It’s Easy! by Doug Addison
Most of my years in ministry have been devoted to making things simple and easy to do. Looking back on my journey over the past twenty years, I can see how God used just a few simple verses from the Bible to guide me. I highly value the entire Bible but the verses that have impacted me the most were the ones that I heard God speak to me directly. In other words, I got a prophetic word from God and deeper insight about written words in the Bible. This happened to me for the first time in 1988. I head a small voice inside that I knew to be the Holy Spirit tell me to look up Isaiah 61. Honestly, I don’t think I had read the book of Isaiah at the point and had no idea what I would find. As I opened my bible and read the first two verses I fell on the floor crying.
Isa 61:1-2 NIV The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor.
I cried for the next six weeks every time I thought of these verses. Since I had just gotten off drugs and came out of the occult, it was comforting to think that God had a greater purpose and plan for my life. I prayed and asked God what to do next. Again, I felt God direct me to two sections of the Bible that explained how He wanted me to proceed. In Matthew 25:35-36 Jesus tells a parable about caring for people in need, praying for the sick and visiting people in prison. Then James 1:27 pointed out that true religion is caring for widows and orphans. I spent the next ten years diligently fulfilling these verses with every opportunity I would get. I ministered to the homeless, prayed for sick people, visited prison inmates to name just a few. These three simple verses built a foundation in my life that allowed me to get God’s heart and perspective for people in need. You might say it was the best Bible college I could have attended.
In 1993 God spoke three more verses to me that became the foundation for my early evangelism training material and I used them as a guiding mission statement for the churches I helped start. Then in 2002 God spoke three more verses to me from the Book of Acts that became the basis for my message on Prophetic Evangelism and the thesis in my book, Prophecy, Dreams, and Evangelism: Acts 1:8; 2:17-18; and 26:17-18. I have gotten a lot of mileage over twenty years out of just a few verses in the Bible. Finding and fulfilling God’s plan for your life is usually easier than you think. Most often, it is as easy as loving God, loving other people and helping others do the same.
