I want to be up front about my Pastor's license. My entire life I wanted to be a Pastor. It's unusual for a 12 year old to dream of wanting to go to seminary, but that was my big dream. Don't ask me why because I didn't know Jesus until I was 16, but my big dream in life was to be a Pastor. Yeah, that's weird, but I am a weird person.
I ended up with a music Ministry by accident. In 1989 I started messing around with speech software and making them sing because I wanted to be a singer. Well when the word got out, I started getting letters from people worldwide that also wanted to sing. So I started doing songs for them. Then on April 28, 1995 I registered "THE FLAME OF HOPE" and made it my Ministry.
Well when AIDS first became known, some people didn't want to get near a person who had AIDS. I did, because that's what Jesus would do. I got heck for it from my Pastor at the time and for 6 months I just did stuff at the Church which felt totally wrong to me because the people that need Jesus are not going to just walk into a Church. So after 6 months I got sick of serving the Pastor because he was not God. So I went back to what I felt God wanted me to do but I prayed for confirmation because I really wanted to know I was doing God's work.
So I went back to a bar where I sang for years. It was a piano bar which is different from just a bar. And when I went in, the insanity started. A group of people all ran over to me at one time and they were all trying to talk to me at one time. It took about 5 minutes for everyone to calm down enough to tell me what was going on. There was a man named Tobias who was on his death bed asking for me. I was told no other Pastor would go because he had AIDS and I was the next best thing. I went. And I was able to help him get right with God. He died the next day.
Word got out about it and I got called the bar Pastor. It just felt right and I could go on forever about stories like that. So as time went on, I met this guy and I have no clue how the topic came up but for $25.00 he could make me a licensed Pastor. He had all the paperwork and I thought it was real. So I became a Pastor because he said that the work I do replaces the requires seminary. I can't do Seminary because I could never keep up with the required work. So, he made me a Pastor, or so I thought.
3 years went by before I heard something about a scam at the Universal Life Church. This broke my heart, and researching it was hard for me because I knew this could mean that I wasn't really a Pastor. What I found made me sick because this Church has no foundation or believes. So I have no idea if my license is real or not. Some States recognize it, other's don't, and I get knocked down a lot because I'm not a real Pastor. I don't know. I'm just sick over this because I thought it was real.
So here's how I dealt with it. That license was real to me at the time. My heart was in it, my heart is in it, and my heart will always be in it. So between me and God, that license is real! And if anyone has a problem with it, they can take me under their wing and ordain me the right way. If they don't want to do that, they really need to stop because God would never put anyone down.
Yeah I screw up, I screw up big time, nut my heart is always in the right place. And if a man of God is known by his fruit, I think touching people worldwide bears tons of fruit. I have more gifts than most people which makes hard because I can do anything. As long as I feel God wants me to do stuff, I do it. God never lets me down because I don't intentionally let Him down. I was thought to be brain-dead at birth, and like it or not God has brought me to where I am today.
Some say my license is official, others say it's not, and I'm hurt because it felt real to me and will always feel real to me because it was not done just to do it, it was done because my heart was in it.
I do art with typewriters, I sing with computers, and I'm as far from normal as you can get. BUT, I'm created in the image of God. I'm not meant to be like anyone else, I'm meant to be the person that God wanted me to be. And I wouldn't have it any other way. If God is for you, who can be against you?
