In this episode Gina has a conversation with Terry & Nancy Clark. Terry & Nancy have lived a life of complete dependance serving Jesus as musicians and worship leaders since the Jesus Movement revival. Terry shares his prodigal story of ending up in a psychiatric hospital in Germany post Vietnam, and his miraculous healing to what it means to live a life of dependance together, as their website says “Jesus has been their Savior, manager, and booking agent for 40 years!”
Learn more about Terry & Nancy and listen to Terry’s podcast Terry Clark & Friends at: catalystpeople.com
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Listen below starting at 14:34
Walking Away
Gina:
I didn’t know this about Mickey and Karen, but I love the fact that both of them independently came to Jesus on their own by reading the Bible themselves. I love that because I think we’ve lost the understanding of the power of God’s word. I’m not talking about knowledge, because it isn’t just about knowledge. The enemy knows the Bible better than you and I do.
He knows it upside down, inside out, everything like that. But there’s something profound and significant about God’s word and about The Holy Spirit. He’s a pursuer, I feel like a broken record. There’s certain things I say all the time on this podcast, but He is a relentless pursuer. He’s fully motivated by love.
His Word is covered and saturated in that love, and it has the power to transform and to bring healing and freedom. I would love for you to share your story. I feel like we’re in a season where you don’t hear people just share their testimony. How did you come to know Jesus?
Terry:
I think that’s right in line with my conversations for Terry Clark and friends, because first of all, about the moat that is between in the church, the pulpit and the people and in Christian music, the celebrity and the listener. He made it so clear to me, and then He said, “That’s what I want to bridge, and here’s how we’re going to do it. You’re going to ask them about the conversations that they had with me that turned each of the corners in their life that brought them where they are now. And you’re saying the same thing.
Gina:
I mean, that was the woman at the Well. Right? She had a conversation. She had a conversation, an intimate conversation with Jesus. He very easily could have gone to the next town and, and preached the gospel in hundreds would’ve come to him. But instead he had a conversation, and then she ran and told her story and brought people to him.
Terry:
And the beautiful thing about that is that he planned the whole thing, because He loved that lady.
Gina:
It’s powerful.
Terry:
And he never gives up, or I wouldn’t be sitting here. He loves hard heads! I’m proof.
Gina:
So tell us about that!
Terry:
Well, I grew up in a very godly home. My mom’s side of the family had gone to church for generations, while my dad’s side weren’t churched at all. My dad had to become a Christian to date my mom, and he was a fine man, one of the greatest men I ever knew, and I realized that after he graduated. But the fact is that I grew up in a very godly environment. I would hear the message lying on the pew or under the pew, either way it all went in.
We were connected with all the pioneers of the movement. And I wound up at one of their district councils. I think I snuck into the balcony of this big conference center, and they were having their district council and their business meeting on the floor. And I put my elbows on the bar, and I listened to what they were doing. And at 13, I knew that’s not what I was going to grow up to be.
Because they were bickering over the silliest things. It was just so obvious that I walked out of that place and it was my determination to find out what I’m supposed to be and what the world’s all about. I determined that I’m going to get an education on everything, and I did that.
Into Darkness
Terry:
And then at the end of the trail, I wound up in the army, and of course you couldn’t find a Christian at all when I was there. It was pre-Vietnam and I was drafted. By the fourth or fifth deployment that I went through, which finally ended me up in Germany, I wound up in the psych ward with no hope.
They were going to send me back to the US to a VA hospital, probably in Fort Worth, since that’s where I reported for the draft. The night before they took me and put me in the hospital. I had gone to my dining room table in the dark, in the little 13th century apartment that I was living in outside of Munich. That had Terry Clark’s ID on it, on the dining room table.
I searched through all of it to see if there was a piece of justifying evidence that I should stick with this human race thing. I couldn’t find one. By that time, I had already been in Southeast Asia and other countries. Japan was one of ’em, and I loved that. So that night, not finding any good reason to be a human being, I just stepped across a little white picket fence into lala land.
I didn’t think I was sick. I thought I was free for the first time. I was free from all the puppet strings that had controlled my life since I was a little kid. You know, I have to perform to be what I’m supposed to be. And, and so you get that free and they, they come and take you away.
Gina:
So what did that look like when you say you stepped across the white picket fence in the lala land?
Terry:
That’s exactly what it looked like to me. Because I was saying I don’t belong here, I’m out of here. I’m not gonna play these games anymore. It’s kind of a mental picture of seeing the picket fence, but it was just the border of all of those things enclosed in this little corral that I was living in and stepping out of it. I was suddenly available to me and I had real purpose. So I did that when they came and got me the next morning and took me to the psych ward. I just went through the hoops that they take you through.
Gina:
What made them come get you?
Terry:
Because I was free to say anything. I saw it was a lot more complicated than that, obviously. But they wrote on the hospital report that I wasn’t violent or dangerous. They were very well mannered in fact. The psychosis was too deep for them to fix and they knew my past and they were going to transport me into the United States to a be in a hospital.
And they had already seen probably thousands by the time I got there go through the same reactions to all of that. Then one day I pulled my old black Bible out of my duffle bag from under the bed, and I popped myself up in the bed and opened it up and started reading. The days before had been filled with more drugs than I ever took on the outside. They used the military to experiment.
The Pursuit of Jesus
Terry:
They experiment, especially on the psychosis and the schizophrenia drugs and all that. I was taking 21 pills three times a day. Pastel colored, nice pretty ones, but a lot of stuff that day brought myself up and suddenly I hear my childhood friend’s voice and it’s Jesus. I had no debate about it.
And he just said, “Terry, I know how you feel. I’ve seen everything human beings have ever done. I mean, you think you saw everything and have been part of more than you want to admit, but I’ve seen everything. And I’m here to let you know that there’s another way to think about this. And you’ve decided not to be a human being. And for the same reason and for a whole lot more evidence, I chose to become one.”
And then he literally drowned me. He drowned me in how he feels toward human beings. It’s a passion, a love. It was the lethal dose of a passion that I couldn’t even express. One interesting thing that was going on that I didn’t know at the time, was that my mom got this call from her friend that had been a friend for a long time in Corpus Christi.
And this lady who was a scary, godly woman called her and said, “The Lord just gave me a vision of Terry in a hospital bed, and there was a furnace of fire underneath him. I can hear the devil’s voice going, ‘I don’t have to worry about this one anymore.’” But she said, “But he’s in a cocoon, protected from the flames.” And of course she didn’t hear the conversation that was going on inside of that cocoon. But that’s when the Lord was speaking, baptizing me.
Gina:
And he actually gave you a brand new mind.
Terry:
Yeah. He actually asked me what I wanted to do. He said, “Now what do you want to do Terry? It’s up to you.” And I said, “Well, that’s the only rational reason to be a human being that I’ve heard.” So I went back in.
And so he basically swept aside all the ashes of the burned brain matter and put a brand new one in my head. Things started happening pretty fast physically because of the new mind. And it was so quick that every half hour, the nurses and the assistants and the doctors were coming in with that rubber hammer to check your reflexes.
They would beat me up with that and he would scratch out the dosage for the next thing. And those 21 pills three times a day started to dwindle pretty fast because every half hour they were just cutting it in half.
Gina:
That tells you how powerful that those drugs were, that they were giving people. How crazy too, because that would normally be pretty dangerous to come off so fast. You know? So Absolutely, the miracle is the healing, but also that God protected you in getting all of that crap out of your system every time.
Through the valley of the Shadow
Terry:
They were brutal medications. Every time I tell this in a concert or a service of some kind, there’s always a psychologist that comes to me very compassionately and said, “We’ve got better drugs now.”
Gina:
Well, I should hope so. I’m glad to hear that.
Terry:
<Laugh>. I got the best of all, because Jesus gave me a brand new mind and your pills can’t do that for me. But the thing is that I was making this transition physically because of the new control center was brand new, and your mind tells your body what to do. So it’s trying to bring me back to normalcy, how it would function. In the evening, the nurse was one that I hadn’t seen during these days that I had been in there.
It was a night nurse that had been off on vacation. She evidently looked at the night before charts and saw the 21 pills and she got her cart and gathered her little pill cups for her rounds. She started making her rounds and she brought them to me and I thought, “Well, I mean, I didn’t question it because she’s the nurse, right?” And I don’t want to get hit by a nurse, you know, and knocked out just because I won’t take the pills. So I took the pills.
That’s when I pulled the Bible out from under the bed out of my duffel bag. I sat there and was opening the Bible and as I read, my face began to twitch and I was going, wait a minute, this is not the Holy Spirit. I realized that when I started to try to move, I was really stiff, but I swiveled off of my bed and headed toward the nurse’s station. I turned the corner and she looked up at me and she grabbed the phone because she knew exactly what she had done.
Gina:
Oh man.
Terry:
I don’t remember how long it was, but when the doctor showed up, he was like a cartoon because he had this white thing and it was his cape. He was coming down the hall and that white coat like a big wing behind him. He had the biggest needle I’ve ever seen in my life in his hand. He wasn’t holding it next to him, he was aiming it <laugh> where he was going.
Gina:
Oh. My. Gosh.
Terry:
And he didn’t wipe it with alcohol or anything, just the first place he could get that needle in me. He jammed it in me and did the plunger. That was really the miracle that you’re talking about, because I found out after what the reaction is to those drugs being overdosed.
What it was doing was reacting in my muscle tissue and then the softer tissue. But it’s like a spousal until it’s crystallized and then you’re a rock if your brain survives, it’s a rock with a brain in it. But that didn’t happen because he got there with that needle right on time.
Nancy:
Anyway, they did have to do a re-diagnosis before he was dismissed from the hospital. It said in that same line on the form it said recovering satisfactorily.
Gina:
Wow. That’s crazy.
Terry:
I still am recovering satisfactorily <laugh>. Thank you. <Laugh>
Nancy:
Soon. But because of that instance, Jesus just moved in to be his soul sanity. There was no other reasoning with other people about things. He went to Jesus, which is what the Lord wants from all of us. For a solid year it was like whatever was going on was completely foreign to me.
Someone would say something and I would go, “Am I supposed to answer that? What am I supposed to say?” But that was the constant thing because he was repopulating my experience with the conversation I would have to have with him. Have the sanity to live in this world.
Gina:
So can you say that again because our listeners can’t see you looking up? So you’re saying for that first year you were dependent on Jesus for everything.
Terry:
Everything was completely foreign to me, like being on a different planet.
Gina:
You’d said before that you threw everything into the trash. Well, at this point, now you’re taking things out and one by one, what about this?
Terry:
Either throwing it back in the trash or or putting it in the file in my brain to operate on what I am and who I am. It’s still that way, because this world is not my home. My home is Jesus and He’s my only sanity. Nancy knows it’s a thin line, but I’m sure she counts on the fact that I’m going to look at Jesus. Mm-Hmm. Even though my own reflexes or reactions would take over for a second or two, that’s going to be His point of view that would get engaged.
Gina:
You know, it’s so interesting because it’s just dependence, right? Jesus is a redeemer. That’s who He is. Was it His will that you go through all this trauma and everything? I would not say it was His will. You get drafted, you’re in the middle of all this stuff, but His pursuit and His love for you is going to meet you there.
Check out the rest of this conversation: Partnership with God & Patterns of Revival
Check out the Dwell Meditations
