Steve Lumbley Testimony- 3

I was not out of work long though. I soon got a job as customer service manager for a small regional telecommunications company. With all the years of my faith training still in my head I could clearly see that this job was from God. This job paid more than I had been making and it seemed to have a huge potential upside. Surely this was God rewarding me for my years of faithful service to Him. It didn’t quite work out that way.

After about a year on this job I was asked to resign. I was crushed. I had never been fired from a job in my life. I never even saw it coming although I should have. There were some false allegations against me, some office politics and that sort of thing but the real reason for this was my big mouth and my rebellious heart. I didn’t know it then but God was about to put me in a position to force me to deal with the issues of my heart.

Coming Out

This began probably the most difficult time of my life. To begin with I was out of work for almost a year. My wife had lost her job with the big paycheck and the company car a year earlier (that’s another testimony all by itself). We went through all our savings. We got behind on all our bills. Again I had several ideas for my own business but nothing was working. None of the “faith formulas” we had been using for years were working. The mortgage company even began foreclosure proceedings on our home.

Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

But something was happening in my life. It was happening in the spirit. God was using this time to turn me from darkness to light. He was using this time to remove much of the false teaching I had been sitting under and replace it with the pure word of God.

Since the time I left the employment of Word of Faith we had not attended any church. Frankly I was burned out on church. For years I had felt like I had to be in church every time the doors were opened. It had become a burden. I was tired of it. What I later discovered was that even my lack of desire to attend church was God! He was calling us out of the harlot religious system we had been a part of all our lives.

I did spend time in prayer and in His word during this time. I mean what else was I going to do. I had no job, no money, no prospects. I needed answers from God and I needed them in a hurry.

It was during this time that God convinced me that the slain in the spirit bit was not from Him. Once I was convinced that this was a false sign or a false religious practice God asked me a question. If slain in the spirit is false, what does that say about the preachers who practice it? Well, I had to admit that regardless of what I thought about any individual minister, it must mean that anyone who practices this is a false teacher or at least is deceived themselves. I decided then and there that I was going to take the exact word of God as the final authority on everything. I told God that I didn’t care what any man said, that if God Himself could not affirm a particular teaching from His word then I would reject that teaching and that preacher. I didn’t know it then but this was a real turning point for me.

I began to see the scriptures in a whole new light. Now understand I was not a novice in the word. I had studied the word of God for years. I knew a lot of the word. I had been a teacher in the church but now it was different. It’s hard to describe but it really was like a veil had been lifted from my eyes. I saw things that I had never seen before. I’m not talking about some kind of “revelation knowledge” that adds supposedly new understanding to it. I’m talking about seeing the words and understanding that they mean exactly what they say.

The other thing that began to happen at this time was that whenever I would listen to some preacher on TV I found myself comparing his words to Gods words. This began to be troublesome because it wasn’t long before I figured out that none of them were preaching the truth. They all were adding to or taking away from the clear meaning of scripture.

A preacher would quote Mark 11:22 …have faith in God. and then say that means to have “the faith of God” or have the “God kind of faith”

And I’d say no it doesn’t. It means exactly what it says, have faith in God not have the faith of God!

Another preacher would reference Romans 4:17 and say that Abraham called things that be not as though they were.

And I’d say no he didn’t. The scripture says GOD called things that be not as though they were. Abraham simply believed God.

Do you see the difference? Again I remind you that deception is subtle. A minor change in meaning can have eternal consequences for each of us. A little leaven leavens the whole lump!

This is part of what I mean by turning me from darkness to light. The other part was that He began to show me my own complicity in the deception that I was a part of.

Now some people have said to me that they can understand how I would be bitter or hurt by what happened at Word Of Faith. Some think that is why I say all these “nasty” things about these preachers. But the truth is I’m not bitter or hurt at all. Would you like to know why?

The reason I’m not bitter is that I had to admit that it was my own fault that I was deceived. That’s right I said it was my fault. It was the idolatry and covetousness in my own heart that kept me in that church for 17 years. I was there because I liked it. I was there because I didn’t want the truth. I wanted to hear lies. And really that’s what most people want, to hear lies.

2 Tim 4:3-4
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for them selves teachers and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside unto fables.

Do you see what Paul is saying . It is we ourselves who heap up these false teachers. I helped raise up Robert Tilton. I helped raise up apostates like Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland. It was my own fault because I wanted teaching according to my own desires, not according to truth.

Once you understand this you’ll understand that you’ve no one to blame but yourself. And that is probably the hardest part of coming out of apostasy, admitting to yourself and to God that you were wrong. The natural tendency of all men is to place blame elsewhere. To lay our own faults and shortcomings at someone else’s feet.

I can tell you this from my own experience. You will never enter the kingdom of God until you acknowledge your own faults. Until you are ready to admit that your own heart is as black as night you will always be in some measure of deception.

In the natural, God continued to allow our situation to deteriorate to the point that I was finally willing to do what He wanted me to do. I finally put down my own ideas and stopped looking to my own ability and said OK to God’s will.

God’s will in this case was probably not what you’d think that it was. It certainly wasn’t what I’d ever thought of as God’s will. What do you think of when you think of God’s will? You probably think God will have you doing some great work like that of foreign missionary or pastor a church or something like that right? Not even close.

I know this may shock you because it did me but God’s will at that time was that I become a car salesman. That’s right. God put me into the car business.

Now let me say right up front that I never wanted to be a car salesman. I mean who does? Does anyone grow up dreaming of selling cars for a living? I sure didn’t. In fact I thought I was too good to sell cars. I thought it was beneath me.

How much pride do you think I had in my heart at that point? Think about it. I had just spent 6 years working for a disgraced T.V. evangelist and I was too good to sell cars! What a prideful arrogant jerk I was. I marvel at how God ever thought He could use me for anything. But God did use me and He used the car business to humble me.

I decided to apply for the job because the dealership offered a salaried training program. I never expected the job to last. I figured I could bring in a small paycheck for a few months while I was looking for something more suitable. God of course had other plans.

I struggled a bit at first. Selling cars is a hard job. You work long hours, nights, weekends, holidays. You must learn to deal with rejection. Even the best car sales people hear the word no more than they hear the word yes. It is really an out doors job. When it’s hot you sweat, when it’s cold you freeze, when it rains you get wet.

After a couple of months, though, I started to see some progress. After six months I started to feel like I might actually be able to do this. After nine months I had made more money than I had made at my previous job for the entire year. At that point I thought, well, maybe this might work out after all.

Finances were still a struggle because we were digging out of the hole we were in but God was faithful. I called our creditors and made payment arrangements on everything we owed. God honored that and we always had enough to make those extra payments. I was discovering that God honors our obedience to Him above anything else. I was also discovering what it meant to trust in God for our daily bread.

I’ve heard people talk about quitting their job to live by faith and I would like to say, before you do that, why don’t you get a job working on straight commission. You’ll learn real quick how to live by faith! Every day you wake up unemployed. Every day you must trust God to bring in buyers, to bring the right people across your path. If you get lazy and quit believing you’ll know it because you’ll go two days, three days, even a week without selling anything. Then you’ll have to repent of your unbelief and obey God. And once again you’ll discover His faithfulness.

After the first year and a half things were going pretty well. We were getting back on our feet financially. I had been the top salesperson of the month several times. I was getting pretty consistent results but I was also getting something else, an enlarged cranium. That old sin of pride was starting to rear its ugly head and God was going to have to humble me one more time.

One Saturday afternoon I was working with a customer and I let the customer leave without following proper procedure. My boss, the department manager called me on it. Well I never had liked him very much. I didn’t like the way he managed. I didn’t like the way he talked to me. I was one of his top guys and I thought he should give me a little more lea way. I decided I had had enough of this guy. I packed my stuff and walked out.

One of the great things about the car business is job security. No matter what you’ve done or not done you can always get a job at another dealership. I was simply going to make a couple of calls on Monday morning and I’d have another job by Monday afternoon. You’ve probably guessed by now that God wasn’t going to let me get away with that.

I came home and told my wife what had happened. She was supportive of me. My wife has always been supportive of me even when I was wrong. We made plans to go out for the evening but before we could leave, the phone rang. It was the dealership General Manager. He told me he heard what had happened and before I did anything he wanted to see me first thing Monday morning. This call only served to strengthen my rebellion. I was vindicated. I was so good that there was no way they were going to let me leave!

As I thought about things over the weekend I did decide that when I talked to the General Manager I should be at least somewhat conciliatory. I had failed to follow proper procedures and I decided that I would at least admit to that. I also decided though that I would let him know how I felt about my manager.

The meeting went exactly like I expected. I admitted that I failed to follow procedure. I also let him know that I really didn’t appreciate the way my boss treated me. The General Manager liked me and he knew that the manager was a bit of a tyrant so he offered me the choice of transferring to the Used Tuck Department or to the Fleet Sales Department. I chose Fleet Sales. I thought I was vindicated but God was setting me up for one more wilderness experience.

See you tomorrow afternoon for that one.