For the first 20 years of my life, I was a good Methodist boy. For the next 20 years of my life, I became a good Christian man. After the 40th year, I became a son. And becoming a son of the Most High God is my personal story.

So, sometime after I was 40, through a series of of great brokenness–my marriage is broken, my work, which had gone very good up until the time that I was 40, really begin to fall apart and I was not succeeding in my in the job that I had, and then my health really began to decline, and then we just had issues, issues of raising our sons, and just the different normal issues but tough issues that we faced there. So I had four areas that really broke me from my normal mode that I had been operating in, my normal Christian mode. And I was a good Bible Church Christian. I’d studied my Bible for 20 years, lots of Bible studies, lots of teaching, lots of reading. That did not seem to bring the healing and the breakthrough that we had in our marriage.

I was challenged by a dear friend who challenged me in regard to personal relational intimacy with the Lord. When you have young kids, you … it’s harder to meet with the Lord and for 10 years I had had some quiet time with the Lord, but I did not, I had ceased to be consistent in my time with the Lord. We’re ministering in church, we’re doing a whole lot of things, but I did not have a relational intimacy with the Lord that was going. And my friend challenged me and he said, “Why don’t we wake up at five every morning and start spending time with the Lord, and then we’ll run together at six?” And I looked at him, and I was just so broken from my emotional divorce and my pain that I was going through at work, and I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do that.” And he looked at me and start crying and said, “Don’t, don’t you want to spend time with the Creator of the Universe?” And I broke down and started crying. And the next morning I got up at five and that marked 288 straight days that I that I journaled. .. met with, woke up at five, met with the Lord, would run very often with him, and I began to have what I now realize were encounters with the Holy Spirit. I began connecting with the Holy Spirit, but I didn’t really know that that’s what I was doing, but I began to have a sensitive spirit.

So what began to take place was a marriage of the Word and the spirit, and I became… I loved the Word and I loved the Holy Spirit enlightening the Word. The Lord began to heal our marriage, and we had a really strong healing that took place in 1998. So about four years of emotional divorce, then some connection with each other. And then a major major healing and deliverance of the things that had blocked our marriage.

Prior to that healing in 1998, I went to a conference in Edmond, Oklahoma. It was a conference on the Holy Spirit. And what happened at the end of that conference–we drove up, two of my best friends drove up with me–they had a prophetic… a prophetic time. So they gathered people up at the front. He spoke prophetically to us and two people spoke to us, one guy named Brock who was 27 years old and another guy who turned out to be Shawn Bolz when he was 24. The young man Brock stood up and he basically prophesied. He said, “Will the three guys from Texas stand up and, and then he started prophesying about, he said he saw a house where he would see youth coming in and learn, to learn the ways of worship and intercession. And he described the house and it actually fit our house. And he went on to describe, say some names that started with G, all of whom we ended up encountering and he said, “I saw the three of you standing up” and he said, ” I saw an X on you and it was like a whole new paradigm. The person of Jesus was on you and a whole new paradigm you would be operating from and youth would be coming to learn the ways of worship and intercession.” And he said there would be hard times and would be wonderful times and there would be hard times and he said, “It’s just the way of the Lord.” So that was a pretty amazing prophecy.

And then Shawn Bolz begin to speak. And as he was speaking over me, he talked to me about some of the things that I had learned. But he said, he said, spoke something about that I would, I was like an elder at the gate, and I would be welcoming all of the, the fish, the young fish, and the unclean fish, and I would be speaking truth to them, and I would know their place in the body. I would know their place, where their place in the body would be, and I would be able to coach and teach them. So that was all very interesting.

What happened three weeks later, after I came back from that conference, was a Young Life leader in Lake Highlands area came up to me and said, “Could you … I’ve been mentoring them to some degree and he said, “Gosh, can you help me out? I’ve got a Campaigner group with seniors at Lake Highlands High School and really all they want to do in the Campaigners group is just goof around and tell jokes. And so I said, “Yeah, bring them over, we’ll talk about it.” And so the end result of that was that he brought six guys. I began to teach them and coach them on sonship, what it means to be a son of the Most High God, because that’s what I had been. By that time, I was, what was I… was probably 45 or 46 years old. But I’d had six years of learning what a son was. So they came over the first night, six of them plus the leader, and we met in this room and we played, I played worship songs by Charlie Hall and Christy Knuckles and Delirious. And that night they were, they were weeping, they were worshiping, they were, it was, it was a move of God that was that was taking place because I … there was nothing really special other than that I was imparting the sonship that I had grown into as well as the worship, the intercession, and then I added the Word because I was a Word guy.

And so that group was the first group. We met for… from November through the end of May, and then the younger brother of one of those guys who met came up to me at a graduation something party or something and said, Oh, Mr. Galindo will you start up another group? My brother has been so impacted by this. Will you start up another group? And so I said, “Sure, we can do that.” So the next year we began a group with juniors and seniors that was a sonship group. And so that group came together, same thing would happen. They went deep into the things of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit fell on on us and there were powerful things and one of the guys was a was a senior and he was an alcoholic and he we ministered to him and he got delivered from the alcoholism and he began to be so transformed people noticed . And he was hanging around with guys who were good Christian guys. So it was something that stirred the school up to say, what is he doing? Why are they friends?

In January of 1999 was when we took a group of girls and guys to the Passion Conference. The kids were impacted. They wanted to bring back what they’re experiencing at Passion to Lake Highlands. And so we met there one of the nights after the worship nights there in Fort Worth. And they said, “How do we bring this back?” I remembered a silent prophetic word that the Lord had spoken to me a year earlier and he said,

“If you want to bring revival to Lake Highlands, you will need to kill the gods of Friday and Saturday night.” And I knew exactly what that meant. It was going to be tied to, okay there … we’re going to be worshiping there’s going to be intercession and the Word, and it needed to be a weekend meeting. It couldn’t, it wouldn’t be a week night like Monday Night Young Life or, or, you know, group Bible study. It needed to be on the weekend where they came. So since Lord had spoken that to me and that was and that was in my heart, when they said that I challenged them with the same thing. If you want to bring this back to your peers at Lake Highlands High School, you’ve got to be willing to kill the gods of Friday and Saturday night. And they said, “We’re ready. We want to do that.” I said, “Then our house is open. ”

So that very first night, that that the kids came, there were 25 of them. I remember real vividly and they they came in, we started playing music and they were just being touched. That began, that was January 9, 1999, and it begin four-and-a-half years of youth coming to our house.

Bottom line, learning the ways worship and intercession and the Word and the presence of the Lord was so strong here at the house that they would just come. So that first year we had 30-40-50 that would come each night. Each night that we had it. Once a week, either on a Friday night or Saturday night and lives were touched, lives were being changed. And they were … it was evident that a revival was taking place.

And the Lord did a mighty work in a young man named Jeremy. He was a really troubled young man–family situation was really tough. About 10 or 15 of the kids all were gathering around and praying over him. And the next Saturday night that we that we had a gathering there were like 70 kids at our house. The next week, there were probably 125 kids. It just it grew so big that we had to move to Scofield church and there were 200 to 300 kids that would come. We ended up after that one year–that season where we went to Scofield church, we thought about going back there again. But we realized, you know, let’s just you come to our house. So there was another whatever, three, three and a half years that what had been a high school ministry was that, but then college kids started coming as well. So youth from all over the all over the place. We didn’t it was just by word of mouth. And this was really before before all the social media had really taken off. So somehow the word would get around that, that you could come to our house and experience the presence of the Lord.

In September of 2003, which is exactly six years, six years to the weekend that I had gone and this prophetic word was spoken over me that youth will come to your home to learn the ways of worship and intercession. And I felt like I heard the Holy Spirit speak and say, “This is your last worship night. I now want you to take worship and intercession and the Word to the marketplace and to the church that we were going to at the time”, which was Northwest Bible Church. And so that was in 2003. And so that ended the, the evenings of worship with the youth. The weekly– it was every week for four and a half years that we, that we did that on the on the weekend.

And then I began to look at, okay, how do I, how do I facilitate the presence of God in the marketplace, and in the churches that I’m involved with. And so lots of other things have happened, I began to be a, what’s called a managing Chair of C 12. So I begin to have a practice that now is 30 CEOs and companies where we, we again, looked at how do we advance the kingdom of God in the in the marketplace.

In 2009, we decided to go ahead and start our worship nights back. And, and so now for 10 years, we’ve been having once a month worship nights. We don’t have once a week worship nights, but once a month worship nights where anywhere from 15 to 50, or 60 people come and we never know who’s going to come, but people still come and we we, whereas in those high school days, or those early days, we would start at eight o’clock and go till one o’clock in the in the morning. Now, we start at eight o’clock, and we finished before 11.

I was trying to, to perform and do good in my life as a Christian–to be a good husband, to be a good father. It wasn’t that I was failing. It’s just I was not effective. And then the Holy Spirit–I began to encounter the Holy Spirit and experience the Holy Spirit, which literally transformed me as a husband and as a father and even as a businessman.

So today, as I reflect on this story, the emotions are still blessed by what he did, what he did, and I recognize that what Jesus said. “Apart from the Father, apart from the Holy Spirit, I can do nothing.” So, my attempts as a good Christian produced some fruit and produced some good things. I’m blessed by that. But it was the operating in the son ship and the relational intimacy with the Lord that I see produced the good works that are 30 fold, 60 fold and 100 fold. Those are the good works that I want to walk in–not just my own good efforts or trying to be a good Christian man, but rather how do I walk as a son of the Most High God who walks in the power and in the strength of the Holy Spirit and advances the kingdom of God.

What brought me to sonship was certainly someone speaking the truth. But I had heard some good teaching on sonship, but no one highlighted it like my spiritual mentor did in 1996 on when I, when I begin to realize, wow, I’m a son of the Most High God. I needed to be … to really understand that … I needed to be in in a desperate state. So in 1992, when I had what I call the four mountains that hit in my life: emotional divorce, being ineffective, and even a failure in my role at work, raising up sons…raising up two sons, one of whom was was rebellious. And then my health, I had four issues that really made me completely broken.

And so what I learned, I, all I knew is that I became desperate. And I needed to meet with the Lord. And those 288 days, straight days, of meeting with the Lord gave me a foundation that has not been…has not been reversed. I’m connected to the Lord regularly and meet with him regularly.

What I did discover was that there’s four states that we are in, can be in. And there’s the first stage is defiance. There’s a lot of people that are in defiance, particularly those who don’t know the Lord. But there’s many Christians who think they know the Lord, or say that they know the Lord. And they’re in a defiant stage; they really don’t realize that they’ve carried on a defiance. And they have not grasped who the Lord is, they still haven’t been adopted as a son.

And then there is a, a distant dependence that people practice.

So there’s defiance, and then you can move into a distant dependence, and that’s when, “Oh, gosh, I’m in trouble. I need to, I really need the Lord.” And it’s only when times are are troubled for people that they call on the Lord–that they want a dependence on the Lord. And that’s what I call distant dependence.

And then there’s what the Pharisees practiced, which I call dignified dependence, and they played the game and said that they’re dependent on the Lord. But all it was a show, and it was a dignified dependence that was not a real authentic dependence on the Lord.

And then what I discovered during my time of brokenness, and what I apparently moved into was what I call daily desperate dependence. And, and that is when life transformation begins to take place. When we recognize “I’m desperately dependent upon the Lord every day” as opposed to “I need you from a distance. I need you some, or I can put on a show as if I need you, but don’t really need you.” So I believe when we come to the daily desperate dependent state, sonship, we’re more apt we long to be adopted. We long to operate as an adopted son or daughter.

In regard to the power of God in my life, how did that…how did I move from a principle-centered Christian into what I believe and what I call a present-centered Christian?

The way I love to teach that is that the Pharisees had the principles of God down pat. Jesus came into their midst, his presence, he was present with them, his presence was there, and yet they so loved the principles of God that they missed his very presence.

I was broken, so I was having this relational intimacy with the Lord and, and learned sonship. I began to encounter his presence and, and began to discover, “Wait a minute, I must be in connection with the Holy Spirit.” So I began to read some Holy Spirit, some books about the Holy Spirit, and began to realize I’m, I’m actually interacting and having connection with the Holy Spirit. And I begin to get prompts… I would call them promptings at the time. Wow, I’m getting … where’d that come from? I’m getting a prompting. I’m seeing things, I’m understanding things. And, and so what I began to realize is, if I’m in his presence, not only do I get transformed, but what will be a fruit of being in his presence is his principles. So if I’m truly in his presence, in love with his presence, like experiencing his presence, the principles of God will be a byproduct.

But I could have the principles, again, practice the principles of God and have no connection with his presence, as did the Pharisees. What I personally experienced and what I love to teach and impart to people is “Let’s experience His presence.” So, I love to facilitate his presence, through what I feel like is, is effective. And when people experience his presence, their lives are transformed, their lives are touched, they begin to move into a transformation process, and then they begin to love his principles. And so therefore, a son and a daughter will love his presence, and the principles will be a wonderful byproduct that then both begin to be manifested in their, in their life.

Psalm 16:11 says, “In his presence is fullness of joy.” And so when we’re in his presence, Joy … it becomes a part of us, and then as we walk in joy, Nehemiah 8:10 says, “The joy of the Lord is my strength.” So as we walk in and as we experience his presence, there is fullness of joy, the joy of the Lord is my strength and then if I really understand sonship, I know Ephesians 2:10, “I’m his workmanship,” which is, a I’m a son of the Most High God and I’m his workmanship created to walk in the good works that he’s prepared in advance. So, I want to be listening to the Holy Spirit. What are the good works?

So one principle I’m in his presence and a principle is, God has created good works.

So what are those good works? So I’m called to be a salesman for this company or I’m called to be a technician for this company. Then sons and daughters begin to ask, “What are the good works that you prepared for me in this company?” and then it might be I want you to love on the people here. Well, that principle is love the Lord, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. So there’s a principle that comes forth. It might be a principle of do your work heartily as unto the Lord rather than for men. And so His presence reiterates or prompts you with, “Hey, do you work heartily?” And so there’s an increase of the kingdom that God has already prepared. The question is, will we recognize that it’s him who does it through the power of the Holy Spirit, and that we can be participants?

So I count it as a son of the Most High God, I get to walk as a participant in the increase of His kingdom. And as I look back on my story, I see that that even though I wasn’t even fully aware of what was going on, I got to walk as a participant in the advancement, in the increase of his government of his kingdom and I’m blessed for it.