Faith Walking

Many people do not understand and, to be frankly honest there have been numerous times when I did not understand, but just the same, I am hopelessly addicted to faith walking. Sometimes it is downright terrifying to hear from God and to proceed forward in faith not seeing the ultimate outcome with your eyes but knowing what God desires to do in your spirit. It might be frightening but it is beyond thrilling to watch when God comes through.

Over and over again over the past two decades of my life I have been summoned by God to live a life of faith walking. This has often meant I did not know my next step. When I gave my to the Lord to preach back in 1985 in the deep east Texas pine thicket of the Pineywoods Baptist Encampment I could have never known then that God would transplant me from the towering pine trees to the flat farm land and wind storms of west Texas. This was just the latest in two decades of faith walking.

It was an act of faith to leave home as a shy and bashful teenager to follow God in a step of faith to go play football for Howard Payne University. It was another act of faith to move to Fort Worth to spend some time at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary after graduating from college. I moved from Brownwood, TX with no place to live, no job, and no money for tuition and in just a few days after I faith walked God made a way for all of those things. I lived in a small furnished duplex, worked at an office furniture company, and God used an anonymous person from my hometown to pay my first year of seminary tuition. My faith grew like a body builder’s biceps who lives in the weight room.

I took another step of faith in marrying Brenda Maria Ortiz on June 29^th, 1991. She committed to being a faith walker with me. We walked by faith to the Spring Creek Baptist Church in Weatherford, TX where we loved on some students and saw God do some amazing things for two years. The youth group grew from less than a dozen to over forty with most of them being saved. We moved from there back to east Texas where I pastored a small country church in Burke, TX; population 314. We learned a great deal about trusting God there for five years before we took the biggest plunge of faith we had ever taken.

I left the full time pastoral ministry to start a traveling ministry. All we had ever learned about being faith walkers was put to use as we trusted God for a place to live, a steady salary, open doors to preach, salvations, and for my books to get published. For five years we continued in the school faith walking, learning, growing, being stretched, and all the while watching God be faithful. [I Thess 5:24]

We learned what it meant to trust God for the unseen [Heb 11:1] as well as to learn to pray in the will of God. [I Jn 5:14-15] God’s answers to our prayers in dramatic fashion increased our confidence to trust Him more. It was during the height of my traveling ministry we felt a call to start a church and for me reenter pastoral ministry. The church ended up disbanding but we sure learned to trust God like we could have never dreamed in those four years. Time would fail me to recount the answers to prayer. Over and over again we found God answers fervent prayers and those prayers can accomplish much. [James 5:16] VERY MUCH!

From there we walked by faith to Paradise where we enjoyed a love and bond with the flock of FBC Paradise for four years that defies description. It was four glorious years of watching God save souls, grow the church, expand our ministry around the world, and expand the vision beyond any of our wildest imaginations. I never dreamed that we would ever leave that place but God firmly, clearly, and consistently revealed that His call for our lives involved another walk of faith to uproot and move our family to Seminole, TX to pastor the First Baptist Church.

Since moving here two and a half weeks ago we have seen God add to the church family, crowded pews, loving and accepting people, and our boys be engrained in the Seminole culture. It was not easy getting them to let go from being Panthers to play for the Indians.

I am convinced with every fiber of my being that [Heb 11:6] is true. “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” I am living proof of that scripture. I am a faith walker and all I have good in my life I owe to Jesus. He led me to Brenda who is the woman crazy enough to faith walk with me time and time again. He blessed me with a wonderful sister in law who is my daughter in my heart as we helped to raise her. I have four great boys. God has met our every need and we have known times of abundance and times of lack but God has rewarded our faith each step of the way.

I will be the first to say that being a faith walker is not always easy but it is always rewarding. What is better than having a front row seat to behold the faithfulness of God and to experience the power of God first hand? That is what we need as individual believers as well as churches. Will you commit to be a faith walker and to lead those you have influence over to be faith walkers with you. It is an amazing adventure. Maybe our faith walking will lead our paths to intersect at some point and we can believe God together for, “abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us.” [Eph 3:20]