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Hearing Voices and Losing One

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.

Isn't this the truth!!!

Bind us Together

There's an old chorus we used to sing that goes like this. "Bind us together Lord, bind us together, with chords that cannot be broken, bind us together Lord bind us together, bind us together in love." 

As I have thought about our house church meetings starting again next week, these words have been in my heart.  I guess what I am trying to say is that I have really missed this intimate time of fellowship, study and prayer, not to mention the great meals.  I think it has been good for us to use the summer for other types of outreach, and for family obligations, vacations, etc.  Another good thing the time off has done, is to make me really appreciate the special bond I have with my church family.  I REALLY DO LOVE YOU GUYS, and I have missed our Wed. evening gatherings.   Although we are indeed the church, wherever we are, or wherever we go, there is still a special strength that we receive from being together with other believers. I would encourage anyone who is not part of a house church, to hook up with one.  You will be truly blessed. 

It has been a great summer, but the school bells will soon be ringing, the footballs will be flying, the band will be marching, and I will be back with my house church family.  I can hardly wait. "Bind us Together Lord."     AMEN

Going To Family

This article was written in December of 2001.

When I was growing up my brothers and sisters and I were very active in family. Our parents were both family-going people, so from the day my brother and I were born we, too, went to family. Our family had a really good, full-time caretaker. He provided us with so many wonderful events and activities that made us want to keep coming to family. Every first day of the week we would all get dressed up and go to family. On that day we would spend 2 to 3 hours at family, mostly for the purpose of listening to the caretaker tell us about the family Book. The Book was available for all of my brothers and sisters and me to read and enjoy on our own, but we always felt we got enough understanding of it by listening to the family caretaker. Besides, he knew it better than any of us anyway; he was a professional family caretaker. On "family day" we would also get to see other people who we didn't normally see very much throughout the week. Everyone was always very cordial and pleasant, and it was always exciting to see new and different faces at the family meeting. This especially pleased the caretaker. After awhile it almost appeared that it was the goal of the family to have more family members, or at least to have more people come to the family meeting on the first day of the week.

In my town, there were several different families. All them were very diverse. They looked different. They talked differently. They did different things. We never associated a whole lot with these other families. Now and then someone might get upset with their own family and go and visit another one, or vice versa. Whenever that happened it always made the caretaker nervous, and he usually would want to meet with that family member to make sure everything was okay. But sometimes we lost some family members to other families in town. But we also gained some family members from other families in town. This was especially true as our family grew larger and began to provide more activities and events. We were very proud to be part of the biggest and best family in town.

One thing I never quite understood about the family was how it was structured. Instead of being chosen for tasks and functions according to what we were gifted to do, our brothers and sisters (well, mostly just brothers) were voted to these roles by the other family members. Then the selected, or "elected," leaders of the family would get together once a month to discuss how the family budget would be spent. This often turned into an very grueling and stressful process for the caretaker. No one ever really knew the reality of what went on in those meetings, especially in the heart of the caretaker. He spent long hours at the family (often the building in which the family met would also be called the family, this was confusing at first, but after awhile you get used to it), in his office preparing proposals for the family leaders, hoping they would all one day catch his vision for the family.

Another very strange thing about our family was the family meal. This was probably the most bizarre event of all family events. First of all, it was hardly ever a meal. Every now and then, say once a month, we would all share a real meal together, usually after the family meeting. But the weekly meal was more of a ritual. There's no doubt it was for a special purpose, and had much meaning. But it was the only meal I ever had where I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone beside me, or even look at anyone beside me for that matter. There was always music played for the meal, but it was very solemn, almost funeral-like music. This was the one part of our family meetings that I always felt had much more potential to bring the family together as a unified group of people who loved one another. Meals usually always do that everywhere else. What better place to have that happen than in a family?

I always thought one of the most difficult jobs anyone could ever have would be a caretaker. It had to be a difficult task trying to help people of the family understand how to be a good family member and share the work of the family, especially when this "persuasion" had to be done primarily during the 30 minute talk the caretaker would always give in the family meeting on the first day of the week (he had to be sure his talk was no more than 30 minutes, because if it went any longer some of the "key" family members might get angry and leave the family... which meant they would no longer be giving money to our family... this seemed to be a common fear of the family). It was very important to try to keep all the family members happy. And this was the caretaker's job. If he wasn't able to do his job, then the family would simply have to find another caretaker. If someone in the family was sick and in the hospital, it wasn't the brothers' and sisters' responsibility to go and visit that family member, it was the caretaker's. If someone in the family was going through a rough time, they made appointments to talk to the caretaker. In reality, much of the family weight was carried on the shoulders of the caretaker. This was probably why one of the first questions a person might ask when inquiring about our family was, "Who's your caretaker?" Of course it was always followed or preceded by this question, "How many is your family running now?" These seemed to be the most important questions about the family. No matter where you went, those were the two questions you were most likely asked by members of another family.

Whenever my brothers and sisters and I would get frustrated with our family we would usually complain about it, and talk about what we would do differently in the family. On a couple occasions we went to visit another family. It was a lot weirder than our family. They were organized much differently, and the caretaker was not like ours. It quickly became obvious to me that it is hard to find the perfect family.

I am now at the place in my life when I look back over all my family-going years, and I am thankful for where I have been, and what I have received from many other very special family members and caretakers. But it seems strange to me, this concept of "GOING to family." It almost doesn't even make any since. How can one GO to family? Obviously it is possible because I did it for years, and thousands of people still do it today. But is it what was originally intended for the family? Did the Creator of the family intend for His Family to consist of a meeting on the first day of the week, which is led by a caretaker and a few others? Did the Creator of the family intend for a major portion of our time, energy, and resources to go toward building big family buildings? And why is it that some family members seem more important than others? I know no one would ever admit that out loud, but it just seems weird that so many family members never do anything except come to the family meetings at the family on the first day of the week. Maybe I should go check out one of those mega-families or a new "emerging" family. I'll bet they know how to do family right. Who knows? Maybe "GOING TO FAMILY" is a dying concept altogether, and the family is now finally learning how to BE the family, function as a family, and grow as a family after all. It certainly sounds more natural. Many of our first-ever family members would probably wonder about my grammar skills if they heard me saying things like "going to family" or, "See you at family this week."

What does that mean anyway?

"Hello" From Myrtle Beach, SC

We're having as great time. But then, how could you NOT have a great time here???

Christianese

Recently I had a friend say to me, "You don't talk like most preachers I've known."

I said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "I don't know. There's just this sort of language they use. It's the way they say things, and you can tell they're a preacher."

I asked, "Well, is that a bad thing? Should I sound more like a preacher?"

He replied, "Oh no. You're fine the way you are."

"Good."

Here's a sample conversation of what I think he may have been talking about...

"Have you ever been saved," a wide-eyed young fellow questioned me with a question as we walked toward the bus. He handed me a booklet with the picture of hell on the front.

"Sure," I responded. "Once when I was 9, I was swimming at Jones' beach on Long Island, and a strong undertow began to drag me out to sea. My uncle heard my call and ?.."

"No, no, no," he interrupted. "I mean redeemed. Have you ever been redeemed? You know, reborn? Washed in the blood?"

"What?" I inquired.

"Convicted,  I mean. Have you ever been convicted?"

"Well, of course not. I've never been in trouble with the law."

He looked at me square in the eye and said, "I think you need to be delivered."

"Delivered? I was just waiting for the bus. I think I'll stick to that, but thank you very much." Now he looked confused.

The next time I saw Ed was at the bus stop again. “Hi Ed.  How are you?”

“Oh great,” he explained, “I was just having my quiet time.”

I said, "Quiet time? What does that mean?"

"Well, each day before lunch, I get in my prayer closet."

I was puzzled. "You pray in a closet? At work?"

"Oh, no, usually it’s in my car."

"You have a closet in your car?"  He changed the subject like the first day I met him. Again he left me confused. This Ed is quite a unique fellow I thought. As we parted that day, Ed gave me a little book that explained how someone could come into relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I read it and understood enough, and knew that was exactly what I needed. And so that night I submitted my life to Jesus, was born again as it stated in the booklet. Two days later, I told Ed. He was overjoyed. The following week we got together again and he strongly urged me to find a good body. Now I was surprised at this suggestion, but it sounded good to me. So I took his advice and began to comb the local health clubs for an attractive body.

When I met Denice, I knew she was just the one. We began to date and soon, she became a believer too. Ed rejoiced and told us it was crucial that we get planted so that we could grow together. I said to Denice, "Sometimes this guy's hard to understand." I told Ed I wasn't quite sure what he meant by planted.

He responded, "Committed. You know, both of you need to be committed."

"Now, wait a minute," I protested, "just because I don't understand what planted means doesn't mean I'm nuts. Anyway, I think to trust in Jesus is probably the most sane thing I've ever done."

Well, it was obvious that Ed's patience was growing thin, and he explained, "Bob and Denice, you've got to get plugged in. Don't you understand?"

Well, no, we didn't. I did wonder if getting plugged in had any connection with going out under the power. Something that I'd heard Ed mention and hoped it would never happen to me. Regretfully, I had to miss worship the next Sunday since I was out of town. But Ed and I had breakfast together later, and he filled me in on what had happened.

He said, "Boy, God moved! God really moved yesterday."

"Where did He go, Ed? I was just getting to know Him and now He's gone?"

"No, no, Bob, God hasn't gone anywhere." I was relieved.

"It's just that so many people were stepping out and moving in the gifts."

"You mean people were leaving the meeting? And what's this about presents?"

"No, no. It's the gifts. The gifts were really flowing," he said. Changing the subject, he said, "Hey, Denice was there, and boy, was she on fire!"

"Fire? Denice got burned? What happened? Is she ok?"

"No, Bob, you don't understand."

"And boy, that's an understatement."

He said, "Denice is just fine. It's just that I believe she's really called, and God really wants to use her."

Things were not getting any clearer. "Did Denice mention she was getting too many phone calls or something? And what's this about God wanting to take advantage of her?"

Ed sighed, "Can I walk in the light with you, Bob?"

I said, "Well, yeah, it's daytime, Ed." He just shook his head. I don't know what it is. Sometimes it seems like Ed and I have a hard time communicating.

It has been 2 years now since I was saved and delivered, plugged in, planted, and committed to a good body. God has been moving, and I've been stepping out in the gifts. I can hardly believe how God's been using me. I do have one new problem, however. It seems that all my friends can't understand me any more. When I share about my redemption, and how I've been washed in the blood as white as snow, and that I desire to follow the lamb, they just tune me right out. I guess they're just convicted when they see me on fire.