My mother made sure that I, along with my three siblings were in Sunday school, and Church most every Sunday morning unless we were contagious with something. We attended the same small Baptist Church where she, and her siblings had attended with her parents. I received a good foundation in the teachings of Christianity, and grew up well grounded in my belief that Jesus the Christ was my lord and savior.

I graduated from high school a happy young man, and was off and running to college. I attended the university of my dreams, and graduated in four years. During this time, the way that I had been raised proved to be of good service to me. In college, away from home, and having full say in your life for the first time, you will run into everything that’s out there: and I did run into just about everything that’s out there. However, I was able to keep some clarity because of the teachings from the bible, and of Jesus that I had received growing up. Whenever I got into a sticky situation in which I wasn’t sure of what to do, I would ask myself the question: what would Jesus do right now? Most of the time after asking myself the question, it would be much clearer to me what should happen next. So my early training would at least give me clarity on what path to take, even if I didn’t always take it.

So I finished college, and worked for a couple of years acquiring some degree related work experience. Then I finally nailed that dream job, and life was good. One thing that I realize now in looking back, the degree in which you may really get to learn about your faith may sit idle for a long while if your luck doesn’t change. Here’s the thing, if you can keep making good decisions, you will avoid most of the situations that causes your luck to change to the point where more faith is required. As long as things continue to go good, and your plans work out the way you want them to, a deeper faith than what you are using is not required. A person doesn’t need faith to receive that which one already has in hand. Faith is for that which a person is hoping to have in hand one day:it is for that which is not yet seen. So it took me making a couple of decisions that were not in my best interest in order for me to get that kind of lucky: now I was facing for the first time a situation where more faith was required than ever before. I found my self in the midst of another group of people that thought differently toward faith than I did. This would be the initial encounter of how I began to discover the Father in God. My luck had changed, and I was now connected to people that believed everything was possible, but their thought process removed most all limitations from being factored into the mix. They knew that barriers were in the pathway, but they didn’t think that it mattered as long as your faith was in God. They literally believed that you could just ask God what you needed, and it would just come to pass. I thought, WOW!

You see, my Baptist training in following the biblical teachings of Jesus, working hard to reach your goals, and my focus on education had put me on the right track to doing ok in our society. I was happy, successful, and surrounded by people that were of my same thinking: they also believed that accomplishing everything was possible, but you had to provide a pathway, or business plan in order to get there. We believed that you couldn’t just have a goal, but your goals needed some mustard behind them to get accomplished. So here I was, my luck had changed, and I was around a new group of people who had great excitement, and love for God in a way that I had not experienced. Looking back at it again, I’m glad to have met them, otherwise, I may not have met the Father in God in the way that I know Him today. Before meeting them, life was going good for me, and required very little faith in spiritual things for me to be successful. Just like many people are doing today, I had made good decisions up to a point, and had received a good education to put myself on the pathway to sharing in the American dream. And to be fair to me, and to others like me, we were also believing in God with great excitement, and Love for Him. We could only do what we had been trained to do from childhood.

So to continue, I begin to fellowship, and worship with this group of people at a new Church. It was still Church, but the teachings on the Holy Ghost made the services different from those at my Baptist church. This is when I heard about the Holy Ghost for the first time. The teachings of His power through gifts were all great, and exciting to me. This experience would take me closer to learning about the Father in God that I know so well today: at that time in my journey, I was unaware of that future experience. The training, and teachings from my Baptist background had me rooted in the word, but nothing that I had done previously had me ready for the experience with the Holy Ghost. I went ahead to receive the Baptism in the Holy Ghost, and I was always in attendance to learn as much as I could about my new experience. As time passed, the Pastors, ministers, and leaders continue to teach on how the power of the Holy Ghost would work to answer our prayers. Whatever we ask the lord in prayer, He would hear us, and answer. The faith in God, and the love for His people that they all had could be felt, and seen in their actions.

I came from a background where our fundamental purpose was achievement. We always set goals, and applied the plan to get the desired results. My education was in Marketing Research, and I would just from my training keep data, and outcomes alive on paper, and in my head. I would notice how people had been believing God to answer their prayers, but most of the time they would come up short. The idea of just asking God for something, and looking for Him to make it happen was still new to me, but I was giving all that I had to see it through. There was no doubt in my mine that what they were teaching us was true, but I felt that something was lacking. I knew that the people were of integrity, but there was a connection missing in the link. My wife, and I had been with our new Church just over a year, and she was beginning to express a desire to leave. She had been raised a Baptist as I had, and she had also graduated from the same University along with me in the same year. So she was use to believing in God, but also believing that we had more to do with providing for our needs through preparation, and education than prayer. We had always prayed to God for help to be successful, as oppose to praying to Him to bring the success to us.

What I found out a little later on is that it is a combination of the two: God helps provide opportunities for your success as you move along the path that He has laid out for you. Anyway, my wife was ready to leave because things were not happening as they were being taught. She felt that prayers, and movements were being made in faith, but the answers, and results were coming up short. As for me, I knew that what the Pastors, and Leaders were saying had truth to it, but I knew that they were missing it somewhere. So I went to God in prayer, but it was more like an all out right wrestling match with Him as Jacob had had with the angel; I said to God, I know that you are God, but they are missing it somewhere. I am not turning my back on you, but I need you to show me what we are missing. And He told me that we were missing Father. I didn’t really know what that meant at the time, but I knew that He was in it with me. I trusted Him that He would teach me, and He did. A few years later, I met a man that gave me a publication of his that I still have today. He told me that God told him to pass it on to me because is was my time. The publication was a confirmation for me to know that I had indeed heard from God. Every since the night that I wrestled with Father about what was missing from the teachings of those Pastors, Father had begin teaching, and training me on the fullness of the God head: the Word(Son),the Power(Holy Ghost), and the Will(Father).

That new Church unbeknown to me at the time had been put in my life to introduced me to the Holy Ghost(second God head level); my Baptist upbringing had rooted me in the Word (first God head level); and Father Himself had taught me of Father(greater God head level). The reason why the Church was coming up short in getting the results that they desired was because they did not know that the Father in God was missing from their Faith. God is more than a word in the Heavens. God is a complete process that we have to process through as members of the Body Of Christ in bodily form. We say God, the Father; God, the Son; and God, the Father, for a reason: it takes all of God unified in order for the Body of Christ to move in the power of the unified God.

SO I DISCOVERED THE FATHER IN GOD BECAUSE HE WAS THERE WAITING FOR HIS TIME TO LET US FIND HIM: FATHERTIME.

Oh by the way, the publication that the man gave me was entitled “Father”.

Stay Tune,

Adopted Son