Have you ever said something with your mouth but never really believed it with your heart? That’s actually quite a tough question to answer I think. Tough only in the sense that the things that we sometimes “believe” in are actually not real beliefs at all because we have trouble accepting the reality of them. What I’m about to tell you is a story about the very thing I’ve just described. I think it can often be easy to find yourself guilty of a certain contradiction. God called me on mine and brought reality to bear on my flimsily held beliefs.
It was early evening when I got the call. My father had been rushed to the hospital. Nobody was quite sure what was wrong only that he was acting as though he were outside of himself. His motor skills were greatly diminished and his powers of speech were consistently eluding him. He was recalling random memories and making statements very outside of his natural character. The initial diagnosis from the doctor that would first treat my father was that he had suffered from a minor stroke. At the conclusion of that phone call I got in my vehicle and rushed headlong towards the hospital where my father had been taken. When I arrived in my father’s hospital room he was awake and surrounded by family. However, he was far from the dad I was used to seeing. Suffice it to say that he wasn’t himself. His words were hard to make out and his patterns of speech were completely nonsensical for a man who is usually intent on making himself understood. I sat down on an uncomfortable stool at my father’s left side and did what I could to keep him talking. My brother was there as well and we both joined the effort of trying to help dad come around. I don’t know how long we carried on aimless conversation with our father before things in the room fell silent. Then the voice was there in the silence. It’s a voice I seem to hear with more frequency as of late. I heard a question as clear as day ring out in the silence of my mind, “Do you believe I can heal your father?” I was slightly startled by the question but not the voice. I looked at my father, who was now sleeping, and his face contorted uncomfortably. I responded inward to the voice and replied, “Yes.” There was a brief moment of suspension before the voice responded, “Then look at your father and say ‘heal him’. You don’t have to say it aloud. Just say it and I will heal him.” Then I froze with uncertainty. The voice continued to softly repeat, “Say it.” Yet I found myself unable to move or even form a conducive thought. I didn’t know what was happening to me.
This mysterious “voice” that I’ve been describing might sound like something I created just to make a better piece of fiction. However, nothing could be further from the truth. There is no comfortable way for me to say this so I’ll just say it. I’ve come to accept that this voice that I hear is unmistakably the voice of God. One might be inclined to ask, “Well Chad how can you say with such brazen certainty that you know that God speaks to you? Don’t you think that’s just a little, if not dangerously, on the arrogant side? What makes you so special that God would take time to directly talk to you?” I’ll be very honest with you. I’m not sure why it is that God speaks directly to me. It’s not like I hear a voice out of the sky or witty banter from a pyro crazed bush. The voice is inside my head. That’s the only way I know how to describe it. But I don’t think it’s exclusive to me. I believe that God is speaking to many people today. I believe He has always been speaking to people. Take a look at the prophets we read about in the Old Testament. God spoke to each one of them and not every one of them has some fantastical story about how God communicated with them. Jeremiah described it like this, “God’s message came to me.” Well what does he mean by “came to me”. Take a look at this sample conversation between Jeremiah and God:
“What do
you see, Jeremiah?”
“I said,
‘A walking stick…that’s all.’”
“And God
said, ‘Good eyes! I’m sticking with
you. I’ll make every word I give
you come
true.’”
This conversation comes right out of Jeremiah 1:11-12. This particular translation is from the Message translation but I encourage you to go and just read the first chapter of Jeremiah. You see this conversational dialogue between God and Jeremiah that seems as natural as two buddies sitting around a kitchen table catching up on old times. Just a few verses before the ones cited above Jeremiah says that, “God reached out, touched my mouth, and said, ‘Look! I’ve just put my words in your mouth….hand-delivered!’” I’m not saying that I’m a prophet or that everyone who hears a word from God is a prophet because I believe God speaks to many people for many reasons. Jeremiah is but one example of how God spoke to people in ancient times but nowhere in the Bible does it tell us that such things were meant only for ancient people. There are many fascinating stories in today’s scope that give considerable weight to the argument that God does speak to us for varied reasons. Now let me take you back into that hospital room with my father where we last found me frozen with uncertainty.
After what seemed like the entire fall of an age, I was finally able to look hard upon my father and utter within myself, “Heal him.” For a moment there was a feeling of weightless exasperation and then the voice asked, “Do you believe that I’ve healed your father?” I wasted no time in responding, “Yes I do believe.” The voice left me with these final words, “Then he is healed.” And with that my father opened his eyes, sat up in his bed, and began talking as though his recent wrestling match with words had never taken place. He was lucid and astoundingly clear. It was like a transformation of sorts. As he sat and talked I felt a lurching feeling ride over all my senses. All I could think was, “My father was healed just like the voice, i.e. God, said he would be.” I believed and it happened. Over the next few days all the tests results from my father came back normal. In the end, when dad was released from the hospital, the doctor’s still asserted that he had in fact suffered a stroke but that he made an amazingly quick recovery. I was so spooked in one sense because I had never witnessed a healing first hand. Yet on the other hand I was overcome because I’d never felt so unmistakably close to the jaw dropping power of the Holy Spirit. But the story doesn’t end there. Travel with me just a few days ahead in time to a sleepless night with a guitar, the voice and something evil.
Saturday night wore tirelessly into Sunday morning. The clock mocked me with it’s blue letters reading 3 a.m. I was restless in bed with an itch to get up and do something. Typically when I get like this I either grab a book or my guitar. This particular night I chose the guitar. I headed off in another room in the house where I could play but not disturb anyone else that was sleeping. I sat down in a high back computer chair and began to strum quietly away. I felt the need to worship and be intimate with God so I tried to center myself to allow the Holy Spirit to come into the deepest parts of me completely without being hindered by myself. Then I felt it. The wash of the Holy Spirit. It’s a beautiful feeling. It feels like nothing else. It’s like I can feel every nerve ending in my body decompress and then warmth spreads through every extremity of my immediate reality. That’s when the surreal feeling swoons me. My mind feels like it falls to nowhere but oddly somewhere very important and necessary. I love these moments because I feel so near to God but this night was about to take an unexpected turn. Suddenly the room felt tense. I literally felt as though the walls were trying to swallow me. Then the fear came. I couldn’t explain what it was but it was like there was something malevolent in the shadows. I felt the unmistakable feeling that someone or something was in the room with me. Then the voice came to me, “Satan is in this room with you right now. Tell him he has no place here and that he needs to leave.” And that was it. I tilted my head over my right shoulder and simply said aloud, “You have no business here. Leave.” No sooner had I finished that last sentence when the room suddenly seemed to sigh relief. The pure, for lack of a better word, evil that I felt there in the room with me ceased to exist. Now let me make something clear. I used to be the kind of person who would say, “Satan does not directly visit people. How arrogant do you have to be to say such a ridiculous thing? After all, most people give Satan far too much credit anyway.” I will say this, I still do believe some of that. However, I’ll never again say that Satan does not come knocking on people’s doors anymore. The events of that night were so harrowing to me that when I went to praise band practice just a few hours later the dew of the experience was still fresh on my head. I felt a compulsion to talk about my experience over the last several hours but I couldn’t bring myself to voice it. I just felt silly saying all those things. In a way I felt like a hypocrite because I suddenly wanted to talk about something that I experienced but had always preached against with my own heart. As I continued to fight the urge to speak up about the experience my voice steadily began to fade. I didn’t have a sore throat nor did I begin to even remotely lose my voice until I started arguing with myself about whether or not to speak up about my strange night. By the time I got into the kitchen with the intercession team I was convinced that my voice was probably going to be gone by the time the praise band got rolling. As I sat there with the intercession team I heard the voice again, “Tell them what happened to you last night and earlier this week or I’m going to take your voice from you this morning.” So I reluctantly opened my mouth to the intercession team and the tickle that was persistent in my throat just a few moments prior suddenly vanished. I spilled my guts right there in front of the intercession team and when I was finished we prayed. I left the room and my voice felt fine. Odd but true.
If you know me well then you would know that to hear me talk like this is rather uncharacteristic. I’m not going to pretend like I can explain everything that happened to me in that particular week. I only know that it happened. Perhaps in time I will understand better but for now I’m not going to try and trivialize a truth I don’t yet fully understand. I just wanted to share.

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