Sid: My guest Hank Kunneman is so red hot for the Messiah. On yesterday’s broadcast we found out that he came from a generation an adopted father that never affirmed him, never said “I love you.” In fact Hank you worked for your dad and you worked hard! What was that like?
Hank: Well when my dad retired out of the service out of the Air Force he opened up his own service station business and I was just a young boy preteen. My dad the way that he would express love again was no news or no affirmation was affirmation. His way of teaching was very much of a command or a demand. He taught you once, you’re supposed to get it right once. Now being in the service station business my fine motor skills, now that’s not a pun but my motor skills were not very good with my hands, I was not very good at things. It took me awhile to understand instruction so that’s not good for somebody who maybe didn’t have a kind of patience to handle. But the thing is I would say things like “I love you dad.” And he would say things like “Same here.” And that was his way of saying “I love you.” And so my relationship with my dad growing up mostly was built around a working relationship. When I went out to play football and baseball he was very busy working he had to supply for 7 kids and so he never attend any of my games and I certainly never held that against him. Boy when I’m watching other people having their father in the stands or their mother in the stands my parents were busy with work.
Sid: Okay, let me jump you up to age 18 you’re in your basement you get saved, tell me about when you were baptized in the Holy Spirit.
Hank: Yeah, something happened to me when I was 18 years of age I got saved, I got Spirit filled shortly 2 months after that. And I was praying in tongues the whole night after I got filled with the Spirit of God I couldn’t stop it was like somebody turned on this force of power and I couldn’t stop praying in tongues. I got caught up and a vision of heaven and I saw a throne room of people singing and worshiping and a huge bright light coming from this figure that was seated upon a throne. And I immediately began to fall down on my face in my bedroom, my mom was at the top of the stairs and was calling my name and did not know that I had a visitation happening from the Lord. And so that was the beginning of my journey where things began to get very heated.
Sid: But I mean you have the most amazing testimony, after you get saved, after you get radically, I mean radically filled with the Holy Spirit you must have been… I know how it was with me I couldn’t keep quiet about Jesus. Now you have a family that’s not a church family, not raised to believe in Jesus and you have a very severe case of acne. How bad was it?
Hank: Yeah, now needing your affirmation from your father, having your grandparents trying to divide the family and having severe acne on your face you want to have any low self-esteem, lack of confidence have severe acne on your face on top of it. But something happened, I was in the middle of a service and the Pastor of that church started having a word of knowledge he said “Somebody is being healed of acne, somebody is being healed of blackheads and he started naming all of these different words for acne. I was sitting in the second row and I didn’t know understand a word of knowledge, I didn’t understand healing I had just gotten saved. I’m thinking “Look you can’t see that I’m in the second row like this is really God.” Well then a woman next to me a senior an elderly woman tapped me on the shoulder and said “That man he’s speaking by God for you God is healing your face.” Something began to happen to my face that I went home I was so excited I told my dad without any manifestations on my face of any proof of healing I said “Dad I’m going healed of my acne.” He said these words “It’ll be a cold day in hell if I’ll believe any of that stuff,” and it just made matters worse and it just began to make him think more and more that I was in a cult. But something very significant took place in a very short time and I mean within days. It’s looked like somebody had taken their fingerprints and took both sides of my cheek and where the acne was on my face and touched both sides and I began to see different circles appearing on my face like someone’s fingerprints and they were different sizes. You know your thumb is a lot bigger you know than your pinky it looked like fingerprints. The Lord was touching and kissing my face, within a short period of time my acne began to disappear, nothing I tried worked before.
Sid: I mean from what you’re telling me this was not a few pimples this was severe acne.
Hank: Yeah, it was. It was very bad acne, yeah.
Sid: What did your dad and mom think of that?
Hank: Well this furthered in their mind that I was in a cult even though they were seeing the manifestation of this healing taking place on my face my dad he just could not come to terms that these kinds of miracles could happen today. So I began to explain to him about the miracle power of God, explain to him about salvation. And we got into a very very heated argument to the point where we were face to face. The next thing were in a physical confrontation and it didn’t end well. I remember picking myself up from the bottom of the stairs.
Sid: He threw you down the stairs?
Hank: Well that’s what exactly what happened this physical confrontation caused me. Yeah, we got into it pretty heavy to where I began to tumble down the stairs. But before that happened he gave me this choice and this is what I want people to understand. He said “I want you to deny this Jesus or get the hell out.” Now those were words that today as I share it I can still feel the pain and the shock of you need to deny Jesus. Now my dad he knew about Jesus in his own way. He wasn’t really asking me to quote deny Jesus but in his mind he was saying “Deny this cult you’re in.” And he said “Deny Jesus.” And I knew that I couldn’t deny Jesus or he said “Get out, get the hell out.” And before I knew it Sid I’ll have tears streaming down my face, just graduated out of high school. Wanted my parents to understand the Christianity that I experienced, I immediately started packing my clothes and you know grabbing whatever I could and I left that night and I drove…
Sid: But where would you go, did you have money?
Hank: I didn’t have anywhere to go.
Sid: Did you have money?
Hank: No, I didn’t have any money so I….
Sid: How does an 18 year old raised in a non-Christian home make such a bold stand for Jesus, how did you do it Hank?
Hank: You know when I gave my heart to the Lord it meant everything to me and Jesus I found out later that “Blessed are those that leave houses and fathers and mothers for My name sake.” And so I knew I couldn’t deny the Lord and so I got in my car and I just began to drive and I remembered that I had gone and visited a youth group 2 weeks prior a different youth program and somebody had given their number and said “If you ever need anything just you know give me a call.” That’s the only number to someone in my new found faith, I didn’t have any other contacts. So I called that number and they just so happened to have somebody move out of their apartment and it was in a very very bad part of the city to where gun shots would go off at night and all kinds of crime, and so it wasn’t the most ideal.
Sid: But at least… I mean you had no money, you knew no one so at least you had a place to stay. But what were family times say Christmas like for you when you had left your mother and father.
Hank: What was Christmas like? It was like this I spent it by myself I spent Christmas and Thanksgiving and the holidays for several years by myself because my dad was very upset, the relationship with my parents was strained.
Sid: Now your dad was a smoker and he get stage 4 cancer.
Hank: Yeah.
Sid: What happened?
Hank: This would have been obviously 20, 30 something years later he began to reach out. And again his philosophy was “It’ll be a cold day in hell before he’d believe in miracles and he gets healed.” The doctors cannot believe that the cancer is disappearing from his body they can’t find the spots in his lungs. Here’s how it happened…
Sid: I’m sorry Hank we’re out of time we’ll pick up here on tomorrow’s broadcast… finally just before the world is going to have a revelation of our awesome heavenly Father but the flip side that’s just as important is His name if Abba. Which means “Daddy.” I mean most Jews, most Catholics, many Christians they know about God being awesome and God but they don’t know about His tenderness and Hank Kunneman has been chosen by God to prophetically present the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation on the Father heart of God. And there’s a generation for many generations that have never experienced the love of God being poured into them, never experienced crawling into Abba’s lap.
