HOW I BUILT A MILLION-DOLLAR CHURCH FACILITY WITH NO MONEY WHEN I WAS 29 YEARS OLD!!!! Faith will come as you acknowledge and declare what God has said about you to yourself. Whatever you do, do not repeat what fleshly people say about you! They are not the foundation that you build your life upon. Praise God you build your life upon Jesus Christ and him alone. When you hear the voice of God {there needs to be evidence in your life that you hear his voice} you need to immediately say what he says about you, what you’re going to do, and where you’re going, and act upon it! Here is one illustration of hearing the voice of God. As I was in prayer one day, the Lord quickened to my heart to build a church that would seat eight hundred people. At the time, the size of our congregation was only about seventy people. On top of this, we had no money. I knew the members of our congregation pretty well, and as far as I could tell, none of them were wealthy. When the Lord quickened my heart, I immediately acted upon on what he spoke to me. I went to the land that we owned which was nothing but an empty cow field. I began to walk that field declaring by the word of the Lord we would have a church upon this property that would sit 800 people. I did this day after day speaking to myself declaring what God had said to me. Of course then we had to act upon this declaration by doing the obvious. We checked with local construction companies to put up this building. Just to put up the exterior steel building and pour the concrete floor would cost us more than $800,000. I knew in my heart that this was not the way to go. There was a man in our congregation who represented Wedge Core a steel building company from South Dakota. We began to coordinate with them for the purchase of the steel we needed. They provided us with all the blueprints that were necessary for the foundation. I located an architectural company in Hanover, Pennsylvania that was willing to work with us. I drew up a rough, simple schematic of what we were looking for. With that drawing, they were able to provide for us the simplest blueprint possible which would be approved by the state of Pennsylvania. We went through the proper process to get the right building permits from local, county, and state authorities. We had everything in hand to start the project. We had done everything we could do. Daily I was continuing to speak to myself in agreement with what God had Quicken to my heart. This maintained and caused faith to continue to operate within me. Now what? We had no money. As I was in prayer, the Spirit of God quickened my heart to simply step out in faith and do it. There was a man in our church who owned a backhoe. I approached Richard about what I wanted to do and he said, “Let’s do it.” We went out to the property and staked out where the footers and foundation were going to be. Then he brought his son Carol up from Maryland to dig these footers. We ended up with a 100 x 150 foot ditch. We prayed every step of the way. As the Spirit of the Lord would quicken me, I would order the building materials. On the day we were to lay the blocks that the metal building would sit on, it was pouring down rain. The men of the congregation wanted to cancel the Saturday work party. I told them that God was going to make it possible for us to lay the blocks on that day. As we were on the building site, we cried out to the Lord and immediately the rain stopped and the sun came out! By the end of that day 500 feet of block had been laid. My Life on the Line The company that was providing the steel for our building called from South Dakota, telling us that the steel building was almost ready to be shipped. They said they could ship it by cash on delivery. When the building arrived I would have to give them approximately $49,000. At the time, we only had $1,000 in our building account, with no other means of finances. The representative from the steel company also informed us they could store the building for about $1,200 a month, or they could ship it out within six to eight weeks. As I was listening to the man over the phone, I heard the Spirit of the Lord say to me, Tell them to send it! I became very still before the Lord, because I wanted to make sure that I heard him correctly. The Spirit spoke to me again, Tell them to send it! I told the gentlemen from the steel company to go ahead and send the building! He told me that would be fine and they would prepare it to be sent. On the other hand, he also informed me that we better be aware that if the building got there and I did not have the money, that I would be breaking interstate laws (I believe he said there were five of them) and that I would be going to jail, as I was the one who gave the approval for the building to come! I got very quiet before the Lord and asked Him, What I should do? The Spirit once again reconfirmed, and quickened to my heart, to have them send it. Once again I told the representative to go ahead and send it. He gave me a warning again. The gift of faith was operating in my heart. I knew that it was done. After I got off the phone, a desire came into my heart to give away the $1,000 in our building account. I was not trying to bribe God to do something for us. The $1,000 we had was not going to do a thing for us, so why not give it away out of faith? We took that thousand dollars and divided it up into ten different checks, sending it to ten different ministries. That Sunday, I went before the congregation and told them this story. I told them the steel was coming and if they wanted to, they could get involved. I also told them we had invested $1,000 into ten other ministries. I did inform them that if I was missing God in this regards, I was going to have a prison ministry. I had put my life on the line. Amazingly, had no fear or anxiety whatsoever during the six weeks leading up to the steel arriving. Without a shadow of a doubt, I knew the money would be there. I kept thanking God to myself and declaring that the money was there. The finances began to trickle in. To this day, I do not remember where it all came from. I did not beg, plead, or call anybody for money. I received a phone call approximately six weeks later from the representative of the steel company. They told me that they were loading this steel up on their big trucks, and was I ready to receive it. At that point we were still extremely short of the finances we needed. I told them to go ahead and send it. Within three days the truck pulled onto our property. I went and met the truck driver at the construction site. He handed me the paperwork. There were certain documents which I had to fill out. I started filling out the paperwork, knowing that I was still $15,000 short of the $49,000 I had to pay them in just a few short moments. As I was signing the papers, one of the men from our church pulled into the parking lot. He drove his car right up to me with his window rolled down. There was something in his right hand. He handed a check to me for $15,000! Thank you Jesus! One day as we were busy putting the steel sheeting on the roof of our new facility with a handful of volunteers, a violent wind storm blew in. It was coming over the top of the Allegheny Mountains, which are just two miles west from us. We could see very dark blue and purple clouds swirling violently and racing toward us. Lightning was striking everywhere in those clouds as echoes of thunder rolled across the valley. This was a fast moving thunderstorm system. If that storm was to hit us with its fierce winds, we would be in big trouble. I was on the top of the building with all of our volunteers. It seemed like all of us had stopped working at the same time. There were about fifteen of us there that day. As I was looking at this storm, the Spirit of the Lord quickened me. Faith rose up in my heart. Every supernatural work of God is from His Spirit. I told them all to stretch forth their hands toward the storm. I pointed my hand with the rest of the men towards the storm. I declared, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth I rebuke this storm. I command it to split in half and go around us in the name of Jesus Christ right now!” Whatever God quickened to my heart is what I spoke at that moment. When I knew it was done inside of me, I turned my back to the storm and went back to work. It seemed as if this same faith also came upon the other men. As far as I know, we all turned our back to the storm and did not look back. Why? It was because we knew in our hearts that this storm had to obey. I kept on working with the men until I saw flashing and movement to my left and to my right. I stood up and looked, and this violent lightning storm was on the north and south side of us. The storm was behind us and in front of us. It had literally obeyed us. It had split right down the middle, and had gone around us. When it reached the east side of us, it joined itself back together and went on its way. We just kept on with constructing our new facility that day. Within five months of breaking ground we had our dedication service. This first phase of construction was 15,000 square feet. The next year we added 7,500 more square feet for our Christian school. The day the steel came in for that particular edition we were still $5,000 short. Once again a man from the church drove up and handed me a check for $5,000. At the time of this book being written, we have close to 40,000 square feet of building. To God be the glory!
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 15:54:07 +0000
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