When I was five years old, God spoke to me. My parents weren't church going people. I had little teaching of who Jesus was, but never the less He spoke to me. When He spoke I didn't wonder who it was, I knew. His voice carried His person and was so simplistic that He conveyed much more than the words He said. The voice was so loud that I still don't know if it was inside of me or an actual audible voice. All I knew was that it changed my current situation and caused me to feel a peace which I needed at that very moment. Right then I felt loved in a way which has allowed me to never doubt the love of God to this day. Although I didn't give my life to Christ until the summer before my senior year of high school, I was always aware of God and interested in His things as I was growing up. I knew that God was real and not just a doctrine or a religion. Some of my earliest memories involve encounters with Jesus Christ. My first contact with Him was not in a Sunday school story about a man in a far away place. He had spoken to me. I knew He was a real, live person.

I was introduced to the phrase "full time Christian service" at a youth camp the same summer I made Christ my Lord. I had no idea that the phrase was not biblical. I was just a kid. I did know one thing for sure: What Christ did on the cross was powerful to me and I wanted to serve God more than anything. Full time service was offered as my best option in the religious system I was involved with, so I took it. Now I know that every believer is called to full time service. The "full time" part has nothing to do with your physical vocation. The phrase was introduced by Satan to help establish a clergy / laity system in a religious realm which he controls. It is just one part of a world system which he rules at this time. But I simply stepped forward to give my life to "full time Christian service". I was then herded through an educational process which was supposed to prepare me for ministry. Well- meaning people taught me Bible facts from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good, but there were few encounters with the Tree of Life in bible college. Something inside of me said not to swallow everything I was told about God and the bible. But there was always a mysterious undertow pulling on me. It was like a magnetic force causing me to conform to a certain image, and it was not Christ's. I did not understand it, but I hated it and rebelled against it. I even used carnality and sin in an effort to avoid the steady draw to be like 'them'. I figured it was better to live a carnal life than to be a hypocrite. Finally I succumbed to it's constant influence. I became a "preacher", a "professional minister" if you will. It had become my identity rather than Christ. Of course I didn't know it. I would proudly tell you that I was different than the rest. In my head I saw myself as being unique and un-compromised, but I had sold out to a religious kingdom which I began to serve instead of Christ. In my heart of hearts I wanted a big church and a big name for myself. I would tell myself that I was doing what God called me to do. Here and there I would see a ray of light, but over all I knew I was trapped. I slowly became aware that Christ was not in control of my life, a religious system was. Christ and the system were so entwined in my thinking that I could not distinguish between them. I could not be lead of the Spirit because I had given the reins of my life to a church board. I had sold out for a salary, a convention allowance, and a title which wasn't even in the bible. But I just could not see Paul being concerned about getting hired or fired! In frustration, I began to recognize some truth but I had no idea how to go about dealing with it. I didn't know there was another way. I had no practical job skills or training in anything. Financially speaking, I was stuck. I was chained in a religious dungeon with seemingly no way out. The enemy had me where he wanted me. I could do very little damage to his kingdom.