A Personal Testimony
Ps Geoff Wiklund
Welcome to 2020 camp! Who would have believed that we would be doing it this way. I want to share a little bit around courage. I want to share a little bit of my story. And a little bit of David Vincent’s story really. David Vincent was in my church many of you will remember him. He was in a wheelchair, suffered from muscular dystrophy.
David wanted to do the Courage course, which was being put on by Ed, Dr Ed Cole. His dad was unable to take him, just because of some work that he was doing at the time, and so I put my hand up and volunteered to go with him. I’d go and pick up David every week put him in the van we’d drive there we’d drive back.
The courage course really brought out some very interesting things and David and I actually had some very, very deep sharing to and from the venue. David shared with me some of his inner struggles that he was going through and the fact that he realised he probably didn’t have too much longer to live, and he needed the courage to face that.
I found myself unwittingly becoming his confident as he shared the struggles with me. And I remember that courage course very well. And he and I cemented an incredibly close relationship with it. David found the courage in God to make that journey to Heaven.
I can’t say that I’ve had the same courage as David. But three and a half years ago God spoke to me to resign my church, sell my house and move north. It took incredible courage to resign my church. I pioneered that church 23 years before and the people in that church, I had won many of them to the lord personally. I had buried their parents, married them, christened their children, dedicated them. They were part of my life, they were family, they were friends. The relationship went very deep.
And to leave them was one of the most painful things that I’ve ever had to do in obedience to God. The courage to do that was just having to come from the Holy Spirit, I just couldn’t do it on my own strength. Then there were other things that weren’t as, I guess, close as that but the home that we’d had was my dream home it reminded me of the house that I’d had as a child. It was our dream place from the point of place of a view, plenty of room.
What’s more, financially it was good for us. We had a flat downstairs. That was paying the mortgage and I knew that once we sold this place we would not be able to complete the financial plan that I had put into place. But God was calling me to have the courage to trust Him. To do what? We didn’t really know at the time. We just knew that God’s hand was on me for a more prophetic role rather than a pastoral role. And that we were going to have to trust Him for our income, trust Him for another house and trust Him that His plan was better than what my plan would be.
Going on to that, the courage to take that step was huge and I have to confess I struggled with it. I knew I wanted to be obedient to God but then one morning very early at a prayer meeting a word came through and I knew that I knew, then that I could do it. And so I called Joanne up on the side of the road and said ‘Listen, I had this word this morning, we need to do it.’ And she said ‘Well that’s confirmation. Let’s do it.’
You know for you and I to come into this weekend, were talking about courage. I don’t know what Gods calling you to do but it will take courage. I believe that courage comes from the Word of God. It’s kind of a faith really in a way. But just like David knowing he was going on his journey, knowing that there were things that he had to go through, I want to say the thing I learned from David was I became the person he could talk to and share with.
And if there’s one thing we want to take out of this weekend is that for you to have the courage you need to have some companions on the way. When that man was lifted on the pallet and lowered through the roof, there were four men carrying him to Jesus. You need people carrying you to give you the courage also to get your miracle.
And so I want to say to you have some confidants. Have some people that you can talk to about your journey. I meet with four other men every Thursday morning and I can share with them my struggles, I can share with them when I need more courage.
Just recently God has challenged me again on another thing that I’m to go to Poland. I thought well, I don’t speak the language; I’ve got no contacts there. What possible difference could I make? And then God showed me Jehu. The prophet poured a horn of oil over him and when he anointed him that man went out from that place and changed the landscape. And I realised that my role in Poland might just be to prophesy over one person. And that one person could change the nation. And so it’s given me the courage to go even though I don’t know what I’m going into.
So today my prayer for you is even though you might not know what it’s going to look like, may you rise up in courage and do that thing that Gods calling you to do and set in motion things just like Jehu did. I pray that this will be a fantastic weekend for you. God Bless.