Paul Karanick and his wife, Christina, experienced what it means to have the faith of a mustard seed. The term is used by Christ to explain the power that one can have if we just have a little faith. Paul looks back on his life and ministry to reveal ho

FAITH OF A MUSTARD SEED

By PAUL KARANICK

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Paul Karanick
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-0347-7

Chapter One

The Grande Finale

On July 7, 2007, the gates at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California opened for a free evangelistic concert. Over 9,000 people gathered to hear music from Skillet, Leeland, The Afters, KJ-52, Warren Barfield, Decyfer Down and worship by the Xclaimed Ministries Band. After years of praying, planning and waiting it finally all came together. After Leeland performed their last song, it was time for me to take the stage.

God had called me several years ago to begin this outreach and now it was time to deliver the Good News of Jesus Christ. The amusing thing about God calling me is that I have never preached to such a large crowd. Until now, the largest crowd to which I have ever preached was 400 people. I stepped onto the stage and began to speak. I quickly realized that no one could hear me because my headset microphone did not work. Not part of the plan! The stage manager handed me a hand held microphone and I continued to speak. As a very animated preacher, having to hold a microphone was a bit of a handicap. I can't recall ever holding a microphone in past events. I suppose there is no better time to get out of your comfort zone than in front of 9,000 people. As I am doing a personal introduction for the audience, the stage helpers are setting up the screen that displays my sermon notes. After they were completely off the stage I realized that the screen was working but my notes were not there. No one, besides me, can see the screen is blank. Here I stand before 9,000 people with a handheld microphone and no notes.

Amazingly Relaxed

Through the last few years of putting this event together, my faith in God has strengthened tremendously. As I was standing on that stage, even with the technical issues, I had so much comfort knowing God was in control. I can truly say God had prepared me for such a time as this. I spoke on how God has a plan for each of us and how Satan will try to steal that plan away by enticing us with other things. The Scripture was from Genesis regarding Adam and Eve. God had given them everything. They had the perfect life. They only had one commandment which was to not eat off of one tree; everything else was fine. However, Satan steps in with lies and convinces them that they can be like God if they eat from that one tree. Once they disobeyed

God by eating the fruit of that tree, they forfeited God's original plan (the perfect plan) and opened the door for sin, corruption and death. God has a plan for each of us and it is an amazing and wonderful plan. Don't allow Satan to steal it from you! Seek God's will in your life and do it; don't settle for anything that Satan has to offer.

At the end of the sermon, I gave an opportunity for people who would like to accept Jesus into their lives to come down to the field so that our counselors could pray with them. We had hundreds of pastors waiting on the field to pray with anyone who responded to the call. This was my first large event and I wasn't sure what to expect. I looked up to the thousands of people in the stands and it seemed that not even one person was moving.

The two learning highlights of my journey over the previous few years were: To trust in Him and to wait on Him. He is always in control!

Be Patient and Wait

I knelt down on the stage and I began to pray a silent prayer—one on one with God. I couldn't believe that I had sold our apartment, spent all of our money and put my family through two years of trials and tribulations to not even have one person come to accept Christ in their life. After that moment with God, I looked up and to my surprise hundreds of people had responded and come down to the field. It's like God was reconfirming to be patient and wait. I had just learned one powerful lesson in mass evangelism; it takes time for people to come down to the field! I did not realize the amount of time it took for people to get out of their seats and make it down to the field. Over 500 came down to the field and we had at least 265 commitments to Christ. We know that there could have been many more that accepted Christ, but we only counted the ones who acknowledged it to one of the pastors or completed an information card. We did not want to assume someone merely coming down to the field meant that they would ask Christ into their life. Each pastor on the field had the responsibility to pray with the individuals in their small group, get basic contact information, then help each person get connected to a Christian Bible-teaching church. The pastors played a very important role in the success of these new believers. It is an awesome experience to become a new Christian and accept Jesus into your life; however, without being discipled and encouraged by mature Christian brothers and sisters it is too easy to lose that new found life.

Now for the final event of the night, I went into the audience to watch the band Skillet bring this night to a close. As I was waiting for the band to take the stage, I was approached by a church youth group that came from Arizona to attend this event. They introduced me to several who had rededicated their life to Christ and a teenage girl who had accepted Christ for the first time. A father sitting nearby introduced me to his son (about eight years old) and said he wanted me to know that he had accepted Jesus into his life at the invitation.

As I walked outside the stadium, many people stopped me to share stories of how the Holy Spirit had touched them through the Lord's Message. After putting so much of our lives into this event, it was encouraging to hear the confessions of faith. I would have done it for ONE saved soul, but the blessing that I received by witnessing so many changed lives made my heart leap!

It is very interesting how God works in our lives. When God called me to begin this ministry I thought I was going to put on an evangelistic concert to reach the lost. God, however, had much more in mind. During the few years of planning and preparing for this event, God broke me down and rebuilt all that I understood about faith. God took this occasion and strengthened my relationship with Him. Now, I could see that in God's eyes it wasn't all about the event; it was also about our relationship and teaching me how to have faith in Him completely.

Will the Small Church Please Stand Up?

I grew up as a preacher's kid. For many years I could not figure out why our churches never seemed to have many people in them. I always asked myself, "Why doesn't anyone do anything to get more youth in the church?" Our church youth group normally consisted of me, my brother and one, maybe two of our friends. I remember attending Avondale Elementary School in Birmingham, Alabama. My friends that attended other churches seemed to always be involved in something with their churches and they always seemed to have lots of youth in their churches. I can remember standing at the windows in the classroom talking to my friends about what we did over the weekend. They seemed to always be doing something fun with their church youth group. Things like camping, biking, concerts and other remarkable activities. I spent time at church but my weekend was nothing like their experience. I went to church Sunday morning with about 30 people (total) and later that night with even less people. The church had some activities but very few people would show up.

God, You Want Me To Do What? Seriously?

Many years later, I was living in California. I was married and had one daughter, when the familiar question flashed through my mind. "Why doesn't anyone do anything to get more youth in the church?" I then directed the same question to the Lord. As I was driving past the Anaheim Convention Center, I realized that the question needed be changed from "Why doesn't anyone do anything to get more youth in the church?" to "What am I going to do to get more youth in the church?" As I passed by, I impulsively picked up the cell phone and called the Anaheim Convention Center to ask how much it would cost to rent out the arena for one day. The representative would not give me an exact amount but she said the base began at $7,500 with the addition of the cost of employees, parking, security, etc. I asked her if she thought the whole day could cost less than $50,000 and she cautiously said it could be done.

I was so excited by this news that I hurried home and walked into my house and looked at my wife and said, "You know our four unit apartment building in Dana Point? I want to sell it and pay for a one day Christian concert at the Anaheim Convention Center. It will cost about $50,000." I explained how God had been putting this on my heart for many years but I did not realize that he was calling me to do this until today.

What Did You Do With My Wife?

Now, my wife is a financially risk-free person. I am the visionary and risk taker; she is my polar opposite. I have big ideas and, she being the realist is always quick to find the logical reason it will not work. For example, I could say, "I have a great idea; we should create a soda that has no caffeine, with a citrus flavor." She will calmly look at me and ask, "Have you ever heard of 7UP or Sprite?"

I am a visionary and she is detailed oriented. She grounds me and works out how my visions can come to life.

When I came home with this grand idea to sell the apartment building (which was supposed to be saved for either our retirement or our children's education), she amazingly agreed with me. Not accepting the answer so easily, I restated it to her; "I said that we should sell the apartment building—our retirement plan—to pay for a one day, evangelistic Christian concert." She agreed once again and stated that we should do whatever God has put on my heart. That scared me more than anything because something seemed wrong about her quick approval. She is the person that pulls me back down to reality. This time she began to float in the clouds with me. I did not know if I should be excited or fearful because of her response!

At this time in my life, I was the Associate Pastor at the Stanton Lighthouse Community Church of the Nazarene and I was also the website designer for the Anaheim District Church of the Nazarene. Now that my wife gave me the OK, I just needed to run it by Dr. Ray Doane, our denomination's District Superintendent to see what he thought. I entered into his office and threw this idea at him and he, without hesitation says, "Sure let's go do it." I take a deep breath and ask him, "You do realize that I am just your computer guy and that I really have no clue what I am doing?" He encouraged me to do what God had put on my heart and he supported what I planned to do. Now, I am really afraid. This seems a bit too easy for such a huge notion. I seriously thought that either my wife or Dr. Doane would have brought me back to earth, but I suppose God talked to them before I arrived.

What's in the Name

One of my first tasks was to come up with a name for this event and ministry. I started out in the morning driving and trying to think of a name. I truly wanted to use the letter X which in Greek symbolizes Christ. All day I had blurted out names but nothing seemed to be what I was looking for. I had read every sign and billboard along the highways to see if anything sounded right. At about 9:30 pm I was about 2 miles from my home and I prayed and asked God, "Why can't you just help me with a name?" I had spent a full day trying to come up with a name and my mind was blank. I thought this would be fairly easy since I knew the concept I was trying to accomplish. After praying and being a bit frustrated with my inability to come up with a simple name and knowing I was close to being home for the day; I stopped at a traffic light and it seemed to be taking a while but as I was continuing to pray I looked out my right window and these big red letters on a restaurant stood out to me "Claim Jumper". I started saying X jumper, X jump, Christ jump, Christ Jumper, Xclaim, Christ claim and that sounded good. So I continued to work with that, "Christ claim" or "Christ claimed." Then finally that was it, "Christ claimed." In those last two miles God had revealed the name.

I walked into the house told my wife I had the name Xclaimed—meaning Christ claimed—and the next words out of her mouth confirmed that it was the name, "Get on the web and see if you can get the domain name." I purchased every version of that name that I could think of. Now I have had some wild ideas in my life but never anything like this. Not long after we began, I felt so convinced about this name and ministry that I went to trademark the name. I have never done that in my life. But I felt compelled to do it. I went online and started the trademark process. I believe that God calls us to do His work; however, I also believe He has a backup plan if we say "No." I found out about two weeks after submitting the trademark. A very large Christian psychologist ministry called me and stated that they too were attempting to trademark the name and had seen that I was also in the process of trademarking the name. It was amazing that God had given me the insight to trademark the name but it also confirmed that if I had I told God "No" or "wait a while"—He had someone else prepared to go ahead and do His work.

I had begun requesting information from the Anaheim Convention Center about what was necessary to put a concert together but I needed to come up with a date. My brother, Chaze, had mentioned in casual conversation that in the upcoming year on June 6, 2006 the date would be 666. At that time it did not mean much beyond being a very interesting thought. In the next week or so all the district pastors had a day at the Anaheim Angels baseball game. I was given a seat about 3 or 4 seats from Dr. Doane. After I had sat for a little while I realized that I had not put my credit card back into my wallet. I took a glance at it and realized that the expiration date was July 2007. I remembered what my brother had said about June 6, 2006 and realized that July 7, 2007 would be 777. I looked at Dr. Doane and shouted to him, "I know the date for the event; July 7, 2007 and it is on a Saturday which is the 7th day of the week". So, we have the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year on the seventh day of the week. God's Word does not specifically say that God's favorite number is seven but we know that He uses it in reference to some really good things and as a number for completion. It was amazing how God was helping me put this together. He has to make it very simple for people like me.

Another thing I noticed that was across from the Angel Stadium was the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim. I told Dr. Doane that the Pond would be a cool place to have the event. The next week I contacted the Convention Center and they could not reserve the 777 date because it was too far in advance, they will only go out one year. I remembered seeing the Arrowhead Pond and called them. They reserved the date for us and we were well on our way. The bad news was that the cost was now around $80,000, but we had equity in our apartment building and I was prepared to use it.

"Walk by Faith not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7, NASB)

It did not take long at all for me to realize that I had no clue what I was doing. However, I was certain that God had called me for this ministry and He would faithfully supply everything that I needed to accomplish what He has started.

`And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.' (Philippians 1:6, NASB)

God calls us to do astonishing works in His name; many times it requires gifts, talents and abilities that are beyond our means. Philippians 1:6 not only confirms that God is working within us spiritually, but it also confirms that God is working with us physically and He will not leave us stranded without the resources we need. God provides and He provides on time. We often want God to provide on our command as in the fairytale stories of a magic genie. Well, God is not a genie and he knows what we need and when we need it. He looks for us to cast our cares upon Him and allow Him to lead us step by step.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from FAITH OF A MUSTARD SEEDby PAUL KARANICK Copyright © 2012 by Paul Karanick. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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