Copyright © 2006 Ron Schwartz
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To Lead Or To Follow - My Testimony

October 23, 2006

By Ron Schwartz

John 5:19

Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.

Jesus was describing a cooperative effort between Himself and God (the Father).  Not that God was cooperating with Jesus but Jesus with God.  His thoughts were not on coming up with His next sermon but in watching events unfold around Him (wherever He found Himself) so He could see what God was doing in it.  As God moved, so did He.  

1 Corinthians 4:20 KJV

For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

What defined Jesus was not the multitude that followed Him nor His sermons but the manifest presence of God that, like the wake of a large ship, followed Him wherever He went.  The first generation of Christians did not have the wealth of New Testament documents and the accumulation of two thousand years of Christian writings like we do today.  So their primary focus was not on sermons.  It was on the manifest presence of God.   As I considered how to convey my thoughts, I eventually decided to give you a brief testimonial from some of my own experiences.

34 years ago

Just before my 16^th birthday, I repented and made a decision to serve the Lord.  Through the intervention of God, I found myself cast into a situation where I was expected to witness to other young people.   It was during my first experience doing so that I witnessed for the first time the manifest presence of God.

I had recently finished classes on how to present the “plan of salvation,” and this was my first real opportunity to practice it.  But it didn’t go as I had been taught.   God strongly impressed on my heart to share scriptures on backsliding with a group of very prominent football players.  I faced was faced with a dilemma: would I continue with the program that I had been taught and practiced, or would I do what I felt God was telling me to do?  I quickly determined to set aside my program and flipped open the Old Testament in my Bible.  My eyes landed on a verse that talked about backslidden Israel.  I asked the leader of the group to read it, and surprisingly he did.  I flipped through a few more pages and there was the word again.  I began to feel the presence of God in a way that I can’t explain – I was very young in the Lord.

Again I asked the leader of the group to read the scripture, and he did.  His voice began to tremble along with his whole body.  I could sense that something supernatural about to take place.  Another verse with the word “backslidden” caught my attention.  I handed it again to the leader, and this time he collapsed and began to cry out to God.  Tears poured from his eyes as he wailed out to God for a good half hour.  Finally, he peered at me through his tears and said, “I need to be baptized.”  It was late at night, so I told him that we could probably find a pastor to do it in a few days, perhaps Sunday.

“I have to be baptized now,” he insisted.   Then the scriptures “can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized (Acts 10:47)” and “go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them (Matthew 28:19)” went through my mind.  So we all walked down to a nearby boat-launch where I baptized him.  It was the most incredible experience of my life.  Once under the water, he exploded up again, worshipping God with incredible joy.  He experienced a total transformation.   It struck me hard, though, that I had not used the “soul winning” process that I had practiced.  Not only that, but I had been brought up believing that only “ordained” pastors had the authority to baptize.  I learned then that when we put our beliefs ahead of God, we generally miss out on what God is doing.  So I followed the leading of God instead.

After that event, I began going out each night (everywhere) sharing the gospel.  Before I would leave, I would spend time praying – preparing myself – for the move of God.  I would always ask, “God root their feet to the ground so that they cannot leave.”  To my surprise, as I began to talk with people, I would see them turn to leave but their feet would not move.   They would sometimes tug and tug trying to move their feet, but they couldn’t.   Fear would come over their faces as they realized that a great power had come over them.  The results were awesome.  Dozens of people gave their lives to God that first month, experiencing a great move of God in their lives.  I knew that it didn’t matter what I said.  The manifest presence of God was there, and He was convicting them.  To my knowledge, I have never used any of the “salvation plan” programs that I was taught.  Not that they are necessarily wrong.  I learned that each person and each event is unique, and God has a specific thing that He wants done.  So I simply watched to see what God was doing in each situation and followed His lead.

A good example of this is what happened one particularly cold winter night as I drove past a local restaurant.  I saw someone going into it, and I knew that this young Christian had a heart for God.  By this time I had stopped believing in coincidence, so I stopped to encourage him and to see if God was doing something there.  Moments after I sat down beside him, a large group of rather loud young people entered and sat down behind me.  They immediately noticed the salvation patches that covered my coat and began to make fun of them.  They called me a “Jesus Freak.”  I turned around, smiled and said, “Actually, the Bible says that they were first called Christians in Antioch.”  I waited, then, to see if God was there.  One of the young men asked a question (I can’t remember the content), and once again I sensed the presence of God.  I stood up, walked over to their table, and began witnessing to them.  I looked around and saw that all the people at the nearby tables were listening.  God’s presence was there.  So I pulled up a chair, stood on it, and began to witness to all the people at the surrounding tables.  Soon, people from the other side of the restaurant had gathered around.  Then the waitresses and the kitchen help.  Six hours later, at 2:00am, I finally left.  I quit only because I had lost my voice and could no longer speak for the Lord.

Many souls had made decisions to follow the Lord.  Someone who was going to leave that restaurant and commit suicide had given his life to God.  The event was not planned.  I had never considered doing that before.  I simply watched what God did and followed.  After hearing this story, some people have tried it for themselves with disastrous results.  Why?  God uniquely tailors each event: He has a specific thing that He wants done.  I have been moved to witness to captive audiences on an elevator and saw God’s presence revealed.  But when I tried it again later (on the way down), there was nothing.  We must not execute our own plans.  We must consider each situation and learn to see what God is doing.

Another time, I was driving through a city with a friend, and we were trying to decide where we would begin witnessing.  We saw a large number of young people entering a large city building (often we would drive around for a few minutes, waiting to either see something that God would be in or sense something God was doing).   We stopped, entered the building, and found that a rock concert had drawn the crowd.  It was so loud that it was impossible for us to witness, so we stopped and prayed a simple prayer: “Lord, stop the music.”  Moments later, a transformer blew, and the building lost power.  Everyone was forced to leave.  They stood outside the entrance, quietly waiting for the problem to be fixed.  We didn’t wait.  We stood atop two large cement columns and preached the gospel of Jesus to the multitudes who stood around listening.  The important part about these events is that we did not plan them.  We simply responded to situations that God created.  Like Jesus, we watched to see what the Father was doing and merely cooperated with Him.

On another occasion, we came upon a number of young people sitting on a park bench.  Was God in this?  To see, I simply began to witness to them.  At first, it seemed like God was not there because one young man began to make fun of us, causing such a disruption that it was impossible to focus.  For some reason, I felt compelled to pray for him, so I reach out and grabbed him by the shoulder.  “God, don’t let him sleep again until he gives his heart to You,” I said without thinking about what I would say.   I then went back to witnessing.  Moments later, he left.  Nothing came of that event, or so I thought, so I simply dismissed it as God not being in it.

I forgot all about that incident for several months.  Then, on Halloween night, as we set out to witness to as many young people on the streets as we could, God began to impress on me to walk in a certain direction.  It was the opposite direction from where we knew the youth would be, toward the edge of town.  After a significant walk, we found ourselves nearing the last street light at the edge of town.  “I’ve got to know where God is taking us,” I said.  So we stopped by a very large oak, knelt down and prayed, “Show us where You’re taking us, Lord.”   After a few minutes, I looked up.   A young man was walking straight for us from the direction we had been traveling.  He drew near and knelt beside me.   “I have been looking everywhere for you,” he said, smiling broadly.  He seemed overjoyed to have found us although I had no idea who he was.  “I don’t know if you remember praying for me, but I have not had any sleep in months.”  There, on Halloween night under an old oak tree, that young man gave his heart to God.

I could tell you many more stories such as these, where we had no program but simply responded to the events unfolding around us, watching carefully to see what God was doing.  Far too often, we dismiss them and go on, never realizing the great work that could have done.   As a result, we can go through our entire lives never affecting others.   Yet there are so many lives that could be transformed if we would merely consider each event in our lives as an opportunity for God to work.

Throughout the gospels, we find someone coming up to Jesus and saying, “My ____ is dying.  Lay your hands on them.”  And each time we find Jesus responding to the situation.  Jesus did have a mission, but he was also situational.  The gospels are replete with accounts of Jesus responding to situations as they occurred.  How does this compare to contemporary pastors who can only be found by appointment?  Many pastors are shielded in such a way that they are not readily available for the type of situations to which Jesus responded, the types of situations that God creates.   Sometime, do a search on the word “passed” in the gospels.  Many of His greatest miracles happened as He “passed” by and saw or heard someone.   You will also find that the apostles operated much the same manner throughout the book of Acts.

By the time I was 18, I found myself cast for the first time into the role of a pastor.  I shared responsibility with an older brother who had many years of experience in ministry.  During the few years that followed, God once again showed me that “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God (Psalms 20:7).”  I learned that there are no coincidences if you simply put away the program and respond to the events as they occur.

One Sunday, I lay at the front of our building praying to know what God wanted at the meeting that evening.  Then, moments before that meeting began, God brought to my mind a certain scripture and then the most incredible revelation from it.  If there was any time in my entire life that I knew I had heard from God, it was then.   I surmised that it was this revelation that God wanted me to share, but God had other plans.  A relatively new person was there that night, and that message struck them in a certain way - a way that caused them to stand up and openly rebuke me.  While she spoke, I felt the presence of God fall.  I realized that this, not my message, was what God was doing.  When she finished, the power of God manifested itself explosively.  As I began to speak, my voice changed and words began to flow from my mouth in a profound way.  People began to fall down crying out to God.  There were tears and rejoicing.  I had never experienced anything like that before.  As I lifted my hands and looked up, I saw standing on either side of me two large angels whose heads touched the 12-foot ceiling.  Many others witnessed the same thing.  The meeting went on for hours.   I was never more certain of any sermon.  So focused was I that I didn’t even consider that God had something more in mind.  Most importantly, once events began to unfold, I recognized it and stepped back to see what God was doing.  I’m sure that everyone who was there that night remembers what happened.  I’m also quite sure that no one remembers the sermon.   What they do remember is that something happened: God was allowed to move, and lives were transformed.  Though my sermon was a great revelation, it yielded no benefit for those who assembled that evening.  It was merely a tool God used to create an event, an event that allowed Him to do great things in His people because I cooperated with Him rather than stepping in to control the situation myself.

In another example, certain friends who pastored other churches asked me to help a church for “just a few months” in a nearby town.   Once again, I recognized this as an event unfolding before me, so I agree to go.   As I walked into the building that first Sunday, I saw three people sitting together near the front row.  I walked up front, introduced myself to them, and began some small talk.  After a few moments, I asked when the others would arrive (after all, the church building was large and impressive, a large brick cathedral-like building with a belfry steeple and stained glass windows).  They informed me that this was it.  The fourth person, the pastor, was on a three-month sabbatical in India.

After the meeting, I visited with one older lady who hung around after the meeting to talk.  She shared with me the rich history of that church, one that went back about four decades.   The church grounds included a campground, and at one time people came from all across the USA to their meetings.  They were even part of the circuit for the big name evangelists of the forties and fifties. “What happened?” I asked.  She didn’t know.  She told me that, over the course of time, God had stopped moving, and people left.  I knew this wasn’t the case.  There had to be more to it.

That night I sat before the Lord.  I had to know what to do.  I felt God impress upon me to “find His lost lambs.”   A few days later, I went to see the same lady who had given me the history and asked her to give me a name and address of a family that used to attend.  I then went and visited them.  The family was not part of any fellowship and was ready to give up on the Lord.  Just that week, they had asked God to send someone.   They began coming the next Sunday.

Day after day, I visited the lost lambs.  None were attending other churches.  One day when I visited a certain family, the husband and father expressed deep hurt and skepticism (being African-American he had experienced much rejection).  After dumping on me his past hurts and bad experiences, he left the room for a moment and returned with a game of Bible Trivia.  He wanted to demonstrate to his family that I was just like all the others who only wanted his money.  He began to pull out cards and ask me questions.   It began as you can imagine: I got some right and some wrong.  Then suddenly I sensed the presence of God.  I began to know the answers before he could ask the questions.   So I followed the leading of God and immediately spoke the answer as soon as he drew the card.  His face changed: he was scared.  This went on for quite some time.  This man who had vowed never to return to church was there the next Sunday with his family.

I began to see that, with each visit, God had been at work during that week before, preparing the way for my visit.  Sometimes He showed Himself through physical healings, sometimes through spiritual.  Three months later, when the pastor returned from India, the large church was full to capacity with all of the lost lambs.  Chairs were set up in the back for the people who were forced to stand because all the seats were filled.  God had once again demonstrated to me what His manifest presence could do.  Instead of simply preaching the gospel at the building and expecting people to come, I made myself available to them where they were and watched to see what God was doing.

On another occasion following a meeting, a schoolteacher asked me if I could take her and a local family to a Medical Center a few hours away.  The next morning I picked up her along with that family.  They were Hispanic.  As an outreach, the teacher taught English to local Hispanic families.  I could easily see why we were going to the hospital.   The baby, who was less than a year old, had grapefruit-sized tumors all over her head.  As I drove, I kept looking back at the baby.  Again, I had long stopped believing in coincidences.   I knew I had to pray for her, but the time didn’t seem right.   My heart grew heavier and heavier.  Throughout the day, the baby was taken through one battery of tests, then another.  I listened as the translator explained that the tumors had begun growing soon after birth, and now they completely covered her head.

My heart grew heavier and heavier as I came to terms with the fact that I would not be able to leave without praying for the baby, but there was not a single moment that we were alone, free from the prying (and skeptical) eyes of the doctors and technicians.  Finally, at the end of the day, we all ended up in a large conference room: the doctors and technicians, the teacher and the baby’s family… and me.   It was crowded, and they gave their dreaded conclusion: the mother and baby would stay, and the rest of us would have to leave.   Then the doctors and technicians sat silent, waiting for us to depart.  I was out of time.  I had to pray right then.  So I stood up in the noiseless room, walked over to the child, and laid both hands over the tumors.  I prayed and then opened my eyes.  Just as I thought, the tumors were still there.   I was embarrassed and quickly left the room.  Though I had been obedient, I was ashamed that I was ashamed of God.

As the months passed, I kept wondering what had happened to that baby.  But I was too ashamed to ask.  Then, after about three months, I finally asked the teacher what had become of the child.   I braced myself for the worst, but a bright smile formed across the teacher’s face.  “Didn’t I tell you?  The next morning when mom and baby woke up, the tumors were gone!”

During the years that followed, I have seen miracles such as this happen again and again.   I have learned that God creates opportunities to glorify Himself.  This is the secret Jesus knew.   Jesus didn’t set about to create an opportunity and then expect God to move.  Jesus went about His mission in life but made Himself available in each situation around Him.  He neglected neither His mission nor the situations.  He found a way to fit each situation into His mission.  He lived His life in a normal way and simply watched for events to unfold and for God to move.

Such a life hasn’t always been smooth sailing for me either.  Sometimes situations have gone against my theology.  For instance, praying for the healing of an animal was not something I would have considered, at least not until I saw God there.  One Saturday afternoon, a widow, her mother, and her daughters who all lived together showed up at my home.  As they drove up, I stepped out onto the porch.  I could hear the crying even before the car doors opened.  The children’s sobs were enough to break my heart.  Their mother and grandmother were also in tears.  As they stepped from the car, I saw their dog with a muzzle over its mouth.  It was the family pet.  The mother explained that they had just come from the vet.  The dog had distemper and needed to be put to sleep.  “You’ve got to help us, Brother Ron,” she exclaimed.  “You have to pray for him.”

The dog growled continuously.  As I picked it up, it tried to bite me through the muzzle.  It braced itself against me and tried to pull away.  “He’s gone crazy,” the mother explained.  I laid my hand upon its head and prayed.  Immediately, the dog grew limp in my arms, stopped growling, and wagged its tail.  It was quite normal now.  We took the muzzle off the dog, and it licked my face.  The dog remained normal as long as I knew that family.  The importance here is that I did not allow my actions to be dictated by my preconceived understanding of biblical theology or doctrine.  I considered this event as it unfolded and looked to see what God was doing in it.  We must not box God in by our theology but trust Him in everything that takes place around us.

One cold winter night, a desperate mother dialed every number for every church that she could find.  Her daughter had been sent home to die.  How she ever got our number I will never know.  I could hear the blizzard whistling outside my windows as this mother pleaded with me to come to her home and pray for her daughter.  The roads were blocked off and dangerous, and the trip would require navigating thirty miles of open country.  It took over two hours to get there.  When I finally arrived, I found the girl under a pile of blankets shivering uncontrollably.  All at once, I felt God’s presence.  I couldn’t seem to place my hands over her face fast enough, and before I could even utter a prayer, I felt the fever leave her.  Her face burst into sweat, she threw off the blankets and jumped out of bed.  “I’m hungry,” she told her mother.  Her mother stood there and cried.  I didn’t go there with the intension of getting a new member.  I didn’t post my number in an effort to market the church.  I merely responded to the events God brought about and was obedient to what the scripture instructed.

The stories are too many to list.  But through all the years since I first stepped onto the street to share the gospel, God has continued to show me that nothing I do will amount to anything without His manifest presence.  I will never see it as long as I am making plans of my own.  I must be willing to wait for it, to watch the events unfold around me, and to have the courage to execute it when I see it.  I am not to make a plan and expect God to cooperate.  I am to see God’s plan and not be afraid to cooperate.

Conclusion

Imagine a spotlight moving across an auditorium floor.   To be in the light, you must follow the light as it moves.   This is what most pastors miss.  Too many of them create their own plan and then execute it expecting God to follow them.  At certain points, their path may cross the path of the spotlight.   This brief encounter is enough to cause many pastors to believe that God is cooperating with them.   They can point to different times when a person told them how their message helped them, as though it were proof of God’s approval.   But these brief encounters with God during the execution of their own plan is not proof.  Such coincidences happen to everyone, not just pastors.

The Kingdom of God is not in words.  It is in the demonstration of God’s power.  Yet all around me I find brothers in the Lord who honestly believe that God’s power is in their words.   They honestly believe that God will use their sermons to transform people.  But, as they say, “the [true] proof is in the pudding.”   Why, then, does the nation with the most Christian churches, radio stations, TV shows, magazines, and bookstores find itself to be the most backslidden nation on earth?  Why is it that the nation with the most sermons preached each week continues to slip further and further into apathy and apostasy?

Ministers spend an inordinate amount of time preparing sermons of which few people can even remember the subject just moments after they leave the church.  Similarly, 95% of the content of a sermon is also lost before people even leave the building.

What’s wrong with the church cannot be fixed by executing your plan.   Having more weekly meetings and holding revival meetings is not the answer either.  Some pastors become so preoccupied with fixing the problems that they end up trying to control everything that happens or even sometimes use strong-arm tactics with people.   But all of these efforts eventually fail because they are the execution of our own plans.

How can I convey to pastors that people are not transformed by the sermons they share or the meetings they undertake?  People need God, and for that, pastors must stop trying to provide solutions and get out of the way.   God knows what people need.  He is able to provide both the answer and the power to transform them.   Wait until you sense God’s presence, for only then is when you will see His power manifested.  This is the true power, not your sermons.  It’s the power to transform people, the power to convert a community, and the power to evangelize a nation.   It is the power to transform the most apostate and apathetic church into one that is full of the power of God.

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