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PASTOR PETE'S TESTIMONY

During the winter of 1969, I remember going to the Wednesday night Awana program at our church. On one particular Wednesday night, an older lady shared with me the love of Jesus Christ. She told me that God loved me and that Jesus had died on the cross to pay for my sin, and that if I would simply confess my sin and accept Jesus into my heart, I would go to heaven. I was filled with joy to know that I could know I could have eternal life! On that night I prayed to accept Jesus into my heart, and I experienced a peace and a joy that I had never known. For the 1^{st time in my life I felt forgiven, and I felt unconditionally loved! I was so filled with joy that I went home and asked each of my family members if they knew Jesus Christ as their Lord. I couldn’t stop talking about Jesus, and I started telling my friends about Him, and inviting them to Wednesday night Church.}

One summer day, when I was 13 years old, after stacking firewood in our garage, I had a seizure and collapsed on the spot as I entered the house. I was immediately rushed to the hospital where I lay in intensive care for a period of 2 weeks. The hospital ran all kinds of tests in desperation in attempt to find out what was wrong with me. It was determined that I had contracted “encephalitis”, which turned out to be an epidemic that year in the Minneapolis area. That summer the hospitals in the Minneapolis area were filled with people who had contracted encephalitis. Apparently the doctor told my parents that I had the worst case in the entire hospital.

I experienced extreme pressure on my brain for a period of 2 weeks. I couldn’t sleep, eat, or do anything but moan in agony. To make matters worse, the doctors couldn’t find a medication to eliminate the pain or swelling, in fact, they didn’t even know what was wrong with me.

After nearly 2 weeks of my condition continuing to grow worse, one Saturday night, the doctors told my parents that that was the night. That night would be the climax of my fever. I would either go into a coma, the fever would break, or I would die. But, that night was the night that would determine my future.

When my dad heard the news, he and our pastor, several elders from our church, and other godly men got together at our church to intercede on my behalf. I remember that night, the pain became so intense that I could not even stand the sound of hearing my mother turn the pages of her bible as she sat next to my bed seeking God on my behalf. As she sat there, silently reading her bible, I remember her turning the page of her bible, and I told her to ‘put that thing away, and stop making so much noise’!

She didn’t say anything, but she silently closed her bible and began to pray for me. My mother told God, that if I was going to waste my life living for myself, for Him to take me home, because she knew that I was His child.

About 11pm that night, my mother left the hospital exhausted from sitting with me for hours listening to me moan and groan . Sometime around midnight, God healed me! My fever broke and for the 1st time in nearly 2 weeks, I fell asleep! I slept soundly that whole night through, and when I woke up ,I felt great, and I ate 2 full breakfasts!

The staff was absolutely shocked at the miracle, and when my mother walked in early that morning, I was sitting up, eating, and praise God, I had been healed!

My mother had mentally prepared herself to sit and listen to me moan again all day, but to her delight, JESUS CHRIST had granted me the gift of healing my body! It was a miracle, it was un-explainable, but what an opportunity my mom had to share Jesus Christ with my Jewish doctor. He couldn’t deny the miracle that God had done!

From that summer on, I really felt the Lord beginning to work in my life. I didn’t want to admit it, but I knew God had special plans for my life. For the next year, I really began to grow in my faith, and I began to feel the Lord removing things from my life. My interests were changing, my friends were changing, and my focus was changing.

Over the course of the next year, people within the church could discern God’s calling on my life. In fact, they started calling me ‘Pastor Pete’. I didn’t like the name, and I told them not call me that, I wasn’t a pastor, and I had no plans be a pastor!

When I was 15 years old, I joined a health club and started weight training. A Christian man, who was attending my parents home bible study, introduced me to the sport of ‘Power Lifting’. I became addicted in a matter of just a short time and I began training for various state-wide Power Lifting meets.

In the summer of 1978, our youth group got together with several other youth groups in our area, and we watched the movie ‘Pilgrims Progress’. I sat with my buddies, and fooled around through the whole movie. When the movie was over, a man who had been sitting behind me, rebuked me and said to me, ‘I’m going to pray that God drops a log on your back to get your attention’. I laughed and didn’t think anything of it until a month later when I was over at my buddies house training for a power lifting meet, when I heard a loud ‘pop’ in my back as I was dead lifting. I collapsed to the floor in excruciating pain. I thought I had broken my back. My parents rushed me to the hospital where they put me in body-traction for 10 days. As I lay there in bed, the words of that man who had rebuked me came to mind. Believe it or not, I began to praise God! The LORD truly had His hand on my life, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t run from God. My life was a true declaration of ‘whom the Lord loves, He chastens’! I was being chastened, and I couldn’t wait to tell the man who rebuked me, that God had answered his prayer!

At the age of 16, the hand of the Lord on my life became very intense and I became very miserable because I was wanting to live my own life! I was wrestling with God over surrendering to His calling upon my life. I had surrendered nearly every area of my life, and by the fall of 1978, God’s call upon my life was so strong that I couldn’t sleep. I was miserable, and when I would lie down at night, all I could hear was the voice of the Lord, ‘Peter, you will never be happy, until you surrender to My will for your life’.

I remember lying in bed one Saturday night feeling the tug of the Holy Spirit. I knew God wanted me to surrender EVERYTHING, but I was afraid. I remember telling the Lord ‘I’ll surrender to do ANYTHING that You call me to do, but ONE! I will be a school teacher, I will be a missionary, I will be a youth worker, I will be anything You want me to be, but I DO NOT want to be a PASTOR!’ I wrestled with the LORD for what seemed like ½ the night. I kept arguing with God, ‘Lord, isn’t it good enough that I’d be a missionary?’ I could not find peace, and God would not let me go to sleep until I surrendered. After hours of trying to talk God out of it, I knew what God’s calling was on my life, and that if I didn’t surrender, I would never find peace. With tears in my eyes, God broke my will and I said ‘Yes Lord, I surrender to preach Your Word!’ I cannot describe the joy, and the peace that filled my soul at that very moment! That night I surrendered to the calling of God upon my life to be a pastor.

That fall I began attending another Christian school which offered a bible class for all the boys who felt called into the ministry called ‘Preacher Boys’ class, and I was taught the fundamentals of ‘Topical’ preaching. For the next 2 years, I attended various pastor’s conferences with my pastor and youth pastor, in Hammond IN.

I wish I could say, my submission to the Lord was perfect, and I never looked back from the day I surrendered, but my life didn’t go that way. Not because I didn’t want to walk consistently with Christ, I just couldn’t! And as a result, by the time I reached my senior year in High School, I was very burnt out on religion. Both the church and the high school I was attending were very legalistic, and I had come to a point of not being able to handle it any more. For some reason, and I wasn’t quite sure why, God was so different to me in my personal devotions and prayer time, than what my church and school were presenting Him as being. He was loving and forgiving, gracious and merciful in my prayer time, but at church and school, He was mean, and just waiting for me to mess up, because apparently, He was looking for a reason to punish me.

No matter how many times I went forward on Sunday’s, and confessed, and re-confessed, and dedicated, and re-dedicated and consecrated and re-consecrated and told God that I was sorry for failing again, and that THIS TIME LORD, I REALLY MEAN IT; no matter how many times I did that, I always failed, and I was tired of being the theme of Sunday morning messages. In fact, because the Sunday morning message was topical, the pastor always preached on what ever sin was the most evident in the people from the week before. Too often my re-dedication didn’t even last until Monday morning. I couldn’t do it, I didn’t know why I couldn’t do it, I wanted to do it, but I just couldn’t. All the church could do, was tell me how disappointed God was with me. In all the years I attended this particular church and High School, never once did I hear a message on Galatians 2:20. All I knew was, God saved me, now it’s my turn to conform myself into Christ’s image. (I hadn’t read Gal 3:3!) I wanted to do the right thing, but I just kept failing. No matter how short I cut my hair, no matter how much I beat myself up, and forced myself to obey the Bible, I couldn’t discipline myself to do what was right. I became intensely frustrated, I was an athlete, I trained almost every day of the week, 2-6 hours a day. I could make myself lift weights. I could make myself get up early. I could train my mind to be disciplined to focus on my work outs, even when my life was filled with problems. I could discipline myself to read my bible, pray, go to church…But somehow, no matter how able I was to discipline myself physically, I could find no power to discipline my old nature to do what was right. I wanted to do it, in fact I desperately wanted to flee sin, and live righteously…BUT I COULDN’T, and it drove me CRAZY!!!!!

During this time I became increasingly frustrated with my Christian life. My bible reading became a job, my prayer life was almost non-existent, I didn’t feel loved by church and school leadership, and I was bored with my ‘Christian friends’, so I began to bury myself in my sport of Power Lifting.

By 1980, I held all the state power lifting records for my weight and age group. As a result, I was invited to participate in the teen age Nationals Power Lifting meet in Chicago Ill, and ended up placing in the top 10 nationally. At the national power lifting meet, I met a man who was the head of Penn State athletic department, and they offered me a full scholarship from Penn State, but God had other plans.

In the spring of 1981, my dad took a job that moved our family to Cody Wyoming. I moved with them, looking for new opportunities, and hoping to attend a Trade School while living at home. By the fall of 1981, I was extremely home sick for friends in Minnesota, so when my sister and brother in law came out for Christmas in 1981, I went back with them. In February of 1982 I was working full time and I moved in with a buddy of mine to try to help get on my feet. Several months passed, nothing seemed to come together, and I grew increasingly dissatisfied with my life which caused me to once again seek the Lord. In the spring of 1982, the Lord reminded me of my calling, and that what I was doing at that time was running from God, so I asked God’s forgiveness, and moved home to Cody Wyoming and took a job roofing houses as I prepared to go to Bible College in the fall. In the fall of 1982, I attended a small private Bible College in northern Wisconsin as I began to prepare for the ministry that God had for me.

In the spring of 1983, I began writing a girl by the name Celeste Ward, whom I had met at our old church in Cody. After only a few months of correspondence, Celeste and I developed a boy friend – girl friend relationship. During that time, I was able to go to Cody a couple of times to see Celeste. Neither one of us were very fond of our long distance relationship, and we were questioning how to reduce the distance.

In the summer of 1984, the company my dad worked for went bankrupt, and my dad took a job in Anchorage Alaska. I moved with them for financial reasons. Needless to say, that moved ended my relationship with Celeste. We were having a difficult enough of a time with 500 miles, let alone now, 3000 miles, so we ended our brief relationship. I went my way and Celeste went hers.

In the fall of 1984, I began attending College in Anchorage. In November of 1984, I knew God was stirring my heart for marriage to come. The only problem was that at that time I wasn’t even dating. I recall distinctively hearing the Holy Sprit say, ‘You have already met the girl I have chosen for you’. After several days of prayer, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God had chosen Celeste for my wife. I wrote Celeste a couple of letters, and about 3 weeks later, I bought her a ring and proposed to her on Thanksgiving Day, 1984. We were married July 6, 1985 in Cody Wyoming. We moved back to Anchorage Alaska where I went back to school to learn the automotive trade.

In the spring of 1988, my mom and dad, my brother and his wife, and Celeste and I moved to North Powder Oregon to buy a ranch, but the deal fell apart just before our closing. From there Celeste and I moved to Bellingham Washington where our son Ryan was born in the spring of 1989. From there we moved to N.E. Minnesota and then in 1991, we ended up in Billings Montana, where we had our daughter Bethany in 1996.

Our years in Billings were very prosperous. We bought our 1st and 2nd houses. Celeste and I each had our own home businesses, plus I had a very lucrative job in the automotive field, and I became very materialistic. We made a lot of money, and we spent a lot of money. During this time, my spiritual walk with the Lord hit an all time low. I became increasingly empty and dissatisfied. We had all but quit going to church, and all our time was invested in us. But God still had His hand on us, especially me as the head of our home. I knew I had run from God’s calling to preach, but I really didn’t care because I had too many other things in life that I was seeking to make me happy. Each year that passed in Billings became worse. Celeste and I began to experience great stress in our marriage, and on top of that, I was more miserable than I had ever been in my life. The stress became so bad, that I began to experience ‘panic attacks’, and I began to develop a phobia of being alone. Financially, we lacked for nothing. We had a beautiful new home, 2 beautiful children, horses, sports car, but I was so empty and extremely lonely. As a born again Christian, I never thought that I could have ever felt so empty. By this time in my life, my heart was very hardened towards the things of the Lord.

In the spring of 1996, Celeste’s mother Ernestine was up to help Celeste during the birth of Bethany, and during that time Ernestine read an article in the Billings Gazette, announcing the start up of ‘Calvary Chapel’. She said that she had heard some good things about Calvary Chapel, and she encouraged us to go.

We missed the 1st Sunday they started, but we made it the next week. We got directions to the North Park Gymnasium in Billings Montana, and showed up a few minutes before they started. It didn’t take any time to realize that this church was way different from any other church I had ever been to. The people were real, there didn’t seem to have that judgmental attitude about who I was. Everyone seemed real, and it was so casual, nobody forced themselves on me and we felt welcome. The pastor got up, welcomed everyone, gave a few announcements, and then they began the worship service. By the second worship song, my hardened heart, for the 1st time in 20 years had been pierced. For the very 1st time in my life, worship at church, was the same as my worship in private. Suddenly, ‘God at church’ was the same God I had known in my own time of devotions. For the 1st time in 20 years I felt the Grace of God upon my life, and I once again felt His call. For the next 2 years, we continued to attend Calvary Chapel Billings, and for the next 2 years God began to work on my heart, even though I continued to pursue happiness through materialism. The longer I pursued my own plans, the more miserable I became.

In the fall of 1997, certain events took place in every area of my life that literally brought me to the ‘end of myself’. I was so sick of myself at this point, that I literally cried out to God that He either change me, or take my life. I couldn’t stand myself any longer, and I knew I couldn’t live another day if God wouldn’t change me!

At that time I felt the distinct calling of God to move to Wyoming. We sold our home in Billings, and moved to Sheridan Wyoming where we bought a little farm and I went to work for a GM dealership. Immediately we began looking for a good bible believing church. We thought we found one in Sheridan, but following the Sunday morning message, the pastor announced that he was leaving. We were very discouraged because we couldn’t find a good church, and now this was our main focus. No longer was church and fellowship something we didn’t have anything else to do, it was a necessity. Church, and being in fellowship with other believers had become a main priority.

Not being able to find a good bible teaching church in the Sheridan area, we began praying about leaving Wyoming, in order to find a good church. About this time we found out that there was a new little church starting in Buffalo Wyoming, called ‘Calvary Fellowship’. They were meeting in one of the members homes, and so it was a very comfortable setting. Within the next few weeks, Celeste was asked to lead worship, and I became one of the board members. We became very involved, and from that spring in 1998, to the spring of 1999, God began to work on my life like never before. For nearly 20 years I had run from God, and God had to teach me 20 years of lessons in 8 months. I recall those lessons as being the most intense lessons I have ever learned. Not only was every lesson God taught me that year more intense than any lesson I had ever learned, God was taking me through 2-5 of these lessons each week.

In the fall of 1998, I went out to eat with the pastor, and he asked me if I was satisfied as an automotive technician, and if I could ever see myself doing anything else. He then proceeded to tell me he knew what God was going to do with my life, and asked me if I wanted to know. At that time I told him ‘no’, because I was too afraid of what God was up to, and due to the intensity of the lessons that God was taking me through, I told the pastor that I couldn’t handle knowing what God was doing. Some times life can be so painful that we can only handle what going on for that day alone. This was one of those times. I had gone back to having an intense prayer life like I had never had before. During those 8 months, God took me deeper than I’d ever gone. It was a fearful experience, but it was the love of Jesus that kept me going. The lessons were excruciating. In fact, I remember telling God that ‘there is no way I will ever run, but Lord would You please let me have a short break from these lessons’? God was always very fair, and at times He’d let up the pressure I was experiencing from my ‘spiritual surgery’, and then He’d begin again. This went on day after day for 8 months. Finally I was ready to hear what the pastor felt God was going to do with my life, so I asked the pastor what he felt God was going to do in my life. The pastor said, ‘I believer that God has called you to be a pastor’. That was confirmation to all that God had been telling me all of my life.

In February of 1999, the Lord led us to sell our farm in Sheridan Wyoming, and move to Buffalo Wyoming where we could be more involved with our church. Both Celeste and I felt directly impressed to ask a specific price for our farm. We called the real estate lady we had bought our farm from, and she said we’d never get that much for it. We told her that we believed that’s what God wanted us to ask, and if it was God’s will, He’d sell it for us. She said ‘good luck’. In less than 1 week we had to cash offers for exactly what we wanted. God wanted us in Buffalo! After selling our farm in Sheridan, we had a significant amount profit from the sale, and I asked God if we could go to Bible College to get prepared for the ministry. The Lord say ‘No, move to Buffalo’. We moved to Buffalo, and before we even got un packed, the church we had been attending had dissolved, the church was done.

We were in shock, but knew that God had brought us to Buffalo for a reason. We felt terrible for all the ‘sheep’ that were left without a shepherd. We sought the Lord as to what we could do to help the sheep. Celeste was the worship leader of that ministry, we owned the sound equipment, and so we decided to set up our equipment in our living room, Celeste could lead worship, and we’d just listen to Pastor Wayne from Calvary Chapel Billings, for our Sunday morning messages. We had several of his old tapes, and we decided we’d just get set up on his mailing list. We called Wayne later that week to tell him what we had in mind, and he invited us up to meet with him the next Sunday morning. We went up that Sunday and met with Pastor Wayne after church. He knew what God was up to, and he asked me if I knew what God was up to. I knew what God wanted, I was surrendered to obey the Lord, but I felt a lot of fear.

Pastor Wayne agreed to come down on Sunday nights and teach us what he had taught his congregation that morning. So we set it up to begin the next week, and that next Sunday night, Celeste led worship, and Wayne led the Bible study. After a couple of Sundays, Wayne asked me to start a mid-week bible study. It was July, and I thought ‘sure, I’ll teach a bible study through the summer’. Little did I know what God had in store for me. Around August 1, 1999, I began a bible study in our living room in the book of Romans. In October of that same year, pastor Wayne announced that the snow was about to fly, and he could no longer come down to teach us. Wayne asked me if I knew what ‘the truth was and what I knew in my heart’, and I told him I knew what God was up to, and I was surrendered to do God’s will. God had spent the previous 2 years preparing me for the ministry.

By October of that same year, we had out grown our living room, so Wayne and I began looking for a building to rent. We rented the 7th Day Adventist Church Building. Pastor Wayne asked God’s blessing and from that day forward, I became the pastor of Calvary Chapel, in Buffalo Wyoming.

At the beginning of our ministry, in the summer of 1999, we filed with the FCC, to get a CSN station here in Buffalo Wyoming. The process was very long, and trying as we began to pray for, and wait upon the Lord for our new full power CSN radio station.

In the fall of 2000, a man by the name of Bob Moore contacted me about starting an LPFM radio station. He informed us that the FCC was granting LP-FM permits in limited quantity, and we only had 2 weeks to file before the window of opportunity was over. With the help of a good attorney, and a very gifted Christian radio engineer, we filed for a LP-FM station for here in Buffalo Wyoming. Six months later, we were informed that we were granted a construction permit. Praise God! We were one of thousands that had applied. We were given 18 months to complete our station, or the permit would be void. It took us 12 months of prayer and planning to get our station on the air. Several faithful and devoted volunteers had contributed to make the station a reality. We have had several thousand dollars worth of equipment donated and several thousand dollars worth of cash donations to help get the station off the ground. On Monday, June 17th 2002 at 8 am, KSLW (Streams of Living Water), 99.5 fm ‘The Stream’ was born.

In January 2003, the Lord has given me a new promise. ACTS 18:9,10 “Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not keep silent; for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you; for I have many people in this city.”

We have boldly been proclaiming the Gospel here in Buffalo for the past 4 years, and God has given me assurance, not only that He has called us here to Buffalo, but that He has many more souls to save in this community! God has called us to live by faith, trust Him no matter what the future holds. In bible college, I prayed for a life lived by faith, and now God has answered my prayers. As I reflect on all the awesome things that God has done, the Lord reminds me that He has only just begun.

There is no greater joy, than to see the power of God demonstrated in a life like mine! Even though I so consistently rebelled against the Lord, and ran from my calling, even so, God was faithful. I felt as though I had wasted so many years in running from my calling, but in the end, all those years were necessary in order that God might prepare me for where I am today. There is no such thing as having ‘finally arrived’. I keep on arriving, day by day. The more I discover who I am, the more I discover His amazing grace.

If you have, or are running from God’s calling upon your life, I’d like to encourage you to surrender to your calling. Go back to your first love, to that time when Jesus Christ was the most important thing in your life. Ask God to rekindle your first love. It’s never too late to say, “Lord, here am I, use me.”

When I returned as a prodigal son to my Heavenly Father, He welcomed me with open arms, and He restored all the years that the locusts had eaten (Joel 2:25). I no longer look back in remorse for having taken so long to completely surrender, rather I look forward with a thankful heart to the things that are yet ahead. If God can do such great things in the life of such a sinner as I, I now know that He can do anything through the life of anyone who will completely surrender to Him.

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Pete