August 12, 2023 WWJWMTD by Steve, the son of John (2SoJ)
A Series on the Last Days, What Must I Do?
#5 Kermit the Prophet, Not Kermit the Frog
Guest author and friend
This article came to me from my friend Otis which he took from a book he was reading, “How to Hear God” by Pete Greig, and Pete writes historical accounts (stories) he discovered through his life’s journey. This book by Pete is a must-read for every Christian! If this article does not bring you hope in areas of your life, your heart is hardened. It is indeed time for the Fire of God to burn in all our lives!
Thus spoke the Prophet Kermit Before I was born the LORD called me; from my mother’s womb, he has spoken my name. —Isaiah 49: 1 I’m talking to a man who looks a lot like the skinny younger brother of Santa Claus. Snow-white beard, twinkly eyes, a ready laugh, abuzz with nervous energy. Ken Helser is telling me the stories of his hippy days touring America, signing record deals, doing drugs, and all the rest. It was 1970. He was sitting in a yoga position, smoking a massive joint, and reading a Bible when he heard a voice: “Hear God,” it said, “and you will live.” It was an experience that set Ken on a spiritual quest, traveling from church to church in his native North Carolina, asking the same questions wherever he went: “Does God really speak today? If so, how does he speak? And how do you know it’s him?” For three months, he says, no one anywhere could answer him.
At last, he found a Baptist pastor who knew what he was talking about. He seemed to have countless thrilling stories of hearing God’s voice for himself. “So can you teach me to hear God?” Ken asked eagerly, sensing that his twelve-week pilgrimage might finally be coming to a conclusion. “No!” snapped the pastor. “You are bowing down to an idol. Music is your god. If you want to hear God, you need to make Jesus Lord.” Longing to “hear God and live,” Ken Helser made Jesus Lord. He repented of his sins, kicked drugs, quit the band with its promise of fame, and solemnly recommitted himself to be faithful to his wife and two daughters. “I began to discover,” he says, with his eyes twinkling, “that in everything God has a voice.” I would go about my day talking to him, asking, “What are you saying in this situation? Where are you at work in this place? What was that encounter all about?” A few years later, a retired schoolteacher by the name of Kermit came to see Ken. They’d only met once before, but Kermit announced that he had a message from God and proceeded to describe an encounter with God he’d had one evening while praying on the baseball field. The Lord had appeared to him and said, “Tell my servant Ken Helser that I have healed his seed. He’s going to have a son who is to be called Jonathan David. He’ll play the harp and sing like an angel. He’ll write prophetic songs for his generation, and his music will go out all over the earth.” What Kermit didn’t know as he delivered this message was that Ken’s wife Linda had cancer of the uterus. She was just two weeks away from a scheduled hysterectomy, which was going to make conceiving another child medically impossible. Neither did he know that Ken was hiding a secret fear that his years of hard drug abuse had damaged “his seed.” He hadn’t told Linda, but this was the real reason he’d always resisted the idea of having a third child.
But now, with his faith turbocharged, Ken rushed home to pray for Linda’s healing before persuading their gynecologist to conduct just one more preoperative test, explaining that they had prayed. The results came back, and the pathologist was baffled. In fact, he kept checking that this really was the same woman, because there was no longer any sign of the cancer. As for the gynecologist, when he came down the corridor to break the good news to Ken and Linda, he was whistling. “That’s gotta be a good sign!” chuckled Ken. “I’ve been in practice thirty years,” the doctor said, “and I think I just witnessed my first miracle.” He paused to let the words sink in. “Ken, your wife is two hundred percent okay!” Jonathan David Helser was born the following year, the fruit of a miracle attested by science and promised by God. But growing up, he showed no interest at all in music; his sole obsession was sports. Wisely, Ken and Linda never put any pressure on him, never shared the details of Kermit’s prophecy. And then, at the age of nineteen, he finally asked his dad to teach him a few chords on the guitar and went off to the UK to train with Youth with a Mission at its base in Nuneaton. Ken went to visit and listened in awe as, for the first time ever, he heard Jonathan David play one of his own songs— a call upon his generation to rise-up and take back the land. Today, Jonathan David Helser makes music with his wife Melissa that truly circles the earth, just as the prophet Kermit predicted all those years ago. In fact, I was with him the day he heard the news that his song “Raise a Hallelujah” had reached number 1 on the airplay charts. And as for his award-winning anthem “No Longer Slaves,” it contains some especially poignant lines: From my mother’s womb You have chosen me Love has called my name I’ve been born again Into Your family Your blood flows through my veins I’m no longer a slave to fear I am a child of God.
Greig, Pete. How to Hear God (p. 115-117). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
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Dr. Steven J. Wentland www.wwjwmtd.com
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