St. Michael's Healing Prayer Services on Thursdays long ago

We hurt each other when we project our way of seeing God onto all of His reality. As if we speak for Him. We never speak for Him; He speaks for Himself. Through His Word, and into the spirits of those that He made, especially those who love and know Him.
We err, I think, when we take words received from Him, meant for us alone, and project them onto everyone.
The Lord may have told one in the body not to eat meat, one not to miss church, one to only pray in their prayer language. We hurt each other when we impose these words spoken to us on our brothers, as these things may not be part of the reality that God made for them.
We are not allowed to pick and choose which parts of His Word we are to follow, but "words" from the Lord are, I believe, given to us alone. They are for our edification, for our obedience, for our worship and focus. Please God, do not let us beat our brothers over the head with them.

The gift of grace, which Jesus Christ died to offer to us, also allows us, I believe, the opportunity to enter into a place that transcends what we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears. The Spirit of God is not encumbered, as we are, by time or space.

A priest, who I really loved because the first time I saw him he glowed, gave a wonderful sermon on believing God for the impossible. It was the last sermon that he gave at that church, and I saw a vision that night of both Jesus, and someone who I love , standing at the alter. It made me so happy to see them, both of them. So---what was happening here?

Was God speaking to me? Or was I engaged in wish fulfillment with hallucinatory tendencies?

I heard some one say recently that the Word of God fits reality. Basically, that it works in the real world, and I believe that this is true.

But what do we do with all of the things in the Bible that do not fit the reality that we normally experience? The miracles of Jesus, the flood, the whale, the Red Sea parting, the taking up of Enoch and Elijah, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the tongues at Pentecost?  I believe that the Gospels, and all the “stories” in the Bible, are true; and this is due in large part to the fact that almost everything in the Scriptures point to things that transcend the “real world”.

I see visions, and I dream dreams.

I love the Word of God.

I have come to understand that many of the things that look like they may be bad things, may be good things, in disguise. Things our eyes can’t see.

Bad dreams are not portents but warnings, signposts. They are kindnesses; a still, small voice.

There is no need to fear, because God is not angry with me.

These are some of the things that I believe God has given to me to explore, and these are the things that my writings here will be about. Hopefully I will be educated by those who read these musings and care to comment, and in the end I hope to see Christ more clearly. This is what I want for both myself and everyone else.

 EVERYBODY needs an editor.

                                                      

It changed my life when I heard a preacher say “God is not angry anymore”. I had a vision at that moment of the Father sitting across a desk from Jesus, and the Lord Jesus said, “I’ve got this”.

If we are in Christ Jesus, God is not angry with us. Jesus picked up the check.

                                                

Sin is an issue, for all people at all times. I know that I still sin, and will until I am like Christ. (1 John 3:2)  But I have made the decision not to call myself a sinner anymore.

I know that this sounds almost heretical. “I’m just a sinner saved by grace” is a phrase that you hear from a lot of Christians and from a lot of pulpits, but I am coming to believe that God is not really honored by such speech, and that He is much more pleased when we really know what His Word says about who we are as believers, and set about learning to walk as if we are all that He says we are. 

I was a sinner, cut off from God, dead in trespasses and disobedience. But God, in His great mercy, made me alive in Christ (Ephesians 2). Somehow, even now, I am seated with the Lord in heaven (!!!). 

I must remain on the alert, because sin is crouching at the door (Genesis 4:7), and the devil roams about seeking to devour me (1 Peter 5:8), and the enemy seeks to ensnare me. To deny that I am still capable of grievous sin is delusion, but I have come to believe that the Spirit of God, who lives inside of me, will protect me if I am sensitive to His voice. 

Jesus bore my sins in His body on the cross, so that I might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds I am healed from the power of sin and death (1Peter 2).

I read in the second chapter of Colossians that Jesus makes me alive with Him by forgiving me of my sins. This is my only real glory, that I am alive with Him, in Him.

Jesus, alone, will save me from this body of death.

When I do sin, He is my advocate, and will forgive me if I ask for forgiveness.

                                                             

Do any of the Epistles tell us that we remain sinners after we accept Christ’s death for us? Did Jesus ever tell us this?

Instead we are called a new creation, born of the Spirit of God who comes and lives inside of us (II Corinthians: 5). This same Spirit is sealed in our hearts as a “pledge” from God, Who “manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place” (Chapter 2), Who “makes us adequate as servants of a new covenant”, Who “transforms us” so that we, who are in Christ, reflect the Lord’s glory (Chapter 3).

We are “sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling” (I Corinthians 1), by God’s grace through Christ Jesus enriched in “everything”, in all speech and knowledge, the “testimony concerning Christ confirmed in you (us)”. By God’s will we “are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (v.30). We have the mind of Christ, (2:16) and all things belong to us as we “belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God” (3:22, 23).

This is who we are now; this is who I choose to be.

I read somewhere that the only way to write is to bleed on the page. So here goes…

The girl remembers the time that she knew that she was different and maybe alone.  She just does not remember how old she was. It was fall, and cold .She didn’t like the cold. It was so cold at the bus stop, waiting for Mr.Gant the bus driver to pick them up, all the kids in the neighborhood, the boys older than the girls. The boys seemed so old, mysterious and mostly nice (except for the one who was later to be diagnosed as mentally disturbed, which the girl knew even then, because normal people are not cruel, correct?)

Who am I trying to kid. I am no writer. Although the crazy boy and Mr. Gant did exist (and he was wonderful, Mr. Gant-I always felt safe in the bus), they are completely incidental to this girl’s story. (Although I feel safe in buses to this day, and I instantly tune out people in whom I detect the least hint of cruelty)

I hope that cruelty is something I will not be accused of when I die. We won’t really know ourselves completely until we stand before the King, will we? I know that we get glimpses into ourselves and into the souls of others, (there would be no hope of repentance or redemption without it), but to really know moment by moment who we are or what we are capable of?

Does God leave us mostly in the dark for this reason? To spare us that view, the ugliness inside ourselves?

 There was a time when I considered my life so uneventful and uninteresting that I lied all the time. I became quite proficient at it, actually. Lying is something that is scarily easy to perfect. One or two verifiable facts (I was there at the farmhouse, I was 17), woven together by half truths and outright fabrications. I never did it to hurt anyone; just to save myself some grief usually, or to make my life seem more appealing.

Once or twice I did it to hide things that I knew I couldn’t bear (he did rape me in that farmhouse, in the barn, actually, even though he said I was beautiful-did that make it alright?), or to spare my parents’ feelings, but mostly I lied because it was easier than seeing the look in peoples faces that said that I wasn’t enough. I lied to ward off rejection.

Not that this is an excuse, of course. And to be fair, I am sure now that most of the rejection I felt was probably imagined, but it became self fulfilling, and I became a loner, or alone, or whatever you want to call it.

People became “out of sight, out of mind”, and sometimes it worked.

I remember in detail the biggest bully of my childhood, Larry M, who later became a political consultant (Truth!) and tried to derail the career of our states first female governor, but I can only fleetingly see most of the people who probably loved me. I hate that.

I was a fat kid, and Larry was merciless.

I don’t lie anymore, at least not to other people. I’m probably still self-delusional, though. At times, the grandiosity of my wishes astounds me. When Paul tells us that the Lord is able to do exceedingly, abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think, I believe that this is true. I just have not seen it yet.

Night at St. MIchael's

This all happened at St Michael’s Episcopal Church at the evening service where I worship and sing. Our worship leader was on vacation, and he had arranged for another local musician, David Childs, to take his place.

St Michaels is an  “historically relevant” church in Charleston,  very beautiful, with the old box pews. Our band sets up and tears down all the sound equipment before and after every service. After setting up an hour late because of an organ recital that had taken place there that afternoon, the sound equipment wouldn’t work.

I sing with two college age kids, Caroline, a classically trained musician, and Damion,  a really great singer in the black gospel tradition. They are good friends of mine and I love them, but they are too young to know that life is change and were very put out with the fact that we had never met or played with this guy and that we had no time to practice. Even Ardy, our laid back sixty year old bass player, was becoming agitated.

Now the cool thing was that earlier in the week I had had one of those waking dreams where you really don’t  understand or remember all that happens, but I knew that the dream was about that worship leader, and that I woke up from it feeling very peaceful. Even in all the chaos I knew that something good was going to happen that night, and I told the kids that. We practiced a few of the 9 or 10 songs that we play a night, and the service was upon us.

David sang the first song by himself, with just his guitar, and there was so much sweetness and joy in his voice that it seemed to open up the whole sanctuary to the presence of the Lord.

For some reason I rarely find a real freedom in the worship at our church. God does speak to me often there; once I actually felt Jesus’ pleasure during a song, once I felt Him smile ( that was cool ), and once I saw the Holy Spirit as a big white bird wrap its wings around one of the priests while he gave a prayer. (This priest nearly began speaking in tongues at this point, so I know that I was not imagining it.)

But this night it was if God’s presence was filling the whole space around us. As we sang the next three songs I began to hear at first softly, then much more urgently, voices like a choir, perfectly pitched, and I looked around the sanctuary and so many faces in the church were glowing with a yellow light, and they were so beautiful. There were two people in the congregation that I did not recognize. They were both huge; solid and tall; a man and a woman; and I wondered if they were my choir. I closed my eyes and sang with the voices and my bandmates and then it was time for the sermon.

I don’t remember much of what the priest said because God was filling my heart with prayers and blessings for someone that I had not been able to pray for because they had hurt me. It was very sweet and I could do nothing but bless the Lord for it and thank Him, and He brought more people to my remembrance, mostly the children that I work with in the public schools. All their little faces kept coming into my mind and Jesus had a prayer for each one of them that He let me pray.

We sang “ All Creatures of our God and King” , and after the first verse I realized that my bandmates had dropped out and that only David and I were singing. Even though we had never practiced together our voices were speaking to each other, praising the Lord. And it wasn’t about either of us; it wasn’t about how our voices blended together or how the notes were right; the conversation was all about Jesus. ( Later, I remembered Malachi 3:16 so it’s all written in a book somewhere before Him).

But the really best thing was later. We did the songs for communion and the “choir” was back, filling the space in the church with this glorious SOUND ( it is really so hard to write about music!). As the procession was ending David did the most unusual thing; he stepped out of the way(he was in the pew in front of Damion and me) and started playing the  intro to “How Great the Father’s Love”. Damion then began to sing in a kind of broken, beautiful, high lonesome voice about God giving us Jesus  and the violence that Jesus suffered for us, and I was so proud of my friend and so thankful that the Lord had sent this really great person to sing for us.

Caroline and I came in on the second verse and though we had never practiced that song together it was as close to perfect as we have ever been as a group. None of us can sing the way we sounded that night.

On the third verse, Damion’s voice took off and both Caroline and I knew that we couldn’t follow. The whole church became still, everyone in the congregation stopped singing, and his voice just filled the sky. I have heard a lot of great music, a lot of beautiful voices, but I have never heard anything like Damion that night, especially from two feet away. When he stopped singing no one moved; even the priests were silent. It was incredible.

As we were packing up I asked about the “choir”, and  I couldn’t find  anyone else ,either in the band or the audience, who had heard them. And  as I was saying goodbye to our visiting praise team leader, asking him, very sincerely, to please come back, we really looked at each other for the first  time and I realized that his eyes were the same eyes from my waking dream.

My Life in Pictures