It is Written for My Travels
It is Written for My Comfort
It is Written... for My Healing
It is Written for My Children
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My husband’s physical body has been under attack since 1979. First it was a dissecting aneurysm, then a near stroke in 1984. Then in the ’90s it was kidney failure. He was on dialysis for three and a half years until he finally had a kidney transplant. This recent episode was the result of a leaking heart valve.
Every single time something happened, God delivered my husband, but my husband would always go back to man’s medicine. Clinton could get people healed. I mean, if he laid hands on you, you were going to get healed. But Clinton did not quite learn how to apply healing to his own body. That’s why you can’t be only a hearer of the Word. You must be a doer of it. I don’t care if you are the pastor of Redeeming Love Christian Center or you are the Pope, it makes no difference. The Word of God must be heard, received, and applied or there will be judgment if we do not judge ourselves.
My husband never committed a moral failure since we’ve been married. That’s almost 32 years. My husband didn’t deny me anything that a man should provide for his wife. I was well taken care of in every area of my life. So I have no complaints about him. I can’t say, "Oh, God judged him about this, that, or the other."
Judgment came to prevent condemnation from coming because as it states in James 3:1, there is a greater condemnation to those who are teachers of the Word. That means, folks, if we’re going to teach it, we’ve got to live it. Okay? Clinton didn’t ever quite learn how to live in divine health. He knew how to teach divine healing and he knew how to dispense it, but he did not quite learn how to apply it to his own personal life.
Clinton loved RLCC more than anything other than Jesus. And he certainly loved Jesus. Of that there was no question. I think it was similar to what Jim Bakker said of himself concerning his own failure. Jim said, "I never fell out of love with Jesus. I just stopped fearing God."
Folks, I don’t know about you, but I plan to fear the Lord. In fact, I feared not telling you what I’m telling you right now because under different circumstances the wife is supposed to make everything sound as though her husband was the perfect ideal person. God loved my husband very much, and my husband loved God very much. But Clinton left the door open, and the enemy got a lick in.
Now, we can either focus on the fact that he’s gone, or we can go on and live what he’s been teaching us all these years. Jesus is still Lord over our congregation. Redeeming Love Christian Center was built around the person of Jesus Christ, not around Clinton and Sarah Utterbach or anyone else. And, because Jesus Christ is the foundation of the work here, we will not build upon anything else but that. We’re not going to have any monuments erected to Clinton. We’re not going to name anything after him. We are going to honor him and what he taught us by beginning to fear God enough to do what he taught. No tribute is greater or more worthwhile than that.
Missing it in our own lives or sinning by failing to do what we know to do is not honoring what Clinton lived for and even died for. Why Clinton couldn’t get it together for himself, I don’t know. That’s between him and Jesus and they have already worked it out. The Lord made him an offer either to come home or to stay here. If Clinton had stayed here, it would have taken months, perhaps years, of rehabilitation to get him back in shape to stand in the pulpit. I really don’t know. I just knew that the deterioration of his body was taking place to such a degree that I didn’t want to see my husband suffer.
When I did speak with the Lord about it, He said, "Manifested victory will come -- either with Jesus as healer or Jesus as deliverer." There’s victory either way. He then said that the congregation would prefer to have him back, "but if he’s not going to do what I tell him to do then you’re better off letting him come home because here with Me there will be no pain, no suffering, no hurting, and no disobedience. He’ll be glad to do everything, and he will still have his reward of seeing Jesus face to face." So that’s why we are moving forward today. God has given me the grace and the strength I need. And while Clinton’s inner man was being renewed day by day, I believe with all my heart that it was renewed enough to say, "I’m ready to give up the ghost and obtain my reward."
For whatever reason, Clinton didn’t learn to take control of his own body and trust God completely for his healing. As many times as God healed him, Clinton still resorted to medicine. I’m not telling you not to go to doctors. I am telling you, however, that your trust and reliance must be upon God and not the doctors. As I told the doctors, medicine obviously couldn’t heal Clinton because if medicine could have healed him, he would have been here with us today. So don’t ever put your confidence in medicine or doctors. Keep your trust in God and apply the Word of God to your life.
Even the doctors had to conclude that there was nothing else they could do. The day before Clinton fell asleep in Christ, I signed the "Do not resuscitate" papers. I told the doctors, "Leave him alone. Either Jesus is going to manifest Himself as the healer, or his deliverer. And either way, he wins, and either way I can live with it."
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