some history
Firstly, I want to thank the Lord for enabling me to put down in words on this website, what He has been showing my spirit all my life. I couldn't imagine twenty five years ago how that would be possible, but I believe He has enabled it.
Thank you Kelvin Benjamin for your photography,
you are appreciated and loved, more than you know.
you are appreciated and loved, more than you know.
I apologise for my limited grammar skills, I am not a writer by any means, infact I achieved low grades at school, so I am grateful for the spell checker, and thesaurus on my pc.
I have been writing on to this website since the end of 2013,
it is the accumulation of about twenty years of written and audio notes, as I felt led by the Spirit to record.
The truth of the Spiritual oneness of the Body of Christ,
and the power within, was laid on my heart
(as I know it was with all of us)
from the very beginning of my walk with Jesus.
My born again walk with Him began under a large canvas marquee, at a bible camp in the south of England,
in the summer of 1975, aged twelve years old.
Although throughout all those years, I could never find the words to express what it was that the Lord was showing my Spirit,
I always knew that the oneness of the body of Christ,
and my very faith itself in Christ, was for me
completely inseparable,
regardless of Satan's relentless worldly bombardments,
that we have all suffered and been exposed to,
from the very first day we were born again,
telling us otherwise, that built this 'stronghold' or 'backdrop'.
The Lord has always shown me this bombardment like a torrential rainstorm of lies, and every one of those droplet's only function was, when added together, would saturate us with unbelief in what our Father has already given us.
To steal the power that is inherently ours from the day we were born again spiritually into God Himself,
which we once knew the day we first met the Lord,
before the 'rains of deception'.
He always told me to watch carefully every deceiving droplet,
because one day
"you will share with My Church what I am showing you".
But the thought of this has always been terrifying to me,
I'd usually bunk off school on the day we had drama class, because I was petrified with fear of being seen
up in front of my own classmates.
I'd imagine the hostility I would face confronting the religiosity, that God was showing me had infiltrated
His beautiful Church.
So I have spent nearly all my adult life running away,
hiding and trying to ignore and suppress everything the Lord was showing me, resulting in drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol, in an attempt to subdue the pain of living a life that wasn't
true to who I knew was living inside of me.
So many mistakes that I am not proud of, so many encounters with darkness, violence, and death, leading to endless despair, grief and hopelessness, years of severe depression and suicidal thoughts.
Often waking up with empty bottles in church graveyards, ditches, doorways and police cells, from the UK to the US and Mexico, and beyond. Begging Him to free me from this life, and through it all desperately trying to convince Him that He had made a big, very big miscalculation regarding myself.
But no matter how much I begged Him for the relief of it all to end, the end it seemed just wouldn't come, regardless of the dangerous situations I deliberately put myself in. Death and escape always remained a few seconds or inches away,
yet He always brought me through
at the very last moment.
I am escaped with the skin of my teeth. Job 19:20
Afterwards, when the dust had settled, He'd show me
how He'd carried me through that particular valley,
detailing what He'd taught me about Himself.
About the trust and faith, I can have in Him,
and He was requiring from me, and His incomprehensible love for me, for His Church, and every soul who had ever lived.
I would like to take this opportunity to say how sorry I am to all those people that I have hurt over the years, because none of them or the situations have ever had my full attention,
my thoughts have always been elsewhere.
I have found it very challenging to see anything else in the
'real world' as important to me as the disastrous consequences of Satan's catastrophic deception.
I have been involved in many churches and ministries, and we always wanted to reach the lost with the 'good news',
yet because of this deception, we were all voluntarily operating without our best weapon, my heart was always broken.
At the time, I always mistakenly took that rejection very personally and deeply, often taking myself off and
back to my 'cave' for months, often years.
I'd have the biggest one man 'pitty-parties',
saying to myself and hoping God was listening,
"they don't want their oneness".
Finding myself living on the streets of San Diego, stealing my alcohol and crying out to God every day to help me.
I cannot describe my gratitude that Victory Outreach,
San Diego picked me up (via JBG thank you brother) and welcomed me into their holy, spirit-filled 'men's home' in Dulzura up in the mountains east of San Diego, alongside around 100 other ex-heroin and crack addicts, most were ex-gang members, many with bullet holes, I would have been in my early thirties.
This would have been around Feb 1996, I completed the program and was gratefully blessed out after 15 months by Joe and Martha Cruz, who will always live in my heart.
In all that time I was never asked for even a penny,
which was lucky because I never had a penny or a cent.
You may recognize the cross at Mount Helix, top of these pages. After I graduated I used to love to go up there, often taking with permission, seasoned brothers from the home.
One younger brother Chris, played in the youth band,
he used to sit in the back seat of the V8 car the church had lent me, with his guitar, and sing a new praise and worship song every day, that the Lord was giving him as we drove.
It was amazing and I loved our time, I still miss that brother,
he was quite happy to listen to me going on about our oneness,
and he encouraged me greatly, thank you Chris.
I stayed in that church for three years or more.
Pastor Sonny was the pastor there at one time, and I listened to him intently and was always blessed.
He even went out of his way and shook my hand,
I learned and received so much love and knowledge in that place, the new church, which I saw refurbished
from an old government dole office,
pastor Tony Guzman was my pastor then, he baptized me there.
2012 in my late forties, I was back in the depths of despair,
after my Michelle unexpectantly died, (I blamed god),
Teen Challenge London came to my rescue and opened their doors of love and healing to me.
The photo above was taken just after I completed the program,
some difference to the mess I was in when I arrived,
thank you Javier and my brothers there, God bless you all.
I cannot put into words the value and my gratitude for the teaching that I learned in both of these amazing ministries,
that coinsidentaly, (if you believe in coincidence) are sister ministries, with both their roots going back to David Wilkinson.
So I'm sure you will understand, how it was that I was reading 'Run baby run', one of Nicky Cruz's books, and happen to come across this quote.
And of course all my other pastors and leaders over the years,
including my Sunday school teachers going back to 1966-7,
I know that Sunday school is such an important ministry,
and I want to thank you all.
*******
It didn't seem to matter what combination of words I used,
it always sounded like "we need more unity",
but I was never saying that.
I would like to thank every Christian teacher and leader who has ever invested in me over the years, I have been blessed with pastors and leaders of the highest order.
And of course my awesome mum and late dad
who took me there every week, and taught me the Lord's prayer which I was encouraged to say every night before bed.
I will always be grateful to them for my secure and stable childhood, because as we know,
not all of us have been so fortunate.
I've learned that believing in our heart that we are not good enough for the purpose God has called us to, is not being humble, it is in fact, the very opposite, telling God,
that we in our wisdom know better than Him.
So the only thing I want now,
is to call out all those lying demons of division,
and watch as our God sends them cowering away
back to their shadows, we're sick of this outrageous deception.
However, they won't come, of course they can't come,
they know what will happen.
The only thing they can do now, is convince us,
that there is nothing new to see here,
and besides, we are far too busy getting results,
from our ministries, that we can see.
Slippery eels.
*******
Satan will do his best to keep us focused away
and onto his worldly human logic.
So when he does, please remind him
that it wouldn't be very logical, at the sound of 'land ahoy',
to look and scrutinize the crow's-nest, before looking very,
very carefully out at the horizon first.
The Lord said to me
"You're very good at asking, but not so good at receiving"
LAND AHOY
"You're very good at asking, but not so good at receiving"
LAND AHOY
Love in the oneness of Christ
Stephen David
Love in the oneness of Christ
Stephen David