By Phill Olson
Only -- goodness and kindness pursue me, All the days of my life, And my dwelling is in the house of Yahweh. That’s a quote from the end of Psalm 23 using Young’s literal translation which has a slightly stronger feel to it than many of our current translations. One lexicon translates this Hebrew word (radap) often translated as follow, “to be hounded by”. What an amazing picture of the goodness and kindness of the Father pursuing us. The compassion which resides in his heart is always looking for ways to bring his children to experience the fullness of his love for us.
I’ll take you back briefly to a period of my life when things felt very different than they do now. In the early 2000s a great deal of change happened very quickly. My mother died, my career shifted significantly and we needed to move because of that change. And along with moving came all the other changes associated with it.
Finding a good church was one of our first challenges. We looked for one with strong worship and settled into a small fellowship fairly close to our new home. After about 6 months we discovered some theological differences with which we were not comfortable, so we decided to look further. We settled into a church again with great worship, strong biblical preaching, but with little charismatic influence.
A piece of my personal story is important to share at this point. I had been a pastor for 10 years from 1977 to 1987 and ended up leaving the ministry due to a serious moral failure, which in my mind, and with some input from “church thinking” disqualified me from any sort of pastoral leadership. So, when the senior pastor of our new church invited me to preach one Sunday morning, I honored his request but with much trepidation. Well, I didn’t get struck dead and received positive feedback regarding my content. Shortly thereafter, he asked me to consider becoming an elder. In my mind I began asking, “God, what are you up to?”
When the senior pastor resigned a year later, the associate pastor came to me and said he would only accept the interim position if I would help him out by preaching once a month. Was there some kind of restoration going on? And if so, what would that look like? In the meantime, I focused on my job running the University of Massachusetts bookstore. During this period we became exposed to the ministry of Global Awakening under the leadership of Dr. Randy Clark when our younger daughter shared some tapes from one of their recent conferences. We attended a couple of Global events ourselves and felt like we had found our tribe, with its focus on the ministry of the Holy Spirit, especially physical healing and prophecy. We soon found out that Randy was starting a ministry school with a strong emphasis on the power of the Spirit as a means of introducing people to God’s family.
Late in August of 2006, my wife, Barb, came downstairs for breakfast one morning after her devotions and suggested we consider dropping our careers to attend either Randy’s school or the Bethel ministry school in California. I was quite shocked because she totally loved her career as an elementary school teacher, so I quietly suggested that this was something we could pray about. But a month later she still wanted to talk about it more. We decided we would apply to the Global school and if admitted, we would lay down our careers and spend two years at the school.
After we finished two years at Global School we were seeking direction for our next season. During a trip to South Africa to host a healing conference, I was part of Global Awakening’s team where I was running the bookstore. It was at that conference where I experienced a powerful time of the Lord’s direction which led me to consider moving to South Africa to plant a Global School. While there I had two power encounters in the night and received two very specific similar prophetic words which laid the foundation for us to decide to move to that nation. Foreign missions had never been an option we had considered at all. However, when I returned home and shared my experiences with Barb, she believed it was something we should pursue. Following other confirmations and prayer, we did ultimately move to Durban, S.A., with a small team in 2010.
Even as I write this I hear the voice of the Lord reminding me of his pursuit. First through a faithful pastor who saw something in me that I thought had died, and then through his assistant following God’s lead to speak it even louder. Then through our daughter knowing our hearts and planting a fresh seed, followed by a faithful wife sharing what she was hearing from the Lord. Surprise visits from the Spirit of God in the night and prophetic words confirmed his call on our lives.
I’m leaving out many other details where the Lord obviously spoke, all the ins and outs of spending five years leading that school in S.A., returning to the US to be Randy’s personal assistant for a year, and finally settling back into the Global Awakening staff helping run their bookstore.
But, I feel I need to share one more special, Holy Spirit directed meeting. In the year I spent as Randy’s personal assistant, there was an event held at the Global headquarters. I was asked to pray for a woman for some emotional and physical healing in my office. When I asked if there was another woman who could assist me, a woman I hadn’t yet formally met came in and we ministered together for a while. I noticed she seemed very familiar with the style of prayer ministry (Sozo) I was using, and when we were done, she mentioned the same thing. She was Katie Luse and she mentioned they were starting a new inner healing ministry, ConnectUp, and wondered if Barb and I might be interested in joining it. Now, 5 years later, we consider ConnectUp our most important spiritual family.
How wonderfully he weaves various influences into our lives to help us grow, and then through those experiences to help others grow as well. Our faithful pursuer! He never stops, He never stops working. Thank you, Lord!
Phill Olson recently retired from being the Director of the Bookstore for Global Awakening under the leadership of Dr. Randy Clark. He has a long history of ministry experience both pastoring and in missions. He is also the author of a hugely important book about women in ministry titled, The Other Half of the Army, by Phill Olson.
