my life experience spiritually has been, roughly speaking;
1. fearing i would die and go to hell as a child. this period was marked with a number of prayers for Jesus to come into my heart and save me and trying to ape what i saw older believers do...but no words other than the occasional short ejaculatory prayer when in great, perceived danger or when i thought i ought to... and reading the bible which made no sense to me and was dry as dust. i silently, almost unconsciously gave up on religion.
2.finally realizing i was a sinner in my early twenties. up to this time i viewed myself as 'good'. there was a kind of crisis which culminated in romans 6.11 in my junior year of college, prayer and...a change of sorts. for the first time the bible 'became alive'. i began to read it voraciously and then 'felt called to be a pastor' and went to seminary and studied the bible and became a pastor and became a pharisee for i continually was very aware of the 'fact' that i did alot of 'good' things and was better than other men. this period lasted nearly 30 years. spiritually it was like kissing through a screen door..no, not even that good..it was like knowing about Jesus as a fact rather than personally knowing and interacting with Him. in that period i remember, after reading the life of the great evangelist, george whitefield, God changed my heart to believe romans 9 which i had wrestled with and rejected quietly years before. i now believed that:
a. there is no injustice with God. v14
b. He said to moses,
'I will have mercy on who I have mercy..I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion'. v15
c. (salvation does not depend on
the man who wills
the man who runs, but on
God who has mercy v16
d. the Scripture said to pharaoh,
'for this very purpose i raised you up to demonstrate My power in you and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole world. v17 so then...
e. He has mercy on whom He desires
f. HE HARDENS WHOM HE DESIRES v18 (this was the sticking point for me...was God going to be who He says He is or was i going to make Him into what i wanted Him to be? that is the question for every human being to resolve..do i believe Him or do i not believe Him. notice in the next verse indicators of rejecting God...'you will say to me then, 'why does He still find fault?...who resists His will?) v19
g. who am i who answers back to God?
h. the thing molded will not say to the molder, 'why did You make me like this', will it? v20
i. the potter has a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use. v21
j. God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and make His power known, endures with much patience VESSELS OF WRATH PREPARED FOR DESTRUCTION all throughout human history to the end of time. v.22 (this was another 'bone' i could not choke down on my own!)
k. God does this (j. above) in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy (LIKE ME..finally!!!...and i did nothing at all...He did it all!) which He prepared beforehand for glory.
l. He said to hosea,
'I will call those who were not My people, 'My people' and her who was not beloved, 'beloved'...and
'it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, 'you are not my people',
there they shall be called sons of the living God.'
m. God, speaking through His prophet isaiah, made it clear that even His special covenant people israel avoided total annihilation as a nation only by His intervention...isaiah says,' except the Lord of sabaoth had left to us a posterity, we would have become as sodom and would have resembled gomorrah (both of which God totally destroyed except for Lot and his two daughter who He had to take by the arm and hurry them out to keep them from being likewise destroyed!) v29
3. #1 and 2 were marked by MY EFFORTS to seek and know and obey Jesus. #3 came within a year after my divorce in 2001. one day, out of the blue..as it seems, a tiny little thought came...
GOD IS CHASTENING ME...
i thought of hebrews 12.7f
'it is for discipline that you endure;
GOD DEALS WITH YOU AS SONS
for what son is ther whom his father does not discipline?
but, if you are without DISCIPLINE, of which ALL ARE PARTAKERS,
then you are illegitimate children and not sons'.
it started to flood into my heart that that had been my state for nearly 50 years of life...all the time thinking i was so good and yet lost as a skunk..wretched... blind, deaf, dumb, crippled, leprous, dead.
i thought of what i was currently doing.... stealing all God's tithe $ over a period of years and using it to buy 4 properties in allentown...so i could 'serve' God fulltime!
GOD WAS CHASTENING ME FOR THE FIRST TIME...I KNEW HE WAS CHASTENING ME.
I WAS HIS CHILD!
He had birthed me!
i hadn't done a thing!!
He was real..for the first time!!!
He was there..all the time... in my heart!!!!
He and i were were constant companions!!!!!
i still don't know when it happened...but it was sometime before...something i was not aware was happening..unless it happened when reading whitefield. i remember distinctly thinking when i close the book that a telescope in my hand had been turned around. when i opened the book i was passing judgment upon God (looking out the wrong end of the telescope)..when i closed it i knew one thing...that GOD WOULD BE PERFECTLY JUST IF HE SENT EVERY PERSON HE EVER CREATED TO HELL..INCLUDING ME. (looking out the right end)
4.within the last few years God is withdrawing..in a weird kind of sense. we still have an intimacy. i still have the sense that He is always with me...but He is progressively showing me my real heart. it is a truly awful sight. it's too awful to put in words. among the many verses He is speaking to me through, the three most potent now are:
A. luke 13.24 strive (AGONIZE) to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and WILL NOT BE ABLE. and along with this..luke 14.26f if anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes and even his own life, he CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE. whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me CANNOT BE My disciple.
this combined with God showing me my true inner self many times leaves me stunned and stupefied and brought very low spiritually. this was the time when i was going to do things for God. He leaves me no doubt that i am not in anyway qualified to do anything for Him. this is a time of great disappointment and brokenness...
B, these next two have been transformed into ejaculatory prayers as a result of this. the first is the heart transplant passage in ezekiel 36.25-7. it comes out something like, Lord, i cannot do what You are asking me to do. i have absolutely no heart for me. You have shown me that. I NEED A NEW HEART! do what You say here:
SPRINKLE CLEAN WATER ON ME and make me clean
CLEANSE ME FROM ALL MY FILTHINESS AND ALL MY IDOLS
GIVE ME A NEW HEART
REMOVE THE HEART OF STONE from my flesh
GIVE ME A HEART OF FLESH
PUT YOUR SPIRIT WITHIN ME
CAUSE ME TO WALK IN YOUR STATUTES
help me BE CAREFUL TO OBSERVE YOUR ORDINANCES
C. the other prayer that i am often led to pray these days is from luke 6.27-8,36-8
Lord You see my heart toward this person! oh Lord help me
LOVE MY ENEMIES
DO GOOD TO THOSE WHO HATE ME
BLESS THOSE WHO CURSE ME
PRAY FOR THOSE WHO SPITEFULLY ABUSE ME
BE MERCIFUL just as my heavenly Father is merciful
NOT TO JUDGE (ie. you are bad!)
NOT TO CONDEMN (ie. as a result of your badness, i don't want to have anything to do with you...i want to keep you at a distance and, if possible, work it so that i don't have to have anything to do with you!)
PARDON (ie. literally...i ask You Lord..to help me IMMEDIATELY (AS SOON AS I REALISE IT!) SEND AWAY every sin done against me or against anyone in such as way that i could always pray 'Lord, forgive me my debts owed to You as i forgive those who owe me debts..with the realization that in that moment I AM GLORIOUSLY FORGIVEN!!!!)
GIVE..good measure..pressed down..shaken together..running over!
oh Lord i AM desperately wicked. SAVE ME from myself and my many wicked thoughts, words and deeds. i know my only hope of salvation is in You and in the death and resurrection of Your son Jesus.
Lord, what in the world does it mean to a sinner like me when You say;
'I HAVE BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST and IT IS NO LONGER I WHO LIVE but Christ lives in me..
if any man is in Christ HE IS A NEW CREATURE; the OLD THINGS HAVE PASSED AWAY; behold NEW THINGS HAVE COME..??!
Lord, my only hope is that i am caught in the wretched distance between how You choose to see me as one with Christ and my actual, sin-filled moment by moment experience. deliver me and make my heart like You so that i may think, say and do what would please You...
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