Tony's Story--An Instrument of salvation and Healing

By Tony Vasquez

(I have known Tony and his wife Jo for 6 years, praying with them every week down at our state capital in Sacramento for most of that time. They live by faith, and God does quite extraordinary things with them from time to time ... David Hobbs)

A short time ago my bride Jo and I needed to go to the P.O. in a nearby supermarket to mail a past due bill. I decided to stay in the vehicle to catch up on some calls I needed to make. Moments had passed when the sound of urgent tapping on the car window startled me. It was Jo. She had an anxious look as if something urgent needed attending.

            “There’s a man on the corner with a shopping cart whom I think needs help! He is near the entrance of the supermarket.” She exclaimed, hastening me to help him.

            As I approached the cart, there stood a fairly well-built thirty-something man of African descent, about 5’ 10” in height, with his arm bound in an Ace bandage from his fingertips to his elbow and braced in a makeshift sling. He was speaking into his cell phone with great agitation with what appeared to be all of his possessions in the shopping cart he was guarding.

            “Hello, my name is Pastor Tony; is there anything I can do to help?”

            Responding with a troubled look, he explained in a strong, African accent, “I work in a job in trucking and I hurt my hand on the job early this morning. The foreman took me to a clinic where they told me my hand was broken. Since I had no medical coverage, the foreman told me he couldn’t use me like this and he dropped me off at this shopping center.”

            “Do you need a ride home?” I asked.

LOVING THE STRANGER

            “I live in Boston. I have just enough on my card to pay for a plane ticket; I don’t have enough to pay for a cab to get to the airport from here. The taxi said the faire would be about $100,” he said in clear frustration.

            “My wife and I will be glad to take you to the airport,  no charge,” I smiled. “But first would you let us pray that Jesus would heal your hand?”

            His eyes shifted to the ground as if searching to answer. “You cannot pray for me,” he spoke in almost a whisper. “I used to serve Jesus but am in a backslidden state. I ran from Jesus to come to America to make money. I am too ashamed to ask Him for help now.”

            “What is your name?” I asked, trying to redirect his focus, “are you African?”

            “I am Ben, and I am from Nigeria,” he responded.

            “Well Ben, as friends of Jesus we can tell you for sure that Jesus wants to heal you!” Before he could say another word, my wife Jo and I placed our hands gently on his shoulder. “Jesus, You love Your son Benjamin. He needs his hands to work. Heal him we pray, amen.”

            “Ben,” I said, “before you get to the airport the Holy Spirit will touch you. God is not a child abuser. He is a healer!”

A WILD RIDE

            About ten minutes into what could have been a very quiet ride I heard our passenger sniffling quietly.

            “I’m sorry about your pain; I’ll try to stay in the lane with less bumps,” I said, trying to comfort him.

            “I am crying because I don’t deserve this!” he said. “The pain in my hand is all but gone!! Only my thumb hurts now!!” He continued moving his fingers in amazement. With tears of gratefulness streaming down his beautiful brown face, he prayed in humility, “Jesus, I come back to You. Thank you for my life! I will go back to church and seek your face. Amen.”

           

HIS WORD IS TRUE

            With great joy and kindness, we began to tell him the truth of God’s word: that the call on his life was without repentance (Rom. 11:29). He began to weep again in wonder, declaring, “God has found me again today! I know He knows me; I will go back to my church and preach.” He was still wiggling his fingers hoping to be completely healed.

           

SUDDENLY

            When we arrived at the airport twenty minutes later and went to the ticket counter, the young man’s hand was still slightly pained. We gave him some extra cash for food after helping with his luggage. As soon as the boarding pass was put into his hand, Benjamin shouted in amazement, “No pain! No pain! The pain is all gone!”

            It was as if Holy Spirit was confirming to him at the last moment that his place was to be home with his wife and children in Boston. He then excitedly unwrapped his arm, banging it with his left hand and waving the previously pained hand for everyone to see. “THANK YOU JESUS!” he exclaimed, now expressing his freedom by dancing for joy as only an African can.

            Wow! Jesus sent a blissful, renewed man off to his wife and children whole; no longer looking for the riches the world brings, but the riches of the souls of men. What a thrilling LIFE: To be part of the Kingdom of God!

Email Tony and Jo at globalfirenetministry@gmail.com 

"Short-timer" Attitude in the Church

By David Hobbs

Most of us have run into “short-timers”: that employee counting the days till his retirement, or the military man about to be discharged. For seniors in May it’s called “senioritis,” but it’s all the same: someone who is so distracted anticipating what’s about to happen that they are no longer focused on what they should be doing.

I’m afraid we have many in the church afflicted with the same short-timer mentality anticipating the rapture: kicking back, singing songs, almost a party mentality thinking they’ll soon be walking those streets of gold and nothing down here will matter any more: “Let the Anti-Christ have it, who cares? I’m out of here.”

Yet Jesus told us to occupy until He comes, and He’s not here yet. It would be bad enough if we knew for a certainty that the rapture would happen this month, say. But in truth nobody knows when it will occur, and in the meantime people are dying every day without Christ, our  culture is in moral free-fall, we are in the midst of an abortion holocaust, we urgently need a fresh move of God to sweep souls into the Kingdom, and we desperately need a corporate cry from the Body of Christ along the lines of 2 Chron. 7:14--for God to hold off judgment and reverse our slide into destruction. It’s perhaps the most critical time in the church’s 2000 year history, where we need every hand on deck giving it their all; and yet we’ve got this crowd hanging out waiting for the rapture, accomplishing nothing and demoralizing the rest.

If the rapture did occur today, would they even be taken? And what would their reception be in heaven, this Laodicean crowd who are “rich and in need of nothing,” yet are spiritually blind to the day in which they are living? Jerusalem was destroyed because she didn’t discern the time in which she was living, and missed the “day of her visitation.” She wasn’t welcomed triumphantly into heaven like many today expect to be.

This has gripped me so much that I wrote the following letter to the editor of my local newspaper, which is my forum for addressing affairs of the church and of the culture.

Dear Editor,

Jesus dictated letters to seven different churches in the Book of Revelation. Many commentators believe each church represents an age in church history. The last church was at Laodicea, which Jesus condemned as lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. He said He would rather they were cold (living like heathen) than lukewarm, and threatened to vomit them out of His mouth because He so loathed their lukewarmness. Yet the commentators call our day the Laodicean Age of the American church..

It was under the watch of the modern church that prayer was removed from the schools and over 55 million babies were aborted. It was under our watch that the moral underpinnings of this nation collapsed leaving our culture in its present frightening state of free-fall. Where is the preaching from the pulpits against sin? The divorce rate of church members is about the same as that of the unchurched, though Jesus plainly forbids it. Ditto out-of-wedlock births, living together unmarried, and many other areas where the church has copied the world instead of influencing it for the better.

Has God changed? But the church has abandoned many of its bedrock doctrines such as the holiness of God and His abhorrence of sin.

Sadly many parishioners attend church in the midst of a world that is going to hell without lifting a finger to stop them, with the ghostly cries of millions of aborted babies echoing in their deafened ears, while they sing songs, hear an uplifting sermon, then go to Dennys to eat pie and talk about being raptured to heaven before the judgment hits. What if the next event on God’s prophetic timetable, instead of the Rapture of the Church, is spewing them from His mouth?

 That was kind of a harsh note to end on, and I know there are many Christians in our local area who are deeply committed, working among the poor and needy, evangelizing the lost. etc. And I hate to risk demoralizing them by painting with a broad brush. Yet we must keep the big picture in mind. There has got to be accountability at some point for what has happened on our watch. When I see from where the church has fallen since I got saved in 1974--it’s stunning.  But who is talking about it? Who is repenting? Who is praying? Yet we think we will be whisked away to heaven in triumph while the unsaved world faces the consequences for what we have allowed to happen! We have accommodated the world and its sin instead of rebuking it. We have played church instead of being The Church. John the Baptist rebuked Herod for his adultery and was beheaded for it; our “Christian” nation reelected Bill Clinton after his escapades and we merely grumbled about it.

The church needs the equivalent of a glass of ice water thrown in its face.