and let Him restore your soul. Place your faith in the righteousness of Jesus.
Contents
Chapter 1 The Lie: Life Is Too Short
Chapter 2 Jesus: The Door to Salvation
Chapter 3 The Pride Fight
Chapter 4 Guilty as Sin
Chapter 5 A Life of Contentment Contains Gratitude
Chapter 6 The Relationship: Through Prayer
The Poetry Corner
The Lie Revealed
A Hope-Filled Struggle
My Shelter
Tempered in the Flames
Charades
How Did I Get Here
I thought I missed My Exit
It’s Now What I Thought
What Is It about Words?
But Why, God?
Frustrations
Grateful
Who Do You Follow?
Hope’s Anchor
The Stare Down
Chapter 1
The Lie: Life Is Too Short
As a Christian it is important to learn how our God gets your attention—the way He lets you know He is trying to tell you something. This particular time He woke me up in the middle of the night. I’ve always been a sound sleeper. It is not very often I wake up in the middle of the night. The times I do, it is usually to glance at the clock, exclaim, “Thank God it’s 3 a.m,” and go back to sleep. I fall asleep about as fast as I wake up, normally. One night that was not the case. I woke up around midnight, and I was wide wake. There was a thought in my head I couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard I tried. Life is too short. It was very odd because not only could I not get this thought out of my head, but it really troubled me. I lay in bed for several hours that night turning this expression over and over in my mind. I was trying to figure out why it troubled me so much, to the point of keeping me awake. Countless thoughts ran through my mind, all centered on this expression.
Life is too short…
Life is too short…
Life is too short…live while you can.
Life is too short…I don’t have time for this marriage.
If someone has cancer…life is too short.
Life is too short…to make ourselves happy.
Life is too short…I don’t have time to make up for all that I’ve done.
Eventually I tired myself out thinking about so many situations like these. I finally fell asleep. I wrote it down when I woke up the next morning. Life is too short, and I it still felt its burden on me.
I asked God through prayer why this expression troubled me so much. Eventually the Holy Spirit would reveal to me why I couldn’t go back to sleep that night. The expression “life is too short” was a lie—one of the lies the devil uses to keep us away from God. Life is not short. Life is eternal, and we have a choice to make. Do we choose heaven with God, or do we choose hell with Satan? Satan made his choice. He fought against God and lost. Now it is Satan’s time that is short, and he will do whatever he can to take you with him. When we believe our time in this world is short, we try to fill it with self-indulgence. If there is no hope in our future, what difference does it make how we live our lives? When time is running out, we begin taking shortcuts. When it’s the time frame on our lives that is short, we begin to take moral shortcuts. When we live with the perspective that our lives are short opportunities to indulge ourselves on all the self-gratifying things of this world, we become selfish. Self-centered people only care about what benefits themselves. I had that perspective. I would seek out the pleasures that I thought were satisfying myself, regardless of the effects it had on me and those around me. My self-satisfying search for pleasure became the center of my life. My enjoyment came from what I could consume with no regard for any moral implications.
Morality is the standard God has given to protect and care for us. It guards our conscience and protects our sanity. When we move beyond the moral boundaries God gave humanity, we delve deeper and deeper into depravity. We trade the truth for a false reality. A reality that exists in our minds as a bubble against the hopelessness the world offers us. We can try to fill our hopelessness with our own desires. All the sex, drugs, power, control, and money in the world can’t fill that hopeless void. Our homes and lives can look neat and in place on the outside, but inside anxiety and discontentment can drive us onward. Trying to find comfort for our discontentment leaves us vulnerable to the lies of Satan. The more we take, the more we want, and the wearier we become in our lives. We can’t ever have enough. Nothing will fill what is missing in our lives. The grass is always greener on the other side because we don’t want enough—we want it all, just as Satan did. Satan wanted it all, including God’s throne. Satan tempts us with everything our heart desires in this world. He tries to lead us away from God by reinforcing the desires of a selfish heart. Living a life of selfish indulgence isolates a person and inflates the prideful view of self. It is temptation that drives us, and it is pride that blinds us to what we really need. As it was with the ruler Jesus met in Luke 18.
18A ruler questioned Him, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 19And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. 20You know the commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother.’” 21And he said, “All these things I have kept from my youth.” 22When Jesus heard this, He said to him, “One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” 23But when he had heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. 24And Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God! 25For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” 26They who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” 27But He said, “The things that are impossible with people are possible with God.” (Luke 18:18–27 NASB 1995)
The pride of this man blinded him to the fact that the answer to his question was standing right in front of him. Jesus asked him whether he believed Jesus was the Messiah, God made flesh for the forgiveness of our sin, since the man called Jesus good. As is always the case, the pride of the heart blinds people to the truth. The ruler believed he was perfect, claiming to have held the Ten Commandments. The lie of pride was telling him to cover his ego and it crushed the ruler. Jesus told him to go sell all his things, the things he valued above all else, the things he’d put so much time and effort into during his life. The things he thought gave him value in this world. The ruler’s hope was in what he could accomplish himself.
What Jesus was showing him was that he was not keeping the Ten Commandments. He was doing what we all do before God. He was lying to cover up the fact that we cannot live up to the moral standard of God. His pride was blinding his to the point Jesus was trying to make. In our self justification before God, we will always fall short.
35One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, 36”Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37And He said to him, “‘You shall love the lord your god with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38This is the greatest and foremost commandment. 39The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:35–40 NASB 1995)
We all have weakness—a broken part of us that desires what this world offers. Satan uses that weakness to tempt the evil in our hearts. Jesus attests to the evil within us.
20And He was saying, “That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. 21For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, 22deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. 23All of these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.” (Mark 7:20–23 NASB 1995)
Our heart condition, our sinful nature, is why we need Jesus. He never sinned, and He died on the cross in our place. We cannot earn our way to heaven. We can’t make up for the sin in our hearts by doing good deeds for people. To the same point, our unworthiness of God won’t keep us out of heaven either. Paul tells us, 23“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23–24 NASB 1995). This is exactly the point of Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well.
The entire story of the Samaritan woman is written in John 4:4–42. I am not going to include all of those scriptures here, but rather stick to the verses God was using to teach me.
19The woman *said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” 21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25The woman *said to Him, “I know the Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” 26Jesus *said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” (John 4:19–26 NASB 1995)
The Samaritan woman, just like the ruler, thought she could only be seen in the eyes of God if she did just the right things at just the right places. Unlike the ruler, she knew she could never accomplish these things. For her, there was no hope of ever entering the presence of God. She told Jesus she could not worship God since Samaritans were not welcome in Jerusalem. She knew, just like the Jews, the Messiah was coming, but she felt there was no way for her to worship the Messiah since she was not allowed to worship in the temple. Jesus answered her in a very profound way, one that hit me like a bolt of lightning to my soul. He told her that salvation comes from believing the truth and worshiping in the spirit.
One Truth: The word of God is truth. One Spirit: We are given one life in service to the Glory of God Almighty. One Way: There is only one way to reconcile our sinful life to God, and that is faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
He told her it is not something you can earn. The ruler tried to earn his salvation, and the truth ruined him. We can claim perfection, but when the truth exposes our lies, how will we react? Will we act prideful like the ruler, or humbly like the Samaritan woman? Action without love is selfish. We can give all we have to charity, but if it is not in love, it is empty.
1If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1–3 NASB 1995)
Our efforts cannot get us into heaven. That is why Jesus was sent to die for our sin. Jesus alone could fulfill the Ten Commandments. This is what Jesus told the people when he said it is impossible for man, but not for God. Jesus fulfilled the covenant given to Moses through His perfect obedience, to the point of dying on the cross. That allowed Jesus to become the perfect sacrifice for our own sin. In the Old Testament, God would only accept the best offering as a sacrifice for the Israelites’ sin offerings. God’s sacrifice to atone for all of mankind’s sin would have to be of a level of perfection mankind could never hope to achieve. Enter Jesus. His death on the cross fulfilled that covenant with God and mankind. Whosoever would accept they are a sinner. Whosoever admits they can never be good enough to make up for their sin. Whosoever believes Jesus is the only begotten son of God. His death on the cross, was to cover our sin. Whosoever believes through Jesus’s perfect obedience God raised Him from the dead to be seated at God’s right hand, where Jesus will intercede to God for us until Jesus comes again in judgment of all creation, will receive eternal life. The pride in the ruler’s heart left him sad and disappointed when the truth was revealed. The humble heart of the Samaritan woman rejoiced in the truth. She believed in the truth and then was able to worship God in spirit. We give our lives to God in worship through our obedience to Him. When she received the truth from Jesus, she could not help but tell the others in town about Him, and what He did for her. She told the very people that accused her of all her sinful ways. She told the very people who drove her to come to the well alone in the middle of the day to avoid their ridicule. She told them about the Messiah, so even her enemies might be saved. When we believe the truth that is Jesus the Messiah, and give our life to God in worship, we are then finally able to truly love our neighbors as ourselves. We can tell them the truth. I don’t want to spend eternity in hell, and I certainly wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
I grew up in religion much like the ruler did. I was raised Roman Catholic. We went to Mass just about every Sunday. I was an altar boy. I made all of my sacraments. I received my first communion and my confirmation. I even came back as a youth minister for the next group of students. Once I went to college I stopped going to church, but I would still have conversations with people at the bars about religion. I would claim to be a Christian. I would tell them about God and Jesus. I would tell them Jesus and God are real. I would enjoy the philosophical debates, but I never spoke about salvation. How could I? I didn’t know what salvation was. I wasn’t saved. I had not experienced salvation through grace yet. Someone knowing God is out there and knowing that Jesus is real will not get you into heaven. God’s word tells us: 19“You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder” (James 2:19 NASB 1995).
The demons know full well God and Jesus are real, but without faith in Jesus as Lord you are lost. It wasn’t until December 2012 that I would understand what it means to be saved, to put my faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. I was like the Jew’s leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. I believe most people are like those leaders. They have the head knowledge of God and of Jesus but have not surrendered to Him in repentance and faith in Jesus’s work on the cross. I would use my knowledge of Jesus and God to belittle people, not to love them and share the truth of God’s word. Nothing would flash boil my temper faster than a friend of mine doing something wrong to someone else. I would jump down their throat so fast and in such a berating way, especially if I was drinking. I would have even less self-control in that state, but it was my self-righteous perspective that was causing the behavior. I held such high expectations for the people in my life. There was no way they could ever live up to my standards. I would get infuriated on the inside at people for letting me down. I was under the illusion that I would always go out of my way to make sure people were taken care of, whether it was my business or not. It would burn me up if that was not reciprocated.
Looking back on it, more often than not I was acting out of selfish reasons. I always thought I would find a new girlfriend or new friends that would eventually meet my needs, and that the base issue wasn’t with me. I saw the issues perfectly clear in all the people around me.
After another failed relationship, reality finally broke me. I came under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. This time I realized the problems and issues I had came from within me. I realized the reason I saw and hated the brokenness in other people, was because the same brokenness was in me. If I couldn’t trust myself, and I couldn’t find anyone in my life to fill that gap, what could I put my trust in? My hope was in finding a better girlfriend or a better group of friends. In that moment, hopelessness filled my heart. It literally brought me to my knees, and my view of myself fell to pieces. My pride in myself was shattered. It left me on the floor in my room crying out with uncontrollable tears, in desperation for someone to help me. I was there for what felt like hours, literally crying for someone to help me, but no one was around. I should say something was there.
That night I crawled into bed exhausted, and something did come to help. It sat down on the corner of my bed. In the pitch-black of my room, I felt something sit down on my bed. You know the feeling, when someone sits on the corner of the bed. The bulge from the corner being pushed down makes the center of the bed rise, the shutter that is sends through the mattress. The thing that sat down on my bed sent a cold up my spine I’ll never forget. It was so painful that I curled myself up into the fetal position. I was raised a Roman Catholic, so all I could think to do was to pray The Our Father over and over again until that presence went away. The cold pain left with it, and I fell asleep out of pure relief and emotional exhaustion.
I’ve spoken with people since about their testimonies, when they accepted Christ. Many of them spoke about when they were getting up for an altar call or to declare faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior, they would feel a hand or something trying to keep them from getting out of their seats. I believe Satan makes every attempt to stop us from making the decision to follow Christ. He will exploit any weakness we have to ruin us. He’ll use sex, money, addiction, anxiety, and any other lie to keep us away from God. Satan wants you to believe your problems are too big for God and you’re not worthy, like the Samaritan woman, that there is no way God would save you until you’ve got yourself cleaned up, or until you mark off the correct to-do list, like the ruler. I believe that thing in my room was Satan’s trick to get me to turn to him for help. One thing I’ve learned in my short walk as a Christian, the first thing that shows up isn’t usually from God. The next morning I woke up, still sad and heartbroken over the ending of another relationship…