Let Go and Let God Part 3

Hello, welcome to Self Talk with me, Dr. Ray Self, the show that empowers you with the Holy Spirit and gives you the ability to overcome every scheme of the enemy so you can enter your promised land. Today, you're going to get a new strategy for success in your life.

 

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Hey, welcome again to Self Talk. I'm your host, me Dr. Ray Self. Thanks for being with me these episodes. You know, I've been talking about the power of letting go, and I felt led to share my testimony because it's something…it's a powerful example of what God can do. It's a time where my life was changed completely when I was able to let go. Period. Thanks for being a part of the show. Again, brought to you by the International College of Ministry at icmcollege.org. And you know, we're enrolling right now. Go to icmcollege.org. Thank you so much for being part of my show. 

 

Okay, here we go. This is Dr. Ray. Heavenly Father, thank you for everyone here listening to the sound of my voice. I pray that I can be a blessing to them. I pray for your anointing, for your Holy Spirit to guide me, help me with my memory, and let me represent you faithfully and truly. God bless everyone who listens to this show, this episode now, in Jesus' name. Amen. So I've been talking about what it means to let go and trust God. And the problem with letting go and trusting God is it sounds very much like a cliché. It sounds like, uh, you know, just something that you know– “Do you know Jesus died for your sins?” Even that has become a cliché, although it's truth. But trusting God, letting go of God, letting go of your…desires, your abilities, your efforts, and trusting God and letting Him take charge, and you releasing your control is very, very powerful. 

 

If you're like me, and I'm sure a lot of people are like me, although it can be a little different, I want to– I'm a manager, I'm a leader. I've always been an entrepreneur, a leader of a ministry or leader of businesses. And I, I was in charge, and I made my plans, and I worked hard to make everything happen. But God has a way of getting us to the place where we need to trust Him. And it's not easy because, see, trust means uncertainty. It means letting go of our own ability. And, and that can make you feel uncomfortable. But it's exactly what we need to do. And as I said in the last episode, letting go is powerful because when God knows we've let go, that's when He begins to move in amazing ways. 

 

So some years ago, I guess it’s probably been- I'm trying to think right now- it's probably been 20, let's see, 25, 26, 27, actually longer than that. Maybe 29 years ago, I was pastoring a church in a small town in Tennessee. It was a beautiful church. I had not been there long, and I was pastoring the church with my wife, and, uh, we had a church and a school, and it was a really nice assignment. We had been sent there by a large church, and we had been planted there, and it was great. In the midst of pastoring this church, my marriage began to have some very, very severe problems. And, um, it was a struggle. It was a struggle pastoring. Although everything th– God was moving, things were happening. The, the people were incredible. I love that church. I still do, thinking about it. But to make a long story short, my wife left me…and here I am pastoring this church and, uh, having to go to church, and it was– it happened very suddenly. There was a big blow-up, and she left. Then I had to go the next Sunday and try to explain to the church where my wife was. The first Sunday I said, "Well, she's just, um, not feeling well." Which is probably true. But after a couple of Sundays, it was obvious that, um, I had a really, really difficult situation. I was in a place where I wanted to reconcile my marriage. I wanted to restore my marriage. I wanted to fix my marriage. I wanted to get things right. So I felt the appropriate thing to do was to lay the church down and focus on the restoration of my marriage. And I did it. It was very, very hard for me. But I felt it was the right thing to do.

 

So, for a long period of time, over a year and a half, I reached out and did my best to reconcile my marriage. But it became clear that my wife was not coming back. She was not returning. At that point, um, it was a very hard, awful situation. I felt the Lord; I felt a release from God. Some people will argue with this, but she wasn't coming back, and uh, we ended up in a divorce, which was awful and painful even to talk about…about now. Um, the scripture reference God gave me was “When the unbelieving spouse leaves, the believer is not under bondage in such situations.” I said, "But Lord, my wife's a Christian." And He goes, "No, she's not believing. The way she left and her refusal to reconcile, she's not a believer at this point." Anyway, and I'm not trying to justify divorce. God hates divorce. I hate divorce. Everybody hates divorce.

 

So, I'm single and I, I'm single, and I stayed single; and I'm thinking at this point ministry is over for me. Um, it's just, it's over, you know, it's, it's toast. And actually, I'm looking back at this. This was probably around 1999. It's, it's a long time ago. ‘98, ‘99. Anyway, I get sometimes my timelines mixed up, but it's been, it's been a while. And so, I'm thinking ministry is over. God probably– I've disqualified myself, you know, all the stuff. And so, I stayed single. I had two teenage children I was caring for. Another long story short. And something happened, something strange happened. God just kept using me. Um, I started planting schools and planting colleges and, and I started getting invitations to preach. You think, "Well, wait a minute. I'm not qualified because I've been through a divorce." But no, you know, God, God's the one that qual– none of us are qualified except for the grace of God. God began to use me, and the ministry actually began to grow. A lot of things began to happen. It was, uh, amazing. I was absolutely astounded because I had disqualified myself, but God wasn't done with me. 

 

But I had another problem. I was lonely. For eight years. For eight years, I stayed lonely. And I was looking, I was looking for a wife. I have to– I was looking for a wife. The Bible says he who finds a, a good wife finds favor with the Lord, so I was looking for a good wife. And you know, I, I've met some people and tried some things, and I, uh…just nothing was working. And I had, um, had a lot of counterfeits come through, you know, ladies that were interested in me, but it became evident this was not the will of the Lord. There was something wrong happening, but I was still lonely. And so, gets to around, um, it must have been- my divorce must have been around 2007, I guess, 2008. So around 2005, around 2005, I said a prayer. I said, "Lord, Lord…you know I'm lonely. You…Lord, you know, Lord, that I don't…I'm lonely. I don't like this feeling. Father, I release my desire to you to have a wife. I release it to you, Father. Lord, you know, I don't want to be single, but Father, if you want me to stay single and just minister, uh, and live here in this little house, I'll do it, Father. But Lord, I surrender to you. I release my desire to you. I let it go. I let it go. I let it go.” And so, for about a month, for about a month, um, you know, I was just doing my thing, doing the ministry and stuff. I was, I was not looking anymore for a wife. I had let it go. I had let it go. And lo and behold, all of a sudden, I have to be honest, it was online; I saw a picture, and I had given up on a wife. I saw a picture of the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. And she wanted to talk to me. She wanted to talk to me. And I emailed her, and she emailed me back, and we emailed back and forth. And we began an email conversation, and then we began to talk on the phone back and forth. Turns out that she lives in Orlando, and I'm up in Tennessee. So I'm thinking, well, this could, could never work, but we became friends. I was a little interested because she was, she was beautiful, had a sweet, loving voice, and she loved to pray over the telephone, and everything was pretty interesting. But I, you know, I didn't think– see how this could possibly, could possibly work. So, you know, I just said, "Well, we'll be friends." So, we remained friends. And this went on for about six months, phone conversations and a few emails.

 

Then all of a sudden, one day I got invited to preach in a little town called Vero Beach, Florida, which is not too far from Orlando. So I called Christie, who we were friends, and I said, “Hey, I'm, I'm going to be preaching a revival in Vero Beach, Florida. Would you like to come hear me preach?” And she said, “Well, yeah, that would be great,” and said, “Where are you flying to?” “I'm flying to Orlando.” She said, “Well, I'll tell you what. I'll pick you up, and I'll drive you down there.” I said, “Really?” “Yeah.” I said, “Wow, this would be cool.” So I flew to Orlando some days later. She picked me up at the airport, and she literally had to hold up a picture of me because she really wasn't sure what I was going to look like in person. She had a photo of me, and she was standing where, where you come off the planes, come through security, with a picture of me so she'd recognize me. It was so funny. But we met at the airport, and she drove me to Vero Beach, Florida, for, uh, a three-day revival. Well, she ended up staying in the same hotel as I did. Different rooms, different rooms, and the revival was anointed; things of God were happening. It was amazing. But we noticed something unusual. Every time we got close to each other, the Spirit of the Lord would fall upon us. He would just– the anointing would be all over us. And you know, we would, uh…the revival is at night. During the day, we would meet and take a walk on the beach or just meet and talk, you know, sit in the lobby and talk, and we'd always feel the presence of God. It was so amazing. It was like the presence of God would always be around us whenever we were together. And the Lord began to speak to us. So, after revival was over, I flew back to Memphis, Tennessee, and I'm thinking, “Lord, what have you done? What's going on here?” And Christie is down in Florida thinking the same thing, “What's going on here?” You know, “This pastor from Tennessee, and I'm in Orlando. How would this work?” And, um, you know, I didn't know. 

 

So, I just kind of thought, well, it's a friend– it's a friendship, and there's an anointing around us. Well, one day I was, I was in a class, and the Lord spoke to me, and He said, "Ray, Christie is my perfect gift to you." And I heard it so loud. It was right, right in my spirit, like a prophetic word directly to me. I went, "Whoa, that's heavy. That's heavy stuff." Next day, I was doing what I like to do. I was playing golf. And the phone rings, and it's Christie. And I had just received this word the night before that she was my perfect gift from God. And I'm thinking, "Well, now what do I do? What do I do? Do I tell her? Do I not tell her? What do I do?" I mean, I was nervous, but I decided,  I put my golf club down -which is not easy to do if you're a golfer - and I said, "Christie, I believe the Lord spoke to me." And I'm really nervous as I'm saying this. She said, "What, what did He say?" “He said that you were God's perfect gift to me.” And Christie goes, [gasps] she gasped and she says, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute." She went and grabbed a prayer journal. And she opened it up to a prophecy she had received. And the prophecy was, "Your husband to be will say these words to you: that you are God's perfect gift to him.” I had spoken the exact words that she had written down three years before. And we were both astounded. And then God started moving. We started getting prophecy, prophetic words, and confirmations and confirmations and confirmations, and it was just incredible. I go back down, uh, over a month later, and I proposed to her on the beach in Vero Beach, Florida, and she accepted my proposal, and we stayed engaged for six months traveling back and forth between Orlando and Memphis, Tennessee. Back and forth between Orlando and Memphis, Tennessee. 

 

We ended up getting married. Kept two houses for a while. One in Tennessee, one in Florida. Eventually, the Lord said, "Move to Orlando." I moved to Orlando. When I get to Orlando, doors start opening up for me all over the world. End up ministering all over the United States, door after door after door. And then I meet a guy named Steve Whitmann, who's a former Air Force nuclear missile programmer. And I shared a vision about having an online college. And he looked at me, and he said, "I can build that for you. I, I would love to build that for you." And I looked at him, I said, "Well, how much will that cost me?" He said, "It won't cost you anything because I have a gift and I want to give it to God." And he began building me a website. And it took him three years to build it without him charging me anything. He built it, spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours building it. He launched the International College of Ministry. And out of that, I can tell you story after story after story. All of this is exceedingly and abundantly more than I could ever think or ask for. And what happened was I let go. I simply let go of my desire to be married. I let go of my feeling of being disqualified. I let go of my life. I let go of my insecurities and fears. I let go, and I'd literally turn my desire and my life over to God in a fresh way. And He did something for me that was exceedingly - like Ephesians 3:20 - exceedingly abundantly more than I could ever think or ask for. It's the reason I'm doing this podcast. It's the reason I have a college with a 2,500-page website and been able to minister all over the US and in many nations. It's the reason that things are be– bigger than me beyond my own understanding. Things I could never dream of. 

 

And I think, and is no credit to me at all. It's all glory to God. But what started it was that day when I let go, and I released my desire to God, and God's plans began to unfold for me. Because if I had held on to my desire, I would have kept doing what I was doing, and I'd have still been in that same rut, spinning around that same wheel. But God had a plan for me that was so much more than I could ever imagine. I believe it began when I let go and really started trusting God. No glory to me; all glory to God because God's got a plan. And I, I just wanted to share this in a, in a little testimony to you. I hope it means something to you. Um, I just know that when I let go of my desires, He sent me Christie, and He opened up doors for this ministry in my life that I could never even imagine. I could tell you many, many stories about the glory of God. Christie and I have been married now for 19 years, and I can tell you so many stories about the glory of God. But the main thing is letting go and trusting God with all your heart, and lean not to your own understanding is powerful. Amen. 

 

Hope this show has been a blessing to you. Thank you so much. Heavenly Father, forgive us for holding on too tightly to our plans and our dreams and our ideas. Lord, help those listening to me who need to let go to let go and fully trust you. Forgive us for not trusting you, Father. Forgive us for not relying on you, Lord. But Lord, today, for those who are willing, we choose today to trust you new, to trust you again, to fully commit our way to you. We know you can do it, Father. Thank you, Father, for everyone listening to this show. Touch them, Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. 

 

Thanks for listening today. Again, check out the show. Well, go to the website. Please go to the website. Please, please, please. Um, icmcollege.org/selftalk. The reason I say that is when you go to the website, and you subscribe and do a review, it makes the show grow. We reach more people, and that's all I want to do. I want to reach more people. Thank you for listening. God bless you so much. This is Dr. Ray. God bless you.

 

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Thank you so much for listening to today's show. I appreciate you very, very much. Don't forget, go to our website for the show. The easiest way to get to it is at icmcollege.org/selftalk. There you can access any of our previous over 200 episodes. You can like, you can subscribe, you can get on our email list. Don't forget to share it with your friends. Again, thank you for being a part of Self Talk. God bless you.