Copyright © 2013 by Joel Stockstill
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 978-0-9890909-0-2
ISBN: 9780989090919
Editing by Edit Resource, LLC
Eric Stanford
eric@editresource.com
Copyediting by Brenda Pitts
www.brendapittseditorial.com
Cover design by Dustin West & Bethany Church
Interior design by Silver Feather Design
Yara Abuata
www.silverfeatherdesign.com
Design Directors:
Amie Stockstill and Laura Hawkes
To the loving memory of my first wife,
Amy Hart Stockstill
Amy, your inspiration lives on in our hearts.
You are truly “the mother of millions.”
foreword
preface
chapter one
THE FIGHT OF FAITH
An unexpected diagnosis sets off an extended battle for my health and my trust in God
chapter two
A MIRACLE OF FAITH
When medical science fails me, the miraculous power of God comes through
chapter three
THE REVELATION OF FAITH
I come to understand how I am joining Jesus in the fellowship of His suffering
chapter four
THE CALL OF FAITH
In the midst of my own health trouble, God lays a burden for the next generation on my heart
chapter five
THE LIFE OF FAITH
God sends me a loving partner for my work and trials
chapter six
THE TEST OF FAITH
I give my wife back to God, learning to trust in Him even in the worst of circumstances
chapter seven
THE ENDURANCE OF FAITH
God restores the sparkle to my eye: a new beginning
conclusion
It is a great joy to be able to write a foreword for one of your sons. It is a testimony that the next generation has come of age and is beginning to speak and shape our world with their own callings.
Joel is my firstborn. From his childhood, he memorized Scripture and told Bible stories with passion. That passion only grew through the years as he moved into manhood.
His life changed dramatically at sixteen when his kidneys failed and he started dialysis. It was at that time God’s call upon His life became crystal clear and he submitted to it. By nineteen, he was preaching at our large church in Baton Rouge. His subsequent marriage to Amy Hart triggered one of the greatest moves of God among youth in our nation as up to seven thousand youth gathered weekly in small groups.
Amy’s untimely death from cancer again threatened Joel’s future. Again he rose up in the strength of God and continued forward. His second wife, Amie, a product of our youth ministry, was joined to his side, and the powerful Bethany internship program developed.
Perhaps you have never walked through what Joel has been through in his thirty-four short years on earth. His message to you, however, regardless of what you are facing, is hope.
Hope has kept Joel moving forward into his future against all odds. His powerful podcasts, blogs, and now television programs are inspiring an entire new generation of American believers. His schedule in the near future is almost totally full in spite of the hindrance of dialysis.
If Joel can make it, you can make it too! Grab on to the rich truths of this book that have been forged in the fires of tribulation. Let those truths transform you into a powerful, tempered disciple of Jesus Christ. Then multiply those truths into others that you choose to disciple. That is Joel’s vision, and that was Christ’s method.
Your life will never be the same after reading this short book. Your future is before you, and Joel’s example can encourage you. As my father has said to all of us many times, “Your best is yet to come!”
—LARRY STOCKSTILL
Have you ever been through a trial of your faith? Have you ever wondered if God cares about your situation? Has it ever seemed as if the fulfillment of a promise of God would never come?
Questions like these have challenged believers since it all began with Abraham. So many believers have had these questions and yet felt unable to express them for fear of saying something wrong or being rejected.
I understand.
I am a pastor’s son. A youth pastor trying to reach a generation with the gospel. A longembattled kidney patient. A widowed and remarried husband.
This book is the story of my life—a story that now spans two decades of amazing miracles and devastating hardships. It is not a rags-to-riches story that leaves you with a happily-ever-after feeling. But in a day when everything seems like it’s supposed to be fast and easy, this story will challenge you to endure in your faith no matter how hard things get or how long they go on.
I pray your heart will be encouraged as this testimony of endurance unfolds before your eyes with transparency and the ultimate tone of victory in Christ.
An unexpected diagnosis sets off an extended battle for my health and my trust in God
“These are the times when we must face the giants of our promised land with the fight of Caleb and Joshua inside us and a confidence of the Lord of Hosts guiding us.”
One hot Louisiana day in July 1995, when I was sixteen years old, I sat in a doctor’s office with my parents on either side of me as my nephrologist (kidney specialist) outlined what lay ahead for me. I began to hear things about my immediate future that scared me to the point of nausea.
But before I get to what I heard, let me back up briefly to tell you how I’d arrived at this day.
Four years earlier, in October 1991, I had been diagnosed with kidney problems through some swelling in my ankles. The doctors didn’t know what had started this kidney issue, but they told me that it would most likely not be a big deal until much later in life. This was definitely good news because my life up to this point had been somewhere between average and perfect. Yeah, I had to get some Cokebottle glasses at seven and braces at twelve, but other than a tonsillectomy and the chickenpox, I had been as healthy as a horse. Blessed to be raised in the godly home of Larry and Melanie Stockstill, the pastors of a church called Bethany World Prayer Center that I thought was better than Disneyland, I was expecting a wonderful and relatively easy life.
Back to the uncomfortable seat in the doctor’s office.
My nephrologist told my parents and me a couple of facts. First, my kidneys were failing fast. That fact was shocking, but the second was beyond comprehension: I would be placed on kidney dialysis while I awaited a kidney transplant. I couldn’t believe it! Getting a transplant seemed like an idea from a sci-fi thriller.
After the doctor appointment, my parents took me to one of my favorite restaurants so I could eat a good meal and get a little distance from that surreal appointment. Instead of accepting the truth, though, I began to drift into serious delusion and false comfort, telling myself that life was going to stay pretty much the same for me, that all those horrible things I had just heard were an overreaction. After all, years earlier I had been told that my problem was going to be minor till I was much older. And I was not older!
At the age of sixteen, my life was all about using my newly acquired driver’s license, playing basketball every day, and chasing cheerleaders around the gym. Could it really be that things were about to become different forever? Was the life I had lived, and had foreseen continuing into my future, really going to be decimated by some strange coincidence of illness?
I wasn’t ready to accept it. But these changes were really happening.
And a new life of faith was waiting to begin.
When people receive a bad report from a doctor, or a call from their financial advisor saying that all is lost, or an eerie ring in the night heralding the news that a loved one has passed or has been in a tragic accident, the story of faith begins. When things are bumping along just fine and all is well from our perspective, the faith that we are forced to call on isn’t much, if indeed it’s anything at all.
In a day when people think they are doing Jesus a favor by attending His house once a month, there has been a drastic erosion of what it means to have great faith and for that great faith to be tested and built. In the parable of the sower, the enemy comes and scoops up the seed immediately, and some who have received the seed of the Word never have a chance to grow precious fruit for the kingdom (Mark 4:15). Likewise, the enemy will try to rock your faith with circumstances and trials that don’t fit within the parameters of your expectation. If you’re like most people, you don’t expect negative things to happen to you. But the reality is that sooner or later something is going to knock you off the pedestal of normal and plunge you into the “opportunity” of great defeat or supernatural victory. And what are you going to do then?
Paul’s statement to the Philippians—“I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13)—is meant to be more than a pep talk for a junior high algebra test. Somewhere in the midst of a devastating blow or a rising tide of adversity in your life, there has to be something that stands up and fights for the victory of Calvary in your situation. That fight is the fight of faith.
I tell many people that in the early years of my struggle with illness, I did not have a deep, abiding faith that rested on the pillar of God’s Word. My parents did, and I thank God for their daily and sometimes hourly prayers that helped sustain me. But for me, it was a deep sense of fight within that carried me through the unspeakable circumstances that followed that awful day in the doctor’s office.
Did everything the doctor say come to pass? Yes! And even more!
Was it the end of the world? No. But it sure felt like it!
There are times when the Lord will extend His rescuing hand and deliver us swiftly from the hand of the enemy. But then there are other times. Oh, those other times!
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