Andrew Murray
And God Created Woman
Difference between Anabaptists and Evangelicals
Mysteries of the Kingdom of God
Anabaptist
Voice
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The Anabaptist Voice
01/21/2009
Proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom of God: Love, Joy and Peace in
Jesus.
Dear friend,
We pray God our Father is giving you the peace and joy and strength. We
here in Tucson are having wonderful beautiful weather. This morning our ground
was wet. We did not hear the rain, but we feel blessed when we have rain.
Yesterday, Michi saw what looked to her at first as a stray dog in our back
yard, but it was not a dog but a large wild bobcat, about 20 inches tall and
weighing about 30 pounds. What surprise! It did not stay long. It jumped over
our 6 feet fence and went next door. Michi called our neighbor and she said she
saw it and it jumped over her fence also into her neighbor’s yard. It app
arently
was looking for rabbits to eat. Here is a photo of it.
Please pray for our dear friend Hyeok Flynt and her family. She lost her
husband 5 years ago in an accident. Hyeok is now living with her son, Timothy,
who is 15 years old and Rebekah who is 12. Rebekah had several grand mal
seizures just recently and broke her wrist. She had to go to the emergency room
twice. Hannah, Hyeok’s 24 years old daughter and her sister, Deborah, 18, are
living about 25 miles away from home, and Hannah goes home and help them often.
We are glad for that.
We are doing well. Praise God! We are so grateful for that. On the way
to the church on Sunday mornings, Naomi leads us with songs that we know by
heart, so almost all the way to the church, we sing and praise our God. We are
amazed that Naomi could think of all the songs to sing. It is a joyful time.
Thank you, Lord! The three of us can hug and laugh together. We are blessed.
Krishta Brown comes over to help us enjoy the Wii Fit system for
exercising. It is also a joy to have Krishta with us. Thank you, Krishta.
Marlene Lambert, Michi’s dear friend and sister in the Lord, wrote that
her oldest daughter had her first baby. Michi was concerned as she had not
heard from Marlene for a long time. We are glad that everything is well.
We enjoy talking with our grandchildren on the telephone. Two year old
Elizabeth Michiko is learning to talk so well. It’s a joy to listen to them
sing for us.
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you, dear friend.
(2 Cor 13:14)
Don was asked to give his testimony at the Wednesday evening Vineyard
church meeting in the home of Elizabeth Willott with 16 people in attendance.
His testimony is given below.
your brother and sisters in Christ,
Don, Michi & Naomi Murphy
Tucson, AZ, phone 520-297-1639
www.AnabaptistChurch.org
"Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to
what is good.” (Romans 12:9)
The Testimony of Don Murphy
01/21/2009
My name is Don Murphy and this is my wife
Michiko. We’ve been married 50 years and have five children. I’ve worked as a
computer programmer for the past 40 years and currently develop and sell
practice management software for doctors. Our business web site is
www.pma2000.com and our personal web site is
www.AnabaptistChurch.org.
I was born in Minnesota, raised on a farm, attended the University of
Minnesota’s Northwest School of Agriculture, and spent four years in the
military as an intelligence analyst in the Air Force Security Service in Japan.
One of the college classes that really impacted my life was a psychology
class on logical reasoning at Sophia University in Tokyo. That prepared my mind
for a technical life in computers, and how I came to view Scripture. I worked
for Bendix Field Engineering on the space program in Minnesota, Ecuador,
Maryland, Antigua and Florida and for Boeing Computer Services on their
commercial aircraft programs in Seattle.
Spiritual Life
I was discharged from the military in Japan and taught English in a
private school in Tokyo where a tall, beautiful Japanese woman was a secretary.
One day the Lord seemed to be telling me that I was to marry her.
In the 15th year of our marriage, my dear wife Michiko was
born again. It was a wonderful, exciting experience for her. And also an
amazing one since she was raised in a Christian family, her father and her
grandfather were Christian ministers.
At that time we were good church-goers, but church was for Sundays.
Michiko tried, in her gentle way, to help lead me to the Lord but I would not
listen to her, since I didn’t understand it and knew nothing about being born
again.
But I should have listened to her. And since I didn’t, the Lord God made
me listen by knocking me down with an injured back. And then I was ready to
listen! I lay in a Seattle hospital, in traction, unable to move, when my
co-worker at Boeing, Ray Moshofsky, a born again Christian, came to visit me and
helped lead me to the Lord.
That was an amazing experience for me also. Suddenly everything was new
and wonderful. The flowers were suddenly so beautiful; everywhere I looked, I
saw beauty. My life suddenly became full of joy.
Being born again for some people may be a gentle, gradual experience but
for Michiko and for myself, it was a sudden, exciting experience.
Several months later I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. Michi and I had
attended a Life in the Spirit seminar at church but nothing happened. A few
days after that seminar ended I was at the daily lunch time Bible study at
Boeing in Seattle where I worked. While we were silently praying I suddenly
felt like water was coming up out of my stomach into my throat. I first thought
that I was choking but then it began to feel wonderful and the words of Jesus
came to me, “Out of your innermost being will come
rivers of living water.” (John 7:38) Then I began to pray in
tongues. I had received the baptism in the Holy Spirit! That was and is a
wonderful experience, the ability to pray to God with my spirit.
Two years after being born again we attended a World MAP Bible camp north
of Seattle. On Friday of that week, they urged everyone to fast as they would
be praying for healing that day. When they called people to come forward who
needed healing, I responded since I was still suffering from that back injury.
An Assembly of God minister prayed for me and my back was instantly healed!
Praise the Lord! That was the first miraculous healing that I had ever seen or
experienced.
After two years of pain, I was free and to this day my back is probably
the healthiest part of my body. Shortly after coming home from the Bible camp
my son David needed help with lifting part of an auto body and I was able to
help him! For two years prior, I was unable to lift anything!
God Speaks!
Did you ever hear God speak to you? I did again about three years ago.
I was praying to God about my wife Michiko, thanking Him for giving me such a
wonderful wife. Suddenly the Lord spoke to me saying “I
gave her to you because I love you.” Wow! I was deeply touched!
It is a wonderful, amazing experience to hear God’s voice. And it is
even more wonderful to hear Him tell you that He loves you. We know that God
loves us, the Bible tells us that. But it is wonderful to hear Him in person
tell you that.
Shortly after I was born again in 1975, the
Lord showed me four teachers to learn from, because I had been a Catholic up to
then, I was 38 years old at the time and knew little of the Christian way of
life. These four teachers each had a certain teaching that I needed, such as
Mel Tari's teaching on simple faith, Larry Christianson's teaching on family
life, Watchman Nee's teaching on the normal Christian life and Bob Mumford's
teaching on the Holy Spirit. So I studied each of these teachers on a
particular subject.
Michi and I began attending a weekly Bible study in someone’s home. I
had never read the Bible before but after reading the New Testament I began
wondering why Christians weren’t living like it taught in there.
One day in 1978 I was worshipping in an Assembly of God church in north
Seattle with my hands raised when suddenly I felt a huge weight being lifted off
of my shoulders and the Lord telling me that was the bondage of the Roman
Catholic church and now I was free of it. That was amazing because I didn’t
realize that I was in bondage.
We then joined a large Pentecostal church and soon had a home fellowship
meeting in our home every Friday evening. As I studied the Bible I became more
and more certain that the way that Jesus and the apostles taught was the way
that we should be living. Unfortunately I wasn’t very sensitive to people’s
feelings and one Friday evening I stated that watching TV was a sin which caused
one of the ladies to leave the room crying. I pray that she has forgiven me.
One day in 1982 the Lord spoke to me and told me to become a ‘full time’
Christian. I wondered what He meant by that. Then I reasoned that the early
Christians must have been ‘full time’ Christians because they were taught by the
apostles who were taught by Jesus. So I began studying the New Testament again
and also the early Christian writers to see how they understood the teachings
there. They seemed to take the words of Christ and the apostles quite
literally. Jesus said, “Do not swear an oath” so they would not swear oaths.
Jesus said, “Do not resist an evil man” so they were pacifists, depending on
their heavenly Father. They were quite strong on obedience to the commands of
Jesus.
I began to realize that the central theme of Jesus’ message was the
kingdom of God. Wherever He went, Jesus preached about the good news of the
kingdom of God and told His apostles to do that also.
One of the Bible verses that touched me was John’s teaching in 1 John
2:15 to love not the world nor the things of the world. The kingdom of the
world is in opposition to the kingdom of God.
So now I try, by the grace of God, to live the Way of the Lord, as the
early church called that lifestyle, and I pray that the Lord Jesus will place us
into a Church of Love and Power like the early Church. They were of one mind,
they met together daily and shared all material goods in common.