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Michael Lawrence was born in Peoria, Illinois, at the
midpoint of America’s involvement in World War II. However, his roots were
in rural Missouri. When Michael was one, his father enlisted and moved with
Michael’s mother and their three small sons back to a small town in
southwest Missouri. A sister was added to the family when Michael was five.
Michael’s father, with one of his army buddies, started
an electrical contracting business in the small town after the war ended.
When the friend left for greener pastures, his dad began involving his sons
in the business as soon as they were old enough. Michael began working in
the trade at age 15—after school, Saturdays, and during summer vacations. He
was taught a strong work ethic, developing an appreciation and affection for
the work itself.
Michael was married at age 19 and moved to Springfield
a year later to begin a job with a local contractor as an electrician’s
apprentice. At age 21, he earned a Journeyman Electrician Certificate, being
among the youngest in the city’s history to be licensed as journeyman. He
has worked locally in the trade ever since, subsequently earning a Master
Electrician Certificate and starting an electrical contracting business that
is now in its twentieth year of operation.
After a few false starts and stops, Michael’s spiritual
journey began in earnest when God apprehended him at age 32. After what he
describes as a short “honeymoon period” with the Lord, his life began to
spiral downward. As God was bringing him to a “deeper life,” he experienced
emotional breakdown, clinical depression, and divorce. By the mercy of God,
those severe tests brought him to a total surrender, and the infilling by
the Spirit and a true walk of faith. It was during this period that he first
was exposed to the teaching of Pastor A. Wilson Phillips, via Phillips’
daily morning drive-time broadcasts. |
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Believing that God was leading him into some type of
counseling ministry, Michael enrolled in evening college at age 34, majoring
in psychology. It soon became apparent to him that writing was one of the
main reasons he was there. There was also a very special lady named Nell
working at the university.
After a rather short courtship, Nell and Michael were
married. He left college to focus on building a life with her. They became
members of Abundant Life Covenant Church during the year it was established
and continue to believe that God places members in the body just as it
pleases Him.
Due to the time constraints of family obligations while
owning and operating a business, Michael’s writing pursuits have been
limited. His previous work consists of several articles published in PRESENT
TRUTH magazine, an occasional guest editorial published in his local
newspaper, plus an unpublished short autobiographical novella, MORTIMER,
recalling life as a boy in a small Midwestern town during the 1950s.
Michael believes
strongly that God continues to lift up prophetic voices in His ongoing
program to reform His Church. He sees a Church being healed of her
inferiority complex that has developed from a century of faulty
dispensational end-time thinking. He believes that our social, racial,
religious, political, and economic unrest and its subsequent behavioral
problems could almost entirely be labeled: “Identity Crises.” He sees a
Church living out in power the Apostle Paul’s revelation of her identity
with our Lord in His death, burial, and resurrection—a Church at once
humbled and empowered by the engrafted truth that she is truly the apple of
her Father’s eye.
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