Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
Over thirty years ago I came to a crisis in my spiritual walk. Becky and I felt called to start a church along Jim & Kathy Hill and Donna Culler. With the encouragement and blessings of our church we were launched into what I thought was to be an adventure with God. To make a long story short, it was an overwhelming failure. One day while earnestly seeking the Lord as to why He was not doing what I thought He was suppose to do, I had an open vision of a ramshackle shack built in the middle of a field. As I looked at the shack I saw a large bulldozer enter the field headed straight to the shack. In that moment I understood the meaning of the vision.
I was the ramshackle shack, the spiritual house I had built with everyone, but my own personal knowledge and relationship with the Lord. The bulldozer was the Holy Spirit and He leveled that house to its foundation. And that is what happened; everything in my life was leveled. It was not simply a failed mission to start a church. It was the most devastating time Becky and I have ever experienced. We were completely broken in our hearts. Looking back I understand we made things much worse than they had to be because of bad choices and decisions. We were naïve and immature, but God has caused it all to work for our good.
One day toward the end of that time I faced the hard truth about myself; I didn’t really know the Lord. Everything I thought I knew about Him had crumbled before me. Who I thought I was as a believer was so far from who I really was. I made a life changing decision that day. I determined I was going to spend the rest of my life getting to know the Lord, to really know Him on a personal face-to-face basis not just know about Him. No longer would I depend solely on other people’s revelations. I had to know Him for myself. For the most part I have been faithful to this one thing for over thirty years now. It is one of the best decisions I have ever made.
Several years ago Tommy Tenney wrote a book titled “God Chasers”. The one thing I remember about the book was that at some point in the life of a God Chaser they discover that God was chasing them all the time. When we understand that, everything in the quest to know God takes a dramatic shift. It took me way too long to get to the place where I could see He was pursuing me, looking for a relationship with me, but I see that clearer now than at anytime in my life and it is having a big impact on me.
One of the first things Jesus said after the resurrection was He called His disciples brothers (John 20:17). He had never called them brothers before. That is the true foundation for a real relationship with the Lord. We are family and He takes responsibility as the older brother who already knows the Father to lead us into that face-to-face relationship. We just have to let Him.
Many Blessings, BW