Pastor Terry Mengle part 1 Articles / Pastors Letters Date: May 30, 2002 - 02:27 AM The Spirit of God just seemed to flow into my soul like a healing balm. It calmed my troubled heart and seemed to put oil on the scars within. This was happening to me because of my unexpected introduction to a bona fide and powerful man of God. His name is Jerry Gaffney. Pastor Terry Mengle New Star Christian Fellowship Kent, Washington Tears streamed down my face. I was overwhelmed with emotion. I was unable to speak. There were few times in my life that I knew I was genuinely in the presence of God and this was one of those times. The Spirit of God just seemed to flow into my soul like a healing balm. It calmed my troubled heart and seemed to put oil on the scars within. This was happening to me because of my unexpected introduction to a bona fide and powerful man of God. His name is Jerry Gaffney. It was March 1996 and the name of the church was Covington Christian Fellowship located just outside Kent, Washington. Fourteen years of ministry had left a lot of scars and hurts from those once considered trusted and intimate friends - people my wife and I had served through great sacrifice. We had known many wonderful believers, but betrayal, gossip, backbiting, and hate from some of the people we had served, loved and sacrificed for had left us wounded in spirit. I had been working a secular job full-time all those years, and still struggled to handle the demands of family, church and job. It was a juggling act that was going badly. The spinning plates were falling off their balancing sticks to crash onto the floor, or else were wobbling dangerously. I felt as if we were losing our three children - that they were disinterested in a close relationship with their Mom and Dad and our God. People we had known, loved and served were backsliding, leaving the church and divorcing - their families self-destructing as we watched in horror. I had lost a good-paying job three years previously and, on top of all the other difficulties we had faced, we were struggling financially. Three months before meeting Jerry Gaffney, my wife and I had come to a point of total burnout. We were almost totally wrecked from ministry. We sorrowfully came to the decision that we would give God six months more of service, while we hung over an emotional abyss, just barely hanging on by our torn and bloody fingertips. About all we had left was the energy to pray that God would come to the rescue and change our situation. God did not change our circumstances. What God did was change each of us dramatically! My wife, Gale, and I had been trudging bleakly through life's duties like zombies: too tired and numb to feel much of anything. While officiating a homeschooling support group meeting in the basement of a local church, Gale noticed some unusual activity in the church above. People were running around excited and shouting. She went upstairs while her guest speaker conducted her meeting. What she saw in the meeting above was unusual by any standard, but it somehow began to build hope within her. "Honey, you have to see this. God is moving in that church," she later reported to me. The last thing I wanted to hear was that God was blessing someone else's church! Her report just seemed to depress me even more than before. However, within me hope began to swell as she continued to describe the church's activities. Gale's friend, Janice, a homeschooling Mom who attended that church, began to give us more exciting information about the meetings and about the evangelist conducting them. So, one morning I arranged to sneak into the back of the church to observe. It was then that I began to be, slowly and surely, renewed in faith through the ministry of this unusual man. God was sovereignly restoring my strength, my joy was returning, and I sensed the return of His loving, reassuring presence. Tears of joy and tenderness flowed down my face. At the end of the meeting Jerry Gaffney came up to me, looked upon me with the love of God in his eyes, and asked tenderly, "You're a pastor, aren't you?" Startled by this obvious word of knowledge that seemed to confirm that God really was moving here, I choked out, "Yes, I am." One of the problems I had with this wonderful touch of God was that the evangelist who had been ministering looked nothing like what I would have expected. I would have thought that a man of such obvious spiritual power would look like an angel from heaven or, at least, like a handsome, well-coifed televangelist. Not so. This man weighed about 300 pounds - was dressed in plain brown slacks, white shirt and suspenders that held his pants up around an impressive girth. Almost nothing about this rumpled, plain man was impressive except his expressive eyes - flashing alternatively with the deep love and the holy fire of God. The other impressive thing about him was his simple, yet healing, message delivered with great power. Astonishing healings of all kinds were accomplished during the next couple of weeks in addition to his powerful and life changing messages from the Word of God.. What happened during those two weeks of glory changed me, my family, and my church forever. That was just the start of an amazing time of change. The changes brought about a vibrant testimony to the power of the Holy Spirit to bring change. I don't think we've seen the end of this testimony that starts with defeat and goes on toward many victories. Some of the changes include: *My wife and I were transformed from tired and defeated to empowered and energized servants of Jesus Christ. *Our marriage was renewed. Our children's affections for us and our God were recharged. *The church we served became vibrant and alive to the power of the Holy Spirit. *The Lord reclaimed His church by reclaiming me. No longer would He let backsliders and carnal people in the church coerce and control the direction of the church and stifle its' voice for righteousness. God reaffirmed His call to me to pastor and it required that I make some costly moral leadership decisions. I had to come against compromise and the intimidation of men. *The people of the church came alive spiritually, and began displaying gifts and manifestations of the Spirit. The prophetic seemed to gain prominence as the people began to hear the voice of their heavenly Father. *Healings occurred: physical, mental, and spiritual. We witnessed real deliverance from the enemy's domination and from bondage of all kinds. *The church entered a time of financial This article comes from World's Largest Prayer Board Annointed.net News http://www.annointed.net/ The URL for this story is: http://www.annointed.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=104