If you were a television news editor putting together a one-hour special on the invasion of Canaan, you would naturally choose the most dramatic footage your film crews had shot. You would lead off, no doubt, with Joshua's army storming across the Jordan River after it had amazingly parted in front of them. You would spend a good block of time on the week of marching around Jericho and the thunderous collapse of its walls. You might include the momentary setback at Ai, due to sin in the camp. But soon you would be back to more military “shock and awe,” as more cities fell to the advancing Israelites. Your grand finale would be when God helped Joshua and his troops by unleashing a violent hailstorm on the enemy—hard enough to cause casualties—and then even lending them extra daylight hours so they could finish the battle.
Would the news editor then look at the religious ceremonies at Gilgal (Josh. 4–5)? Nah! Too dull. TV audiences go for action. Keep the tension building—never let it sag. That's the way you hold viewers.
I admit I never paid much attention to Gilgal either, until I ran across an obscure mention further down the time line, in Judges 2. By now, Joshua had passed away, and the Israelites were quickly drifting away from God. The opening line of the chapter says, “The angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bokim….”
Why would the Bible bother to tell us where the angel of the Lord came from? Most other references in Scripture simply say that God's special angel shows up at a certain place (on Mount Horeb with the discouraged Elijah, for example, or at the spring in the desert where Hagar stopped for water). The angel of the Lord gives his message, then disappears. Where the angel comes from goes unmentioned.
But Gilgal, a small place a mile or two northeast of Jericho, apparently held some kind of spiritual significance. God was present there in a unique way. Even hundreds of years after Joshua led the invasion of the land, the prophet Samuel repeatedly returned to Gilgal to offer sacrifices, to confront King Saul about his wayward deeds, to call the nation to renewed dedication. This practice stemmed, I believe, from what God did in this place back in Joshua's day.
Gilgal was the Israelites' first stop after crossing the Jordan; it became their “base camp” for launching many military forays. It was also a training ground where God taught his people three lessons that made future victories possible. These three principles remain significant for us today. They make up a set of keys to God's abiding presence and blessing. We dare not push ahead on the Israelites' story without looking at the lessons of Gilgal.
1. Look Back before You Move Forward
At Gilgal, Joshua followed God's command to take twelve large stones from the middle of the Jordan River—which God had miraculously divided to allow his people to cross on dry land—and set them up as memorial stones. The purpose of the stones was to spark discussions with the next generation: “In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD” (Josh. 4:6–7). In this way the miracle of God's power and provision would be reinforced.
These stones were not idols to be worshiped. Rather, they were testimonials to the faithfulness of the one and only God. They gave reason to give God praise. And in such a climate, “the angel of the Lord” felt right at home.
When the people of Israel looked out toward the perimeter of their camp, they might naturally have wondered how many Canaanite armies were lurking in the shadows or behind walls, waiting to harm them. But when they focused on the twelve stones, their fears evaporated. Their God had just stopped the flood-stage Jordan so they could cross over! Surely he could stop the arrows and rocks of the enemy, too.
In our confrontations with obstacles or opponents today, we would do well not to focus on the troubles lined up against us. Instead, we need to celebrate the God who has already demonstrated his power and provision in our past. We don't need to be fretful or anxious. We need to anchor our hearts and minds in God's overwhelming track record.
The Bible says, “Come near to God and he will come near to you” (James 4:8). Apparently not all Christians live the same distance from God. Even though we all belong to his family, some are pressing in closer to his dynamic strength than others. As we live a life full of praise and thanksgiving for past mercies, we experience God coming ever closer to us in the present.
Psalm 22:3 speaks about God being “enthroned upon the praises of Israel.”1 What a difference it would make if we simply paused once an hour or so to say, “I praise you, Lord. You've been so good to me! I give you thanks.” Just think how much more joy and peace would be ours all day long.
This would be valuable not only on sunny days but also in times of testing and loss. Of course, problems come our way throughout life. That is inevitable. But instead of worrying, we can face the difficulties in a context of all that God has done for us in the past. When our backs were against the wall, God opened a door of provision. He is the same God today.
George Müller ran an orphanage in Bristol, England, in the 1800s that served more than 100,000 children over a fifty-year period. He said God had led him not to solicit any funds for this work. Instead, he would just trust and wait. As a result, his walk of faith and prayer grew dramatically. One New Year's Eve, when he was fifty-nine years old, he said in a sermon,
We have, through the goodness of the Lord, been permitted to enter upon another year—and the minds of many among us will no doubt be occupied with plans for the future, and the various fears of our work and service for the Lord…. Above all things see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord. Other things may press upon you, the Lord's work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls truly happy in God Himself! Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life. This has been my firm and settled condition for the last five and thirty years.2
Be “happy in God” on the basis of his faithfulness up to now—that is the first lesson of Gilgal. Naturally we will face challenges, but let us not major in them. Rather, let us major in thanksgiving for the blessings God has already poured out on our lives. The one who brought us out of our “Egypt,” who forgave our sins and made us his own, will not fail us now.
Worry changes nothing. God wants us instead to look at the twelve stones in our lives. Certainly each Christian has at least twelve memorials to God's goodness from a past day when we've really needed him. Some of us have 12,000!
A whole cluster of memorial stones of praise in my life comes from the way God brought our church to its present location on Smith Street. After what we have lived through the past few years, you will never convince me that God is not a God of miracle provision. We were so cramped in the old building on Flatbush Avenue. We were holding three services a Sunday in a converted theater that could seat 1,200. People were having to sit in overflow rooms watching the service on TV monitors. Our children and youth were jammed into basement rooms far too small.
One Sunday afternoon in 1996 as I walked toward the sanctuary for the 3:30 service, I happened upon a woman trying to sign in her seven-year-old son for children's church. I overheard the worker say, “I'm so sorry, but we are just totally filled up. There's no room for your boy.”
I watched that mother as her shoulders sagged. She would have to take her son along with her to the lobby instead and watch the service on a TV monitor. If the child became restless, she would miss part of the benefit—and meanwhile, the boy would miss getting to learn about Jesus at an appropriate level. I felt a great sadness. All through that afternoon service I couldn't get that woman and her son out of my mind.
“God, this shouldn't happen,” I said silently. “This is the Lord's house. Somebody who goes to the work of taking maybe two different subway trains to get here should have the opportunity to worship you unhindered, and her child should be taught and loved. What are we going to do about this?”
That week I met with the pastors and described what I had seen. We began to pray, “God, this can't be your will for people to be turned away. What do you have in mind?” We took a number of days to seek the Lord. We came to the conclusion that while God had blessed us abundantly in this building, its time was now over. Something more was in his future for us. What might it be?
We didn't know, but we did know that something had to change right away, even temporarily. Until we could get to a bigger place, the leadership decided to add yet another service. We would now have church at 9 a.m., 12 noon, 3 p.m., and 6 p.m. on Sunday. With each service running around two hours, this would make for a marathon day. But we could stand anything for a couple of years, we told ourselves.
Little did we know that it would be six years before we “entered the Promised Land.” We knocked on a lot of doors and went down several blind alleys until finally God led us to the historic Loew's Metropolitan Theater in the heart of downtown Brooklyn, which had a glorious history but was now terribly dilapidated. Water had damaged its once-beautiful neoclassical ceiling. The plumbing, heating, and electrical systems were a disaster. Homeless alcoholics and drug addicts had been using it for shelter. Some of the rats were large enough to be carrying attaché cases with The New York Times tucked under one arm!
Yes, it seated 4,100 when built back in 1918, the largest theater in North America at that time. Besides the auditorium, the parcel now included three adjacent office buildings. So the potential was huge. And the location was marvelous, right at the convergence of multiple subway and bus lines. All we needed was money—lots of it.
And we had none. Plus, ours was not a rich, suburban congregation. This was an inner-city church of many hourly-wage earners, students, single parents, and a fair number of unemployed. I knew better than to ask for pledges of large amounts. Nor did I want to disenfranchise anyone. So I decided to take a once-a-month offering for the project, asking our people to think about a fifty-dollar gift. The rest, I knew, would have to come from outside sources.
About this time, I was invited to an interview on The 700 Club regarding my first book, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire. Host Pat Robertson asked me how things were going at the church. I shared with him our situation, and he said he would like to help in some way. The following week, I was shocked to receive a letter from him promising $1 million! I hadn't asked him directly for any amount of money.
We took this as a “memorial stone”—a provision of God that meant we should move forward. Our faith began to swell. I went to the theater owners with a bold offer of $6.3 million in cash. They accepted.
In a short amount of time God supplied the balance needed, and the property became ours. We felt exhilarated. We thought our journey of faith was complete. That was before we began seriously tallying the cost of renovation.
We were soon reminded that, this being New York City, the job would have to involve union contractors every step of the way. Electricians, for example, made $90 an hour. It was especially galling to walk through the job site and find some of them smoking pot during working hours. At one point we faced a demand to hire an additional worker who was, in our view, completely unneeded. But we had no options. The unions held the power to shut the entire project down at any time. They also darkly warned about mysterious “accidents” to the building that could happen in the middle of the night.
I remember once when our finance manager informed me that we needed another $600,000 within forty-eight hours or else the work would have to stop. My wife, Carol, was away that day caring for her mother, who was ill. The Lord impressed me that morning not to go into the office as usual; instead, I should seek his help in a little prayer room we have in our attic.
I stayed in the attic from ten in the morning until around five-thirty in the afternoon, calling out to God to show himself as our strong provider. During those hours a number of phone calls and other messages came in—providing enough to meet our need that week.
This was not the only time such a last-minute provision took place. One time we had to come up with $1.4 million within two weeks. The Lord rose up to help us. At another time the figure was $6 million to complete Phase One of the renovation. I came back from a ministry trip to South America and began going through a stack of mail that had accumulated while I was away. Within ten minutes I opened one envelope pledging $1 million—and another for $5 million! I had no idea that either of those gifts was coming.
We moved into the new facility in May 2002, scaling back to “just” three services a Sunday, now that the building could accommodate larger crowds. It has turned out to be a marvelous center for ministry. We could never have imagined all the blessings God had in store for us in this place. Every time I walk into the building, look up at the beautifully restored ceilings, or hear the air conditioning kick on, I am reminded of God's faithfulness. What an amazing memorial stone he has provided!
Plus, the value of this property has soared in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy. New York City lost hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space that terrible day. Many a corporation has since looked toward downtown Brooklyn to relocate their workers. Then a major developer named Bruce Ratner bought the New Jersey Nets professional basketball team and decided to build them a new home in Brooklyn. The new complex, called the Atlantic Yards—just six blocks from our church—will include an 18,000-seat sports arena plus two huge office buildings, condos, and other commercial space with an overall price tag of $4.1 billion. All of this is driving real estate values higher.
Had we built this church from the ground up, we would have been required to buy an extra square block just for parking, at an astronomical price. But because the building was formerly a theater—a place of public assembly—we were spared this regulation. We don't need that much parking anyway, since more than half of the congregation comes via public transit.
In sum, outsiders have commented, “You guys must be real estate geniuses! You jumped in at just the right moment.” No, we didn't have a clue. All we knew was that God wanted us to provide more capacity for his work, and he would be faithful to make it possible. He certainly has been!
I don't expect to face this particular kind of construction project again in my lifetime. But I'm sure other challenges will come along. And when they do, I will look back at the pile of “memorial stones” that have accumulated and will say, “Remember how God met those huge needs in the past? He will do it again. He is the God who provides for his people.”
If we forget the past victories, we succumb to a kind of spiritual amnesia. How much better to resist the prevailing fear and anxiety with a joyful, positive, thankful outlook. As we remember and celebrate God's goodness, we see the next blessing start to emerge from right around the corner. We move forward with assurance.
2. Don't Try to Move Forward in Disobedience
The second lesson of Gilgal shows up in chapter 5 of the book of Joshua. The generation that had come out of Egypt had forgotten something along the way. During the forty years they spent wandering in the desert, they stopped practicing the sign of the covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That sign was circumcision. To be a Hebrew male meant being circumcised. But as sons were born during the wilderness wanderings, God's people failed to honor their covenant obligations. So now God said, in essence, “Stop everything. The present generation is living in disobedience. Don't take another step until you straighten this out.”
Joshua initiated a massive circumcision program over the next few days. When it was finished, the Lord responded, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you” (5:9). In fact, that is how the place got its name; “Gilgal” sounds like the Hebrew word for “roll” or “rolling.” Gilgal was where the Israelites rolled into alignment with God's requirements, so he could then bless them in the battles that lay ahead.
This relationship between obedience and God's favor is something we don't talk about much today. We prefer to say that God is love, and we are Christians, so we're just going to stand on the promises of his faithfulness, regardless of our lifestyles. We expect God to shower his blessings on us, even though we cheat on the job or harbor bitterness in our hearts. We don't think God would actually withhold his goodness just because of how we live. Come on, nobody's perfect, right?
I am not saying that God will refuse to help us or work through us unless we are sinless. In fact, no one lives a perfect moral life. But there is a major difference between the person who sincerely wants to live like Christ but falls short at times, and the person who persistently disobeys the Bible. For such a person as the latter to cry out in a time of emergency, “O God, O God, help me please!” is a form of hypocrisy.
More than once God has convicted me of some kind of disobedience, such as a heart attitude. On a few Sunday mornings in the past, Carol and I have had “words” with each other on the way to church. Then as the first service began, and I stood there singing along with the congregation and hearing Carol play the keyboard, I have known that I had better not even go up and try to make announcements, let alone preach. Instead, I have walked over to the band pit and simply whispered to her, “I'm sorry for what I said this morning.” She has graciously nodded as she continued to play.
At other times I am reading the Word in my devotional time when God puts a finger on my disobedience, saying to me, You've got to let that go. Whenever this happens, I cannot brush it aside. I have to deal with whatever God has pointed out.
God directs his children to “walk in the light, as he is in the light” (1 John 1:7). Again, this does not equate to moral perfection. But it does mean being willing to be transparent and sincere. It also means repenting when God points out disobedience, as he did to the nation at Gilgal. If we choose to persist in sin, we have no assurance that God will bless us. He is not our puppet. His grace does not give us license to live however we want. He expects from us devotion and submission to his Word.
I was preaching on this subject at a prayer conference in a western state, and when I got to this point, I said, “Everything stopped before the Israelites could head into the battle against Jericho, because God said, ‘No, you can't go. The generation that has come out of Egypt has not been circumcised.’ That was the mark God gave to Abraham. It marked him and his family as belonging to God.
“In the same way, we cannot live in known disobedience and expect that God will bless and help us. If he did, he would be encouraging our rebellion. We can't have God and, at the same time, hold onto the sin he sent his Son to die for.”
It was a clear enough point to understand. But in that moment I sensed I had somehow totally lost the audience. A wall had gone up—a wall of misunderstanding, I assumed. People just stared at me. They showed none of the zeal from ten minutes before.
Uh-oh, I said to myself. There's a disconnect here. They're not with me anymore. I must not have explained it right, and now they're confused. So in my heart I whispered, Lord, help me to explain this better. They're not getting it. I must have done a bad job.
I backed up and went through the point again. I quoted Psalm 66:18: “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” After all, this was a prayer conference. Getting God to listen to us was the main agenda, right?
The more I talked, the stonier the crowd became. I began to realize something. This was not a wall of misunderstanding after all. This was a wall of rejection. This audience did not want to hear that you had to give up anything or adjust anything in your personal life to comply with God's will.
I sputtered a little bit. They wanted to hear that Jesus would meet them wherever they were—and let them stay that way. He shouldn't try to move them to any different kind of lifestyle. They wanted Jesus, but on their terms.
I stepped back. God, is this for real? I prayed silently. I feel like I'm in a battle here.
I then leaned forward again and said, “Maybe some of you think you can live in sin, you can lie on the job, you can sleep around—and still press a button to get ‘instant God.’ It doesn't work that way.
“If you think I came all the way out here from New York City to get your applause and tell you what you want to hear, you've got the wrong speaker tonight. Whatever you might feel about me personally, I must tell you the truth, or I will fail God miserably.”
The place was totally silent. No amens. No nothing.
“You cannot have sin and have God's blessing at the same time. That is what Gilgal means. They could have claimed, ‘Yeah, but we're the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Biologically that was true—but their vertical relationship with God was messed up.” I kept on imploring them with this thought. “Do you understand? Do you get what I'm saying?”
I paused again. Nothing but more silence. Everyone felt awkward, including me.
Suddenly, from the back of the auditorium a man cried out, “Don't stop! Don't be afraid! You're right—we need to hear this!” His voice was cracking with tears. “Keep going! Say it!”
That was all I needed to turn me loose. I plunged with full force into restating the point. Only then did I sense a bit of breaking in the crowd.
I then moved on to the last point, about the Israelites observing Passover at Gilgal (Josh. 5:10–12). I quoted 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
I said, “God is not trying to rain on your parade. He simply knows that some things to which we're drawn can destroy us. My daughter Susie went through a phase as a little girl where she loved matches and knives. I had to step in and say, No!
“Your holiest days will be your happiest days. The people of Israel got right with God at Gilgal, and they were thereby prepared to go out and conquer the land.”
Toward the end of that conference session, I went back to my hotel. I found my shirt drenched with perspiration, as if I had been in a fistfight. I battled with bewilderment and discouragement.
The next morning, a driver came to pick me up early to catch my flight home. On the way to the airport, I spotted a Target store. “Could we stop here just a minute so I could find something to take to my grandson?” I asked. He pulled into the lot.
I was going down the aisle looking for something an eight-year-old boy would like when a man in his twenties passed the other way. Suddenly he called out, “Jim Cymbala!”
I stopped. “Yes?” I responded.
“Hey! I was there last night when you spoke.”
“Oh.”
“That was really powerful,” he said. “What you preached about Gilgal really got through to my mother.”
“Yes?” I said, curious to learn more.
“She was there; she's a believer. She said something interesting to me afterward—that your message spoke to her so much she's going to start praying about leaving the boyfriend she's living with.”
“What?” I couldn't quite believe what I'd just heard.
He repeated himself. “She's living with this guy. And she's going to start praying about moving out.”
I reached out and grabbed the young man's arm. “Sir,” I said with dead seriousness, “I want you to do something the minute you leave this store. I want you to call your mother, tell her you happened to run into me, and give her this message from me: Do not pray about a single thing in this case. That would be tempting God. Just move out! You don't need to pray about things that God has already called sin.”
He looked at me with surprise. “Okay, I'll tell her,” he answered, hoping I would let go of his arm.
I left the store after buying a little sweatshirt for my grandson and headed back to the waiting car. All the while I was asking myself how far this bizarre attitude was spreading among churchgoers across our nation.
Other ministers have told me that this kind of thinking is not all that unusual among people these days. Some televangelists, in fact, are now aggravating this problem by their practice of avoiding the word sin at all costs. Why, you ask? Because the ratings gurus advise them that whenever you tell viewers they should stop doing something, they quickly click to a different channel. They don't want to hear it.
Not long ago two Jewish businessmen here in Brooklyn, a father and son, sat in my office discussing a real estate transaction. They are both very kind men and very successful in the business world. Since they were talking to a Christian minister, they told me how much they both liked to watch a certain popular television preacher.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“He's so good! You know, in our lives, we're into two things: money and family. That's all we live for. And this preacher has a lot of things to say about being good to your family. He also says you can follow certain principles from the book of Proverbs and make a lot of money. So he's right on our wavelength!”
My heart sagged as I thought of a vast audience hardly ever hearing the message the apostle Paul “declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus” (Acts 20:21). Compare that with the contemporary view that says, “Don't tell the people they're doing anything wrong. If you do, they might leave. And nothing justifies turning people off.”
Holding back is not the method of our Savior. John 6 tells about a time Jesus spoke, and people decided not to follow him anymore. But he didn't run after them to say, “Well, fellows, I can change that after all. I'm sorry—did that offend you? I must have had a momentary lapse there. Let me fix things up for you.”
Gilgal is about facing the need to repent when we sin. It is about yielding our will to God's will and his ways. It is about giving him reason to smile upon us and open up a channel to bless us.
If I have a sinful area in my life and I won't let it go, I cannot appeal with any amount of faith for God to help me in another area of my life. God's special love for us as his sons and daughters includes his chastening us when we fall into a pattern of disobedience. This results in a loss of peace, not to mention a loss of power for the next battle.
Long ago in the fourth century, a teacher and prolific hymn writer known as Ephrem the Syrian observed with great wisdom, “He who will not serve the Lord alone must be the slave of many masters.”3 To reject God's requirements does not set us free to enjoy our independence. It instead plunges us into ever more complicated bondages.
God lovingly calls us to obedience. He never gives up. The fact of his holiness cannot be compromised. When we disobey him, we hurt ourselves and we break communication with him. Only when this is restored can we realize his blessing on our efforts.
3. The Blood Sacrifice Must Always Remain Central
One more thing happened at Gilgal. “On the evening of the fourteenth day of the month … the Israelites celebrated the Passover. The day after the Passover, that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: unleavened bread and roasted grain” (Josh. 5:10–11).
Passover celebrated God's provision and protection. The Hebrew people smeared lamb's blood on their doorposts to recall the final plague back in Egypt, when the firstborn of their oppressors died while their own children lived. God had declared, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt” (Exod. 12:13).
Only the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross two thousand years ago, shields us from the awful judgment of God for sin. We are not justified because of our good intentions. We are not protected because of our tearful appeals. We can, in fact, do nothing to merit God's favor. Only the blood puts us in right standing with him. In the words of the Andraé Crouch song that we often sing in our church, the blood of Jesus “reaches to the highest mountain” and “flows to the lowest valley.” That is why “it will never lose its power.”4
We often take time at the Brooklyn Tabernacle to have people tell and retell the stories of how God reached down to rescue them at their most frightening moments. We never get tired of these testimonies. We never take them for granted. In fact, they create great joy throughout the congregation. We rejoice in the same things that bring joy to the heart of God. Some of these stories come from our own members, others from special guests whom we invite to come our way. I want our members always to stay mindful of the fact that “the blood of Jesus, [God's] Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
More than once we have welcomed Fernando Aranda from California to recount his amazing journey from hopelessness to Christ. He grew up in the rough barrios of East Los Angeles, the youngest of five children. From his earliest years, the pull of the streets and the allure of drugs proved more powerful than any home influence. He began sniffing glue and running with older gang members while still in grade school. In fact, he was a chronic truant by age eight, which resulted in a three-year stint at a boys' reformatory.
By age eleven he returned to the violent neighborhood and joined a dangerous gang. He and a friend soon got arrested for hitting a man over the head with a crowbar. That landed “Fernie,” as he was known, in another camp situation for troubled juveniles. He returned to the streets two years later as a young teenager totally out of control.
As he neared his sixteenth birthday, Fernie made two interesting decisions: to get serious about a girlfriend (a pastor's daughter, no less), and to try to join the Marines! Both his grandfather and father had served in that branch of the military. In Fernie's case, neither arrangement worked very well. “My problem in the Marines,” he says today with a smile, “was that there was no war going on just then! So I fought anybody who was around. I got busted five times for insubordination.” Soon he was pushed out of the service.
Meanwhile, he so provoked his teenage wife by his wild lifestyle that she shot him in the hand one day with a 25-millimeter weapon. She then took their baby daughter and left.
Fernie, however, was not about to straighten up. He met an older man nicknamed “Folsom Eddie” (from his long residence at that particular California prison), who offered Fernie a chance to make quick money. Their business would be bank robbery and kidnapping. All Fernie had to do was drive the getaway car.
Fernie's second wife, Donna, didn't mind this kind of activity at all. She was as enchanted with drugs and guns as her husband, and in fact, sported more tattoos than he did. She did get upset, however, the night she followed her husband to a party and caught him dancing with another girl. She stabbed him in the back with a knife.
Folsom Eddie and Fernie managed their biggest score when they nabbed a bank president and wound up with a quarter-million dollars, which they split. Eddie, however, spent a good deal of his take in L.A. bars bragging about his exploits. Soon the police picked up the scent and started looking for both men.
Early one morning, Fernie and Donna came to visit their baby, who was being cared for by Fernie's mother. Neither of them expected the police to be waiting. They had wiretapped his mother's phone. It wasn't long before the young man was packed off to a northern California prison with a twenty-five-years-to-life sentence.
Fernie's rebellion continued even behind bars. When three inmates were murdered in the prison yard, Fernie was one of a handful of suspects put into solitary confinement. For twenty-three hours a day he saw nothing but his cell. At the monthly investigation meetings about the killings, he would only mutter, “I don't know nuthin'.”
Then came the day that his frail little mother, seventy-one years old, arrived to visit him. The sight of her son in full shackles, shuffling slowly toward the phone on the other side of the bulletproof glass, made her burst into tears. “I don't want to die seeing you in this condition,” she cried. All too soon, the visiting hour was over.
Fernie returned to his cell an angry, distraught man. “O God,” he blurted in perhaps the first prayer of his life, “if you'll get me out of this hellhole, I promise I'll serve you for the rest of my life.” He didn't fully comprehend what he had just said; he only knew he was on a track to nowhere and nothing.
A year later, without warning, Fernando Aranda's name was called at two o'clock in the morning for release. This had to be a mistake, he told himself. He had served only thirteen years of his sentence. Maybe they were going to drive him out into the desert and just shoot him. But when he stepped onto the Greyhound bus at the terminal a few hours later, with clean clothes and some money in his pocket, he really did recognize that he was free.
That evening he got off the bus in El Monte, California, his old neighborhood. “It's amazing how Satan sets things up for you,” he recalls. Right there at the depot was a guy named Robert whom he hadn't seen in more than a decade. Immediately Robert ushered him toward a nearby motel, where every allurement from drugs to girls was waiting. A three-day binge followed.
That Saturday morning, Robert and Fernie headed out toward the beach to meet a contact for more drugs. Suddenly Robert hissed, “Look out! There's the Drug Task Force!” Fernie handed off his cash and prison ID to Robert and raced toward a nearby park, where a crowd of people had gathered for some music. He quickly blended into the group.
Soon a man came up to him and said, with no introduction, “Hey, guess what? Jesus loves you.”
Fernie was repulsed. He immediately turned to leave. But as he did, he glimpsed the police coming toward him. He decided his best option was to dive back into the crowd—which was actually a street rally sponsored by a group called Victory Outreach Ministries.
What happened next defies prediction. As Fernie tells it:
“I'd never seen any of these people in my life. But a young man named Louie approached me next. He looked sort of like the Marlboro Man—big muscles, big mustache. He walked up to me and boldly said, ‘Hey, bro—don't you remember the day you prayed in your prison cell, that if God would release you from that hellhole, you'd serve him the rest of your life?’
“I couldn't believe it! I was stunned. How could this man know anything about my prayer more than a year before?
“I suddenly felt I was no longer hearing the voice of a man. It was the voice of God.”
Before Fernie could reply, the man pointed a finger right between his eyes and said, “And you know what you have to do.”
This was enough to make Fernando Aranda crumble to his knees there on the grass. He began to weep. “God, I'm sorry! Forgive me of all my sins.” The power of God was driving this tough criminal to the point of full surrender.
The next thing Fernie remembers is a small, sweet female voice saying, “Let's take him home!” He looked up to see a girl named Georgina, the daughter of Pastor Sonny Arguinzoni, who heads up Victory Outreach Ministries.
“Yes! Take me home. Please!” he whimpered.
Within minutes the ministry team had put him in a car and headed in the direction of his mother's house. But then, about a mile away, they stopped instead at Victory's group home for men, where more than fifty guys were being discipled toward a new walk with Christ.
Fernie's mother eventually came to see him there. Her prior glimpse of him in prison shackles turned out not to be her final view after all. She saw her son being revolutionized by the cleansing power of the blood of Christ. After three years of intense training, Fernie began to appear in crusades, churches, and other outreaches, telling his amazing story.
When he speaks these days, he sometimes finishes with the driving gospel song made famous by Johnny Cash, “My God Is Real.” Audiences (including those at the Brooklyn Tabernacle) weep as he belts out the message:
…He's real in my soul!
My God is real, for he has washed and made me whole!
His love for me is like pure gold,
My God is real, and I can feel him in my soul!5
The blood of the Lamb of God is strong enough to break the chains of drugs and crime. It overwhelms bad habits, bad socioeconomics, and bad friendships. It is the Passover to fulfill all Passover meals, freeing us from the punishments we deserve. It is the center of our hope and faith in Christ. It is God's provision for all the messes we find ourselves in.
When we anchor ourselves in the three lessons of Gilgal—
praise for all his past blessings, a sincere heart that repents of sin, and full faith in the work of Christ on the cross—we are then squarely in the place where God can bless us. We are ready to enter into “more.”