I want to tell you about a young man who knew it all. You know the type. But this guy would really drive you nuts because he was somehow usually right. He had above average intelligence with a God-given gift of understanding. While growing up, this young boy was introduced to Christ at the age of 10, believing Christ was the Son of God, came and die for his sins. During his formative years, he began to be told over and over that he didn’t count. Later, he was continuously told that he would one day end up in jail. This young boy came to live with a deep suspicion that no one, even Jesus, was on his side. He grew up paranoid that if he were to make it in this world, he would have to do it on his own. He knew he had a gift of understanding the way things work, so he retreated into that place where he had complete control to show everyone he wasn’t a failure and he could make it in life.
As a young man, he listened to motivational speakers and was even offered a job to travel as a motivational speaker and demonstrate how a person could make it in this world. He had high profile jobs with titles and travel allowances. He had mastered the art of being a self-made man, yet on the outside, all he attempted never really seemed to work out. It seemed as though he would sabotage anything good in his life. He started business after business and was even sought out by others to hear his counsel and wisdom that he somehow had obtained. This went on and on until the age of 26.
Believing he had finally “made it”, he had controlling interest in his own business (making pretty good money). He was a 50% partner in a supporting business that had the potential of being the foundation of income to support a possible family and be the backbone of future entrepreneurial endeavors. He had never married but was beginning to secretly hunger for a relationship with Jesus.
The young man attended a meeting with other men in a stadium of 30,000. His eyes were opened to the reality of God. About six months leading up to the stadium meeting was a gentle leading by God drawing him into the Bible and closer to Him. He didn’t even really know what was happening, but he began reading his Bible in the evenings and being ministered to. Even before the stadium meeting, He had been told how special he was by a lot of people, people genuinely caring for him. They even told him that he was so intelligent and the greatest salesperson and entrepreneurial minds they had ever seen, which may be true. However, no one ever told him that he mattered like Jesus did that day. It was raining in the physical but it was reigning in the spiritual, in this mans life. He was experiencing God like no one even hinted would be possible. He fell to his face, recognizing the holiness of the only true and living God wanted to be his personal guide through all eternity, beginning now. No one ever told him that he was going about mastering life the wrong way but somehow he was beginning to understand that the road he was on would only lead to more strife and the maintenance to keep up a life of the world’s type of success would not be worth the effort. When God met him on that stadium field in 1996, He began telling him different things than the people who cared for him had been teaching. God was even speaking true hope that seemed different from the Pastor that had preached the wonderful truth that drew him to be able to see God then. Never had anyone told him he counted and now God had this grown man’s undivided attention. Like a baby, he wept tears of joy. God himself had revealed the burden that had held this man down for so long. He bought books and tapes but only continued studying the word of God like he had began only a short time before. This was what seemed logical to do to get to know about this awesome God who had interrupted the young mans life with this wonderful revelation. He didn’t have to do anything to be accepted. He didn’t have to prove anything to anyone.
One day, several months later, his partner announced to him that their business relationship was over and that he had taken all the money and fixed it so that he would not be able to recover anything. This destroyed the man because, as we mentioned before, he didn’t trust anyone. His partner that had just announced that he had taken him for everything he had ever worked for was his best friend in the world, his childhood friend and dear brother. As those years prior to this event passed, the young man began to realize that God was more real than even the Pastor seemed to portray. During most of his life he went to church, really understanding that he was a Christian and would spend eternity with Jesus when he died. What he was just now learning was how Jesus deals with people, in his life, even while he was making tremendous mistakes. He even committed a crime at the age of 22, hoping to be able to meet payroll for one of his companies. His only thought, when he was facedown with handcuffs on his wrists and shotguns at his head, was that those who told him he wouldn’t amount to anything were right. Strangely enough, it was a relief for him to be arrested. He felt as if he had fulfilled the words of those who had spoken those terribly damaging words. Nonetheless, at that time, he still bounced back to a place of self-reliance. From all who knew him he continued to be one of the most optimistic people they had ever seen. Well, the same day as the happenings with his partner and lifelong best friend, he was confronted with a choice. He had grown enough with the Lord to know not to take this into his own hands, although this was the biggest trial he had faced yet. He knew that the fraud that his best friend committed against him would be easily proven and had in mind to prosecute his friend. Since the stadium meeting, the young man was Spirit filled with a unique appetite to only do the will of God. God wasn’t leading him to do anything. He loved the Lord so dearly that he wouldn’t make a move, even save his own life from sure destruction, unless God was leading him. What was God up to? The man went directly to a parking lot while on his way to what he thought was the courthouse. That is where the District Attorney was. In the parking lot, he sobbed like he lost everything he ever was. For hours that day he road around experiencing the brokenness of Jesus and the power of His resurrection. He was willing to die. That’s all it took. He had found the intimacy with God that no one ever mentioned could happen. Why hadn’t anyone told him? He didn’t think anything like that as the day went on. He was being emptied out of everything he counted as gain. The God that loved him so very much loved him enough to remove from him the wrong pathway. It didn’t hurt any less knowing this. He had insights into His love that only could be experienced. Later that night he being still broken, while sitting on the side of his bed, gave up totally and literally fell over to his left side into Jesus’ lap. He doesn’t know if it was his literal lap or spiritually a comforting place, but he does know that he was caught up into the third heaven. Jesus himself was stroking His wounded child, telling him, “It’s ok and I am here. The One you believe is here.” There were no great revelations from most Christian’s perspective during this time in his life, although there were many treasured secrets shared with the young man. The awesome thing that holds him still to this day was the simple fact that the God of the entire universe cares for him and that this same God said that he counted. For the next three years he spent no less than six hours a day in intimate study of God’s word. This man went away for nearly four years to study Him and His ways.
For this man, the relationship for all eternity had begun. God had simply allowed this man to come to a place that he had to choose between all that he had ever worked for- and Him. The man chose Him and has richly been rewarded for this. Almost immediately, the Lord allowed the man to be able to purchase even more property, even though his credit had also been destroyed in the tragic events of the recent past. There were as many as a dozen properties and God was continuously being revealed to those coming in this young minister’s path. He had been called by God before, but now he heard from God himself that he had also been chosen. The homes and property he had would soon begin to dwindle. They would be sold one by one to take the money and remodel a home in inner city Gadsden to provide treatment for men who would come out of prison and need to hear they matter. God had somehow turned everything around. The things that were once so destructive were the very things God was preparing to use; the skillful carpenter had control of the tool, His servant. The ministry, Restoration House Ministries was born in a way that wouldn’t bind him from his calling. Although there are some who don’t understand knowing Jesus so intimately, He has led this man’s step’s to write you this letter.
The man I have been telling you about is I. I now identify with Christ in His sufferings. The painful death was tremendous, but the glorious resurrection is unspeakable. “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes.” And He will come in your life, too. It is true, “every knee would bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord.” The only question is, what will you have to go through for your knee to bow and for your tongue to confess? “For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena.” The trials continue, as we literally have had no income. Is this the end or the beginning for our lives on this earth? I must expose that many mistakenly preach God’s love is shown through financial gain and things of this world. But the truth is, “God’s love is revealed in Him, His truth, and it will always set you free.” Free to prosper? Yes, but not the way the world might understand it. Am I really ready to sit in the dark because no one would come along side us and support God’s ministry? Yes, I think we are being readied to be on display, what the world might call a failure but in Christ He calls, “Lesson number one for anyone who boldly comes behind the veil”.
I was once lost but now I am found. April 27, 2002, I was married to my beautiful wife, Candace. My wife and I live in the inner city home at 815 S 12th Street where we minister daily full-time. We don’t mind the working for nothing except His presence but it isn’t God’s perfect plan for us to have to pay for the ministries bills, if it is God-called. I understand that you may not have surrendered everything yet, but if you have, pray blessings on us and send us out to do the work of training up the saints. It is your ministry too and I am the Lord’s servant; to serve you as He leads, and to receive my living from the same gospel that I have chosen to live. There are very few works that are purely God, His Truth and not man supported. Restoration House Ministries and my life are two things that are supported by every preceding word coming from His mouth. I say this openly and honestly as a witness of Him. I know of nothing left in my life or ministry that he didn’t put here. Will you surrender your will in your life? We decided to sell items on eBay to bring provision to the few ministries we have found that have surrendered to this type of 'faith-walk'. God is love and we need love because He is love. There are so many ministries parading themselves as having the answer to life, when there message is little more than more dead end roads along the way. We use the money from our auctions to support the type work I have described in this letter; honest, open and true accepting love. You and I make up the body of Christ, and we have placed ourselves on a limb, believing that by doing this it may reveal to many the need to take more seriously their relationship with Christ.
Blessings forever friend,
Rev. David Roberts, Executive Director
Restoration House Ministries
inquire for speaking engagements, seeking counsel, etc: david@restorationhouse.com
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