TCW Short Take #4: How were you saved out of the Prosperity Gospel movement?

Tell us the story of how you came out of this. What was going on in your mind? How you understood the gospel? How your wife played into that?

Give us a snapshot of that story. People can read about it in the book, but just tell us how God saved you out of this. Yeah, it was through his word, no doubt, the understanding of the true gospel and Jesus' healing ministry and his sovereignty, and he used people along the way. So a quick 3.2-minute sermon would be, you've got the coach, you've got the girl, and you've got the pastor. My coach at Dallas Baptist University, where I played baseball after working for my uncle, was a disciple maker, and he began to talk to me about the sovereignty of God and talk to our team about it. And we memorized Bible verses and went through went through different studies, and the sovereignty of God started leaking in, albeit I was confused a bit because the idea of God being sovereign really messed with my theology because I thought I was in control with my faith and my offerings and my anointing, but that messed me up. And then God brought my wife along, and we tried as a family to fix her. She didn't speak in tongues, she didn't come from our background, she drove a Toyota Yaris, I drove a Hummer, she worked as a server at a restaurant, I had only ever been a prosperity preacher worker. Her family was blue-collar, my family was prosperity gospel, wealth, and royalty, so she comes along and the Lord really used the things that happened with her. There were things that we tried to get her to do and make her have and make her become that weren't working.

And I began to wonder, you know, what's wrong with her? But then soon I began to question what's wrong with our beliefs? And she had gone to my uncle's services, my dad's, we had tried to get her to speak in tongues and get the anointing on her life, we had tried to get her to revere all of the leaders that were leading us, and the Lord really used her to ask me some tough questions. And we went on that journey together and then ended up at a church plant where a pastor, Tony Wood, one of my best friends still today, started helping me along asking questions as well. And then the Lord really took hold of our church, our lives, everything. And I preached a sermon one Sunday and Tony gave me a MacArthur commentary and I preached John 5, the healing at the pool of Bethesda, and made a few observations that Jesus healed one man, he healed them immediately, and the man didn't even know who Jesus was. So I thought, well Jesus didn't heal everybody, Jesus didn't heal with a show, he did it immediately, there was no process, and then the man didn't know he was, how did he even have enough faith to get healed? And I began to study right there the passage and realized that Jesus' sovereign power and healing is what the Bible teaches and that we cannot turn his healing ministry into a formula for monetary gain. My entire world came crashing down, this is the cliff notes version but all the rest of it's in the book, and I was saved. I repented of my sin, I turned to Christ, he won victory in my heart, and I committed to preaching the true gospel since that day. And other dominoes fell of course after, but that's really the short version of how his word, the truth, and faithful people were used to change my life. We hope you gained from this short take of the Christian Worldview radio program. To hear the full program and further connect with this ministry, visit thechristianworldview.org. I'm David Wheaton.