Authentic Faith

By Travis Michael Hovde

There are times and places where heaven and earth collide, where the line between eternity and time grows dim, and the reality of God becomes real. There are experiences and circumstances that force our beliefs to cross over from a mundane theory and into a living reality.

This is my story. It is our story. It is His story. It is not perfect, but it is real. It is a story of my experiences with God, calling to ministry, journey of planting a church, and surviving disaster and devastation.

This book is for anyone who ever desperately wondered if God exists or if He cares. It is for honest people who have questioned Christians, been disappointed with church as usual, or simply wondered if there was more. I hope my story will inspire and challenge you to discover the wonderful treasure of authentic faith or galvanize the faith you already have.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490821887

Travis Michael Hovde

Travis Michael Hovde is founder and lead pastor of Eagles Wings Community Fellowship in Minot, North Dakota. He is an Ordained Bishop in the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), and has served as pastor, Regional Council member, Regional Youth and Discipleship Board member, and State School of Ministry coordinator. His passion is to communicate the truth of God’s Word in a way that is authentic, relevant, and understandable. He lives in Minot, North Dakota with his wife, DeEtte, and three children, Brynn, Caleb, and Annalise.

Book preview

Authentic

Faith

TRAVIS MICHAEL HOVDE

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Copyright © 2014 TRAVIS MICHAEL HOVDE.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Unless otherwise stated scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

All rights reserved.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-2187-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-2189-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-2188-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014900081

WestBow Press rev. date: 1/15/2014

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One One More Day

Chapter 2 Happily Never After

Chapter 3 Jesus Camp

Chapter 4 Freedumb

Chapter 5 Get Me To The Church On Time

Chapter 6 Called Out

Chapter 7 Take Up Your Cross (And Your Toilet Brush) And Follow Me

Chapter 8 The Eagle Has Landed

Chapter 9 Breaking Down The Wall

Chapter 10 Faith In Action

Chapter 11 Keep It Between The Ditches!

Chapter 12 When The River Rises

Chapter 13 Authenticity Test

This book is lovingly and respectfully dedicated to the past, present,

and future members and friends of

Eagles Wings Community Fellowship.

INTRODUCTION

Somewhere deep inside of you is a longing, a deep craving for something beyond the daily routine of getting up every morning and going through the motions. God is well aware of that craving within you. In fact, He put it there. That craving exists because you were not made to just exist by living out someone else’s definition of what life should be. You were created to rise above the status quo, the mundane, and the ordinary and into something extraordinary.

Right now, as you begin reading this book, you are being pursued. The God of heaven and earth is passionately and relentlessly pursuing you. He will stop at nothing to find and reclaim you, including paying an enormous, unthinkable sacrifice Himself. A real, living, amazing God desires a relationship with you and wants to fill the craving within you.

This is a story of my experiences with God and my journey of faith. These stories are true, and I hope they will serve as a catalyst for you to encounter God yourself and find the sacred gift of Authentic Faith.

CHAPTER ONE

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ONE MORE DAY

T here is a chance you are going to die tomorrow, and there is also a chance that your spinal cord will be damaged and you could become paralyzed. Whatever words the surgeon uttered after that were lost in a haze of questions within my thirteen-year-old mind.

The stillness of the hospital room on the pediatric floor that night was eerie, as one by one the questions arose in my head like witnesses being called into the courtroom. What if die tomorrow? What happens next? Do I just cease to exist as it all ends in a cloud of black nothingness? What if there is a heaven? What if there is a hell? What if I met God face-to-face? Am I ready to meet Him?

Not So Normal

I was in the hospital preparing to have open-heart surgery the next morning, at the ripe old age of thirteen. The predicament I found myself in had begun with a routine trip to a doctor’s office for a required physical prior to the start of basketball season at the small school I attended. The doctor noticed I had high blood pressure in the upper part of my body and low pressure in the lower part of my body. The pulse in the lower part of my body was barely detectable. Something was wrong. Until then, I did not have any signs of health problems. I was a healthy, normal young boy, or so I thought.

I was referred to a pediatric cardiologist and later diagnosed with a heart condition called an aortic coarctation, which is a condition I had since birth. It had gone undetected. My aorta, the main artery coming out of my heart, was severely narrowed. After the doctors determined the location and severity, they determined it would have to be repaired with open-heart surgery where the narrow part of the aorta would be cut open and then patched with Gor-Tex. I would have to lie on my side for the surgery while the doctor made an incision. It would start in my chest, go under my arm, and end near my spinal cord. After the aorta was repaired with Gor-Tex, the incision would be sealed with fifty-seven staples.

I was shocked and scared, to say the least. In a matter of weeks, my whole little world as I had known it was turned upside down. This was not a part of the script I had in my head about the way life was supposed to go, but I was no longer in control.

Faith Check

I was raised in a Christian home. My mother and father had come to a place of faith as young adults, but I was still not sure what I believed. As I was staring out the window of the hospital that night, the loneliness in the room that night paralleled the solitary place I was at in my quest to find out what I believed.

I knew the burden of proof for my own faith rested on me. Sure, I had been taught Bible stories growing up and went to church with my family. Most people thought I was a good person, but there was unrest, uneasiness, and an uncertainty welling up in my anxious soul that night. The circumstances had brought me to a place where I had to answer these questions for myself, and the luxury of a long life to search them out was far from a guarantee at this point.

The urgency of the moment forced me to a decision.

I thought that if the next morning I died during surgery and it all ended in black nothingness, then life was truly a cruel joke and the cards just happened to be stacked against me.

This depressing thought of hopelessness saddened and angered me. I began reasoning within my own mind. If it angered me, what was the real reason for my anger? Because there was this deep, invisible, internal compass within me that told me there was