My Godwink Chronicles

One day, while home alone, I went to my front yard in total silence and solitude, as if I was the only one alive in my neighborhood.  It felt like one of those scary movies where a man or woman wakes up in a strange nightmare where they are the only one left alive in the world...like an episode I saw once on the Twilight Zone.  I felt totally alone.  I looked for some sign that God saw me, that He acknowledged me.  A direct and personal sign.  I thought about what that would look like.  Maybe it would look like a bird that lights a few feet away from me.  Birds don't usually do that.  Or maybe a breeze as I'm feeling hot.  Something from God, to me, personally.

I'm reading "When God Winks at You:  How God Speaks Directly to You Through the Power of Coincidence."  This book focuses on what I wanted to experience that day.  Squire Russel calls coincidences God winks, personal communications from God to you and me.  I'm enjoying reading this book, having just finished the first chapter.  (Just finding the book was a God wink for me.  I was looking for a book about speaking skills, not thinking anything about coincidences.)  The first chapter ends with an encouragement to chronicle the God winks in the reader's life. I have a lot of them, and I'm sure you do too.  May mine encourage you in reading them, and may they encourage you to chronicle your own God winks.

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I wanted a ventriloquist dummy when I was about 5 years old.  I saw one advertised in a comic book for 5 dollars.  So I went into my living room, got on my knees, and prayed that God would give me 5 dollars to get the dummy.  I got up and didn't think anything more about it.  I wanted it, but not badly. I don't know how I knew to pray, or why I did.  That was that.

The next day, on my way home from school, I found one dollar on the ground as I walked.  For three more days, each day after school, while walking home, I found another dollar.  My mother asked, "Where are you getting the money?"  "I'm finding it," I told her.  On the fifth day, my little brother ran ahead of me and said, "I'm going to get the dollar today."  I raced him for it.  Then my baby sitter, who walked us home everyday, said, "I found it," and picked up the last dollar bill.  I knew God was teaching me a lesson about competition.  I was kind of mad with my brother, but again, as children do, I didn't think about it.

Years passed.  Somehow, my uncle found out that I wanted a ventriloquist dummy.  (My dad told him, now that I remember.)  Intrigued, my uncle bought me the very ventriloquist doll I wanted.  I checked out a book on ventriloquism and practiced.  I got so good at it that I asked a friend of mine to let me pull his hair with him opening his mouth with each pull.  He agreed, and I "threw my voice" into my friend Khari.  We both got in trouble and were sent to the principal...our teacher thought Khari was talking to me!

"We exist to do things that can't be done without God's special supernatural grace."  John Piper.
"Apart from me, you can do nothing."  The Lord Jesus

I want something I can't have without God:  I want every person I meet to see and know that God is with me, just like with Joseph in the book of Genesis.  But I can't make people see God in me.  And I can't make God reveal Himself through me. All I can do is ask God to do it, and live in a way that let's God do it.

How is that?

Faith.

It is written, "The just shall live by faith."  I became a Christian by faith, and I live the Christian life by faith.  More specifically, by prayer.  I prayed "the sinner's prayer," and I keep praying the saved person's prayer.  Jesus, help me, because without you, I can't do anything eternally worth doing.

I know this to be true.  I can't be a Christlike man, husband, or father without the Spirit of Jesus helping me every single moment.  This is a solid fact.  So everyday, all I can do, and all we who believe can do, is pray for God's power, and trust him to give it.

Meeting God

"The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him." Habakkuk 2:20
"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God?" 1 Corinthians 6:19

Every time you meet a believer, you encounter God in that believer.  Every time.  And you know it.  You feel Him.  God's eyes looking through the eyes of the Christian.  God's voice speaking through the daughter of God.

You meet God every time you meet a believer in Christ.  Every time.

"I don't think so," some of you may say.
But a lot of you may not.  You know what I mean.

You stop using profanity, or you become more aware of it when you do.
You feel uncomfortable when he prays before he eats.
You feel uneasy if she says, "God willing" when she speaks about tomorrow.

That's because you meet God in that believer.

Every time.

God can be in you too, if you want Him to.

Is God boring?

Or, is a "personal relationship with the Lord" boring? 

It depends.

Some think of a relationship with God as reading the Bible, individually or in Christian community, meaning at church meetings.  Every now and then God may "show up," depending on the denomination.  Some one may speak in an unknown language, pass out, or get healed...maybe.  A demon may scream through the mouth of a person in the front pew, and a "deliverance minister" may engage in spiritual warfare, vehemently commanding the demon to come out...after asking it's name and origin of entry.  A prophet may give "a word" that may or may not be relevant or even true. 

But most of the time...Bible Study after Bible Study after Bible Study. 

Is this what Jesus came for, Bible Studies?

True, it's not like God is here for our entertainment or excitement.  We exist for Him, and not He for us.  True indeed. 

As I write this, I feel bored.  God is in me.  How can I feel bored with God in me? 

Is God boring?

No.

Where is God when I feel bored?  Has he "left the building" that is my body, His temple? 

No.

He made it clear to me this very morning that He is with me and in me.  He made His love known to me, that He wants my best.  I felt thankful for this affirmation from His Spirit. 

I am blessed with the Spirit of God in me, the promise of eternity, a job, a beautiful wife and six beautiful children.  Health.  Sanity.

But I'm bored.

What is boredom in the presence of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus?

It must be a lie.  I have life and life abundantly in me. 

Boredom is a kind of death...deadness...purposelessness...meaninglessness.

But my life is far from meaningless. 

My purpose is the knowledge and likeness of God.  To know God and be like Him is not boring at all.

I resist boredom.

Living what we believe

Mildred Lisette Norman, an American peace activist, said that we should live what we believe. James, the brother of the Lord, said it this way, "Faith without works is dead." He said to be a doer of the word and not merely a hearer.

If we believe in a living God, should we not have a living relationship with Him?

If we believe in a personal God, should we not have a personal relationship with Him?

How do persons relate? Is it not through words in conversation?

If we believe this, we should live this. We should speak to God, expecting Him to respond to us...in words...in a conversation.

But many are considered insane when they say they converse with God.

Insane.

Now what could be more sane than conversing with God? Whose mind is clearer: the one who ignores the voice of God, or the one who enjoys it?

Our belief comes from hearing, and our hearing from the word of God, according to the Apostle Paul. And the Lord Jesus said that we live by the very words that come from the mouth of God, not from the finger of God, not from the writing of God. In fact, Jesus said, "It is written," not "it is spoken," "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

I emphasize this because we in western culture emphasize writing, exalting the written word above the spoken word. But the written is a servant of the spoken. We write when we cannot speak. We write to make permanent what was spoken. God spoke the heavens and the earth into existence. He didn't write it into existence. What is written is a record of what was spoken.

God speaks.

Do we believe this?

Then we should live this.

Is God an "Absentee Landlord?" (Part 2)

Some say they only feel like God is absent, that it only seems like he's an absentee landlord. These acknowledge this as a dishonorable lie. They resist it.

Yet others speak with the same venom of the serpent in the movie mentioned previously. They even resent those who experience God's presence daily, even in adversity. They shun the ones who maintain communion, the very ones who could help them fight the deception. Those who feel far from God can be helped by those who feel near. Indeed, if I draw near to God, and God draws near to me, then those who draw near to me indeed draw near to God.

Of course the ones experiencing divine loneliness need nor want a mediator among men and women. They don't want a go-between. They want to know God directly, for and by themselves. This is good. Until then, they accept indirect communion, for whatever reason.

But those who revile God as distant need to be reminded of the truth:

He is not far from any of us.

His son came from heaven to be one of us' dying and rising from the dead for us.

His Spirit came to live inside of us.

This is far from absentee.

Some shun the "personal experiences" of those who are close to God, making it clear that "their experience is not every one's experience."

Forget the experiences of the so called few, if they must be forgotten. God made us all and is near us all, according to Paul. Jesus died for all, for every man and woman. This should never be forgotten or taken for granted. Creation and salvation are not the actions of an absentee landlord.

God is near to all, felt or unfelt. Of course those who want to feel his presence want a good thing, and will receive what they want. They should settle for nothing less. But while they wait, they should not dishonor the one who never left them nor forsook them. They should honor him, the invisible one; the one closer to them then the breath in their nostrils. He breathes into their nostrils the breath of life. He is their very life. There is nothing closer to the living then their life and breath itself.

Where is God? He is in every breath you and I take. For it is written, "The Spirit of the Almighty has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life."

Is God an "Absentee Landlord?"

"Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Ahaha. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He's laughin'....He's a SADIST! He's an absentee landlord! Worship that? NEVER!"   Al Pacino as the devil in "The Devil's Advocate"

I left out the profanity, though I considered leaving it because, well, it's the devil. He's profane. The movie gives one of the best depictions of the evil one I've seen, though he's still too charming.
The key point is that the devil, the accuser of God, calls God an "absentee landlord," a description that I've actually heard from the mouths of Christians. Words attributed to Satan come from the mouths of those who claim to be his children.

Now of course the movie is fiction. But is this better? Is it better that even nonbelievers know that considering God an "absentee landlord" dishonors him?

I've actually had an absentee landlord, who came to be known as "the voice." I never saw him or met him. We only talked on the phone. But I could talk to him. If I sought him with all of my heart, I would find and talk to my absentee landlord. Yet God is made out to be worse than even this. Those who accuse him, with the devil, of being an absentee landlord, make God out to be even more absent. They make God out to be unreachable, no matter how hard the seeker seeks him.

In doing this, they make him a liar, because he promises to be found by those who seek him with all of their hearts.

This is the irony: God is and will be absent from those who consider Him so, from those who doubt his presence and his desire to be present.

Where is God? He is with those who refuse to believe the lie of his absence.