Sheryl ~ Please share with our readers a little about yourselves. I always like to start out an interview by asking if you will share from your conversion experiences to when you knew you were called by God. After sharing that you can bring us fast forward to where you are today.
Renae:
I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, in the coal mining country and lived a pretty sheltered life. I really can't remember a time specifically when I was born again, since I was raised in church from the time that I was about 2 years old. My grandfather was the pastor of a Pentecostal church and so I literally grew up in church. My mom was a minister at our church as well, so I was very involved with church. I began with playing the piano and guitar at around age 10, and then later teaching Sunday school classes. As I got older, I began to sense a calling of intercession on my life, and many times would be awakened at night by the Father to pray for those on their death bed.
I was married at 16 then divorced at 18 due to a very abusive marriage. I moved to North Carolina in 1989 after my parents moved to find better jobs. I met Curtis in late 89 and I knew that God had answered my prayers to bring a man into my life that I could serve in ministry with. We were married in 1990. We have 4 beautiful children, Faith age 16, Caleb age 13, Mekayla age12 and Alex age 7. Our children are all walking with God and are being developed in their own talents and giftings. God has truly blessed us in our marriage! We will be celebrating our 18th anniversary this May!
Since that time, I have been on a learning journey, having gained a foundation from the Word of Faith church we attended. For many years now, I have been learning more and more about how important the prophetic is in my life and learning how to make myself available to the Holy Spirit to work in and through me as He wills. I have also known for about 5 years now that I was called to minister to women who have been abused, and also called as a spiritual mother. God has slowly been moving me into more of a prophetic impartation anointing and I am looking so forward to where He is taking me now.
My years as a child and teen were not filled with awesome testimonies as far as what Curtis has shared, because of growing up in a pastor's family; I stayed out of trouble for the most part. But I know the keeping power of the Holy Spirit and have learned that even though you grow up doing the right things and going to church and doing "church work", that in itself is not the key to effective ministry. The key is to have a relationship with Abba Father and to allow all other aspects of ministry to flow out of that relationship, not trying to use those things to bring us to God or earn anything from Him.
Curtis:
My conversion experience was quite dramatic and extensive, from the age of 8, it seems like I spent a lot of time in church. My mom was a new Christian at that time and she was so hungry for the Lord, but by the time I was 12 years old I had smoked pot for the first time. By the time I was 13, I started using pot and pills on a regular basis
Even as a young teenager I had become increasingly violent. It seemed like I was always in a fight - in and out of school, I always got into a ton of trouble. By the time I was 18, I was involved with very heavy drug usage including marijuana, hashish, mushrooms, cocaine, ecstasy, crystal meth, LSD, and various pills (uppers and downers) even dealing drugs and growing small amounts of marijuana plants. Needless to say, I never even made it through my senior year high school. I ended up dropping out, twice!!!
I was always being watched by the police and had a well known reputation as a trouble maker. Also at the age of 18, I had been arrested a few times on minor possession charges but quickly found myself in very deep trouble with the law. I was actually looking at two years in prison when I had a violent clash with the police on a very cold December night in New England after a 10 day drug and alcohol binge.
I capped off this 10 day drug and alcohol binge, by drinking a half gallon bottle of whiskey straight and chasing it with beer (which was not uncommon for me at that time in my life), when I blacked out for about 8 hours and should have died from blood alcohol poisoning alone. On top of that I got into a brutal fight with three guys in my third story apartment that ended up three stories down and out into the street. When the police showed up, I turned my violent aggression toward them. They called for back-up three times and it ended up taking 7 police officers, 45 minutes to get me down and get me handcuffed. I was under the influence and absolutely out of my mind. I narrowly escaped death three times just in that one night.
The first, from the blood alcohol poisoning; second, from a deep laceration to the left temple from being knocked down onto a sharp, jagged, chunk of ice; (The Dr said that a fraction of an inch further in, or at more of an angle, would have killed me instantly) third, I was so intoxicated as well as under the influence of several drugs and so violent, the police had no choice but to use brutal force to subdue me. They had to beat me severely just to get me handcuffed and in the police car.
The doctors at the hospital said that they had never seen anyone with a blood alcohol content at that level that ever lived to tell about it. Only three other people came into that hospital with blood alcohol poisoning as bad as mine; one went into a coma and never recovered, another one went into a coma for a month, came out but had some major complications and died a month later. The other one went into a coma, came out and lived but remained in a vegetated state. They told me that it was nothing short of divine intervention that I was even alive period, say nothing about the multiple lacerations, concussions, and cracked ribs from the severe beating I took. I was a mess! It took a bunch of stitches to put my face back together and I had so many chemicals in my blood that they could not even give me so much as an aspirin!!! Yes, I was still conscious and I was very well aware of what was going on. I felt every single stitch, but I never said a single word! At this point I felt like I deserved every bit of it! The doctor also told me that although the beating could have killed me, ultimately it probably ended up saving my life . I had already been blacked out for about 8 hours, they said that I was well on my way to slipping into a coma from which I most likely would have never recovered, but ironically that beating is the very thing that brought me back to consciousness!
It took me several weeks to recover from that night but I still continued to drink heavily and use heavy drugs. I remember one night not even 5 months later, being very high on ecstasy and drinking heavily, a friend of my brothers convinced me to steal into the yard of a paper mill in the middle of the night and we then walked right through the entire mill in full operation without being caught then climbed up a 150 foot tall silo and drank a beer while checking out the view over the town, leaving the cans up there just to say that we did it. I have had so many more encounters that could have very easily taken me out of this world in an instant. I survived multiple drug overdoses that the Lord miraculously delivered me from, during which I actually had some very dark and evil spiritual encounters that would make the hair stand up on the back anyone's neck.
It is only by the grace of God that I have never been shot, I have literally stared straight down the barrel of a loaded .357 pistol that was stuck right in my face during a drunken street brawl. I have had two .45 caliber pistols stuck in my chest at the same time by the same person, and I had a .38 special pulled out on me during a fight with one of my best drinking buddies. I know, I know . with friends like that, who needs enemy's right? Consequently we were no longer friends after that night!
Growing up in school, I was a fairly big guy; I was 6`1 tall, and weighed 180 - 190lbs. I was a country farm boy and an avid weight lifter, bench pressing over 350lbs and could full parallel squat over 612lbs 10 times without stopping. We lived on a lake so my brother, two sisters and I would swim long distances with no spotters, just for the fun of it! For several years I ran 5 miles a day, even if it was 20 below zero! Eventually drugs, alcohol and violence completely overtook my entire life. Once I was out of school I hardly ever got into a fight one on one, it was always two or three guys against me or someone with a weapon.
I am saying all of this for a reason. In April 1989, I was 22 years old and I was finally at the very end of my rope from being so totally controlled by demons, literally almost losing my mind from all the drugs and the severe torment of so much iniquity!
I knew that if something did not change and fast, I was a dead man for sure! This was completely beside the fact that at this time I actually had people looking for me to kill me and this was no game whatsoever . these people were crazy and this was for real! There was no doubt that certain death was closing in from every side!
I cried out to God one night and asked that if He was real, would He please get me out of this demonic torment or take me out of this world because I did not want to live in this condition any longer, I just could not take another day! A peace came over me that night and the very next day I got a phone call from a Christian uncle that I had worked with during the summer months painting in New England but he would also go south to the Carolinas to paint in the winter. He called me and offered to get me a ride to South Carolina and pay for everything. He even had a job for me and a place to stay! Within three days of that prayer I was on my way out of state, headed for the Carolinas . I knew the Lord was giving me the chance of a lifetime . to live free!
I arrived in the upstate of South Carolina around the second week in April, 1989. I came off all drugs supernaturally; it really was a total miracle! I still had not learned to sincerely turn my life over to the Lord, so I still continued to drink just to kill the severe pain in my soul. I really was not sure that I was really saved so I played church for a few months, but later that summer during a Wednesday night service on Aug 4 1989, the power of God fell and I had a real old fashioned encounter at the altar weeping like a baby! It was so real; it was like I had taken a breath for the very first time, ever! I knew that I was born again! A week or so later in my own prayer closet, I was filled with the holy spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. I was so indescribably hungry for the Lord that I devoured the word of God, many times for most of the night up until 4 or 5 am and still working 8 - 10 hours a day in the South Carolina heat painting outside. I figured that if I could drink and party all night long with the devil, I could study, pray, and hang out with Jesus just as much and more! I was so hungry to know Him!!!
I started having very powerful dreams and visions almost immediately. There seemed to be a tremendous flood of healing, deliverance, and restoration spirit, soul, and body while developing quickly and learning how to operate in the prophetic. It was actually very scary! I knew almost immediately that I was called to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ with signs and wonders following and I witnessed several tremendous miracles even as a young Christian that showed me how much God loves to touch people.
I met my wife Renae soon after becoming born again and less than a year later we were married with a unusual manifestation of God's presence and a very powerful word of prophecy during our wedding, it was awesome! Within a year of being married we were "sent forth" into the ministry and a year later we were licensed as ministers. We also were set in place as youth pastors and I started preaching in the jails, on the streets, and everywhere else anyone would listen. It was like that famous old saying; I would preach at the drop of a hat . and I would drop the hat! I had the privilege of impacting thousands for Christ mostly the rogue outcasts praying with hundreds of them to receive Jesus Christ as Lord. There were so many awesome testimonies!
Like so many other people who are called into the prophetic and apostolic, we really struggled through so much opposition over the years, even within what we considered as our "home church" as well as the organization which that church belonged to. This church whom we deeply considered as family was responsible for so many really powerful developments in the very foundation of our belief systems that we still stand on to this day; but yet they themselves did not grow and develop corporately. This automatically caused them to become more and more controlled by religion and jezebel. It is easy to see that before long we became a target of much control, manipulation, intimidation, even fear tactics.
One day in April of 2004. the Lord spoke to me and told me flat out that he had had enough and would not allow His seed within us to be suppressed and held back any longer and He opened up an opportunity for us to move to Florida. When we presented this opportunity to our pastors at that time they became very angry with us and by their own choice; even their own words to us directly, we were actually cut off from them after 15 years of what we thought was a covenant relationship.
The Lord miraculously provided everything for us to move and we ended up exactly where we needed to be. It seemed like we immediately exploded in growth and began to develop exponentially under an apostle whom we grew to love very much. Nobody had ever ministered to our need like this church did; I will never forget their generosity! Soon this season began to develop its own level of stiff opposition and we had to learn to grow through all of that as well. We learned so much through adversity and we actually benefited greatly although the pressure at times was extremely intense.
I am sharing this because I know that there are so many other people out there who are going through something similar or will be faced with similar things. We cannot be angry with leaders who tend to hold this "new breed" generation back. They are simply trying to train the way they were trained. At the same time the older wine skin generation should not deal harshly with the new breed generation simply because they do not see and perceive according to the older paradigms of teaching.
If we will all be patient with each other, work with one another and remain open to the Lord; we will all benefit greatly! Not only did we encounter very strong opposition, but also persecution from friends, family, even by some of those who were leading us; simply because we did everything we knew in great effort to obey God. So many people tried to force us into their box and we just did not fit. They tried so hard to make us into something that we were not. We were not rebellious in any way; we tried very hard to do everything we knew to be cooperative and subordinate. We always considered relationship to be extremely important! Even still, we have been called false teachers, false prophets, false apostles, heretics, an occult - and my personal favorite - "a lying spirit in the mouth of a false prophet". what do I say to all of this? The very same thing I would say to anyone else in this situation . welcome to the ministry!
I really feel like it is important to mention these things because if you continue to walk in love toward your accusers and pursue God with all of your heart and just embrace His will for your life; whatever you are called to be, your mantle and giftings will absolutely blossom. The Lord spoke to me during a huge attack from some people who we love very much and He told me to stand before Him as a priest and repent on the behalf of my accusers. I did just exactly that, for over a year. I do not know if it changed them, but I know it changed me. It provided tremendous salvation to my own soul!
Although "Proton Ministries International" was spoken to me by the Lord in January of 2006 it was actually birthed in the middle of the summer of 2006 during some of the most intense pressure I have ever faced in my entire life!
Continued ~ http://theyorksonline.com/forbes2
