*In the early part of Reverend Foster Clark‘s life he did not know that God would summon him for a purpose nor was he aware of the blessings that would overflow from his cup simply by answering the call.  Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Foster grew up in a military family and subsequently entered the Air Force after high school, serving in the first Gulf War.
“When I was in the last stage of my military career, God started dropping into my heart, ‘get ready, I want you to get out and follow me’ and I’m not going to lie, my first reaction was why?” Clark heartily chuckles at his defiance.
He honestly conveys he had no interest in entering ministry like most people who proclaim and tussled with God for a couple of years before he finally acquiesced to the Almighty. But he remained perplexed why God was calling him to serve in 1989 during his 10-year career of military service.
“We have a lot of preachers out here, ministers, [and] ministries. I don’t want to do anything that doesn’t have a distinct purpose to it and so my question was to God ‘if you’re calling me into the ministry, why, and what is my purpose? What is your purpose or your mission for me?,” he inquired. As an Air Force and Desert Storm Veteran Clark always considers the mission and vision before each operation, and he admits God “answered [his] question.”
In 2003, Foster established Expectant Faith World Ministries and was commissioned to teach people from all nations how to walk with the manifestation of victory in their life despite their circumstances. He was driven to destroy hopelessness; whether it is rooted in poverty, lack of education, or faith. His first directive was to sojourn to Kenya to start serving and while there he met a Christian woman who lost all hope for her life.
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“She loved God but had so many things happen in her life that she lost hope of it getting any better and what God dropped into my heart was she had lost her expectation, which birthed the name Expected Faith. A lot of people have faith but very few people put a demand on that faith, put an expectation on that faith and that’s because, in my opinion, it hasn’t really been taught. We’re taught to have faith and trust God but God’s word says so much more,” he exhorts.
When pressed to expound on what caused the woman’s hopelessness and how the love of God can help others who may feel the same way in our society, the story unfolds in such a way that enhances Clark’s amazement at God’s providence.
“When I walked into the church, the lady was sitting in the front row, then she came up and was singing as part of the praise team but I kept staring at her and I didn’t know why,” he recalls. “[I’m] done preaching and praying for people, she walks up, and the Lord said, ‘what you’re looking at is hopelessness, she’s alive but she lost her will to live.” He further describes that the woman told him the number of tragedies she went through in her life. Foster immediately wanted to help her financial needs and God told him “not yet.”
Clark remembers every single service, every word spoken in his sermons touched upon what the woman was dealing with, unbeknownst to him.
“The lady walked up to me the first day and she said, ‘I came here to go to church one last time, then go home and kill myself.’ I say it to God under my breath, ‘what do you want me to say to that?’ Jesus loves you isn’t going to fix that, she already loves God, but evidently, she’s seen a disconnect. The Lord is so wise, He said, ‘ask her to put it off just one day,’ that moved me because it showed me how compassionate God was, He understood her situation. He wasn’t saying, don’t do it, trust me. He said, ‘ask her to put it off one day,’ one day kept turning into the next day, and every night, I would ask her for one more day, the fifth day, the word had begun to saturate her heart that God was speaking,” Clark says, adding that when God anoints His Word, at a specific time, it will slowly change a heart.
By the time the woman came to the church on the fifth day, she had a glimmer in her eye, a little spark of hope. He said God urged him to give her a certain amount of money and to help her but Clark was puzzled as to why at this time he was instructed to move.
“He said, ‘because she didn’t have the faith to receive it. First I had to give her the hope to live. Now I’m going to feed her faith and show her I know where she’s at’ and to me, that’s what launched the entire ministry,” he says, recognizing that God’s will and purpose centered around sending him there for this specific moment.
Based on his own spiritual journey and growth, Clark believes that what births hope in people is when they hear a word from God that is specifically tailored to them at a particular time. “God is that detailed, if we take the time to listen and I’m talking about leaders now, if we will take the time to listen and hear God for the service or the person that we’re dealing with and not just have our ready made answer, then God’s word will take effect and bring about change,” he reasons. The task of the Expectant Faith World Ministry is to properly equip people with the tools to withstand life on earth, as well as, work towards a heavenly eternal destination.
“While you’re waiting to get there, how do you live it here? What does God’s Word say about everyday life here, getting through the hurts? If your faith gets tired, if you’re walking this Christian walk, you’re going to have some tired faith days. In church we’re always taught, just have faith but faith doesn’t work like that you can be high, one minute and down the next,” he counsels like a wise preacher. “But God stays steady but how do we work our faith that when we’re in that valley part, now we’re rising back up again.”
He further explains that the ministry’s main goal and purpose is to instill and impart in people hope, and unexpected faith, show the grace and love of God to those who feel grace is not applicable to them, restore the fire and passion in marriages, and to motivate people to pray and act on the Word of God with the power of the Spirit of God in them.
Presently, E.F.W.M. leads conferences, seminars, food for orphanages, and revivals that meet the physical and spiritual needs of people. Through his efforts and team, Foster’s outreach has adopted three schools in Africa and one in Bangladesh. The conference he spearheaded in Dhaka Bangladesh drew 200 young people and 300 adults to hear the gospel. Pastors and ministers traveled from around Bangladesh, slept on concrete floors so they could be trained and taught in God’s word.
The educational segment of the ministry is not only geared towards third-world nations but it was launched there, Clark makes sure the ministry’s offerings are also available in America. He drew inspiration to embrace and nurture schools when he visited a center for learning that had no electricity or school supplies. He recalls witnessing a young girl using the same piece of paper for all of her lessons, erasing the information, and beginning again when taught a new instruction. God nudged Clark’s heart, telling him that helping underfunded schools would become a part of his mission, he started to ship school supplies to every country he visited and adopted schools.
“We provide generators that bring electricity, you have to bring them into the computer age and we started putting laptops, at least one per school. We supply chalkboards to every school, wherever we go, we see what the need is, and meet that need. I believe greatly with everything in me whether you’re here in America or elsewhere, people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care and what are you willing to do?” he says. “I can’t stand here and preach to you about God’s goodness and God’s faithfulness and I have the ability to do something and don’t do it but say I’ll pray for you, that makes no no sense to me.”
E.F.W.M leadership seminars focus on business, and buying houses which he bases on scripture, “It’s great to have people know about God and serve God, first and foremost, but what makes your life different? That’s the focus of this ministry and the focus of the book. What makes your life different because of God’s Word.”
His new book “Now Faith – Faith for the Daily Walk of Life” published through Snyder Press, LLC., speaks to those who struggle with their faith due to the pressures and battles of life. The book will take readers from a place of hardship to victory, from simply persevering to moving forward in faith with expectation and the manifestation of God’s faithfulness.
“When you start talking about hope and faith, people that know me, my team, I’m about as transparent as it gets. I have my good days, my bad days, but the walk of God with me,” he pauses as his voice breaks. “It hasn’t been that you get saved and just start climbing. It’s been up, it’s been down, it’s been a fight with God [which] I normally lost. It’s like the book “Now Faith,” God told me to write this book, three, four years ago, it was written out of my questions with God, not out of my love for God. I had so many questions and I was a ten-year Christian at that point. But I had so many questions about His word about life that weren’t getting answered anywhere.” He expresses how Christians are taught to retain their faith, trust in God, and pray, in order to gain peace.
“But how do you get all of that stuff that God says in His Word? John 14:27 says ‘peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you’ at the time that I read that verse, as a Christian I had all kinds of hell and chaos in my life. So where was this peace? God started answering the questions that I had and then I come to find out, I’m not the only one with these questions,” he states. “So this is who I am, what we do and where I’m at with God.”
Most believers who adhere to the tenets of Christianity can attest that following and living out its principles can be an arduous undertaking. However, Clark wants readers of his book to remember and take away one thing, “Don’t let condemnation about where you are with God hold you back.” He perceives that many people feel that they carry a stain on them when their faith is struggling at the moment because others will make the erroneous judgment that something is wrong with their Christian walk.
“If you ever walked somebody’s path, you don’t know how they got where they are, if you take anything from this book, understand God accepts where you are with Him, but he knows how to get you back to a place of victory,” he declares. “You are not supposed to simply glory in your struggle. God gets His glory out of your rise, answered prayers, not just your struggle.”
In his book, he answers the questions that plague most believers like ‘why do I have to pray if God knows everything,’ and ‘what do you do when your faith gets tired?’
“You’re gonna have some moments with God where you’re not understanding. I want people to know it’s okay to be in that place,” Clark assures. “That’s the purpose of the book if they can’t take anything, understand there’s a faith-filling station that God has no matter if you’re running on empty, he knows how to fill it, and then he knows how to position you to get back to that place of victory that He has for you because He gets glory out of your victories. If you don’t take nothing out of the book, get that.”
Clark’s stance is more than just conjecture, he knows what it is to struggle and become victorious especially after discovering the root of long-held anger. During the process of writing his book God took him back to his childhood when growing up he was called trifling, meaning no good or of no value, and how the enemy used that word against him. Throughout his life, Clark fought for respect and acceptance and when he didn’t feel good enough, anger would present itself. However, as he read God’s Word that he is “fearfully and wonderfully made” his anger slowly dissipated.
“I didn’t have to prove I was good enough. [I’m] never going to be good enough except by Christ. Even in my failures, God says ‘I’ll never leave you nor forsake you.’ He brought me through it and then my faith took off. When you realize how accepted you are, your faith will just explode in your praying, in your relationships, whatever. Because now you don’t feel that tension, that weight of trying to be something, God says just be you,” he says.
The year 2022 produced a carousel of anxiety-inducing headlines of a plunging economy, job losses, impending recession, nations rising against nation, ongoing spreading of disease, and natural disasters to name a few. Yet, Clark wants everyone to remember that “God can do more in the blink of an eye than you can a year from now.”
He tells the story of a sick team member who the Holy Spirit instructed him to pray for “sudden release,” and references how an imprisoned apostle Paul prayed, sang praises and the shackles fell off, and how the women with the issue of blood crawled through the crowd to touch the hem of his garment and was suddenly healed.
“Hebrews 11:1 to me is one of the most misquoted verses, ‘faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’ but they leave off the first word, ‘now faith,’ that ‘now’ is the key that sets up the verse. Your now faith instantaneous in the moment is the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen. So for this year, the year ain’t over, God got a whole lot of time to do a suddenly now,” he confidently proclaims.
Check out Rev. Clark’s radio shows “Living The Adventure of Faith” every Wednesday at 11 AM (EST) and “Friday Night Gospel Romance – The Sounds of Passion,” every Friday at 11 PM (EST) broadcast on americanpatriotradio.com
To learn more, go to Synder Press, LLC., and Expectant Faith World Ministries
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