February 25, 2001

Monica,

Then God said to Jacob, "Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau."

I have noticed something interesting. People tend to go back and seek God where they found him before. Jacob had his first personal experience with God at a place he called Bethel because he met God there. When he had gone his own way for a while and even had foreign gods in his house, God told him to go back to the place where they had first met.

I have noticed this tendency in my own physical siblings and in myself. Aunt Ginny met God in an Assembly of God church. She goes to church just about every Sunday "to get charged up to make it through the week." That is where she finds God the best even though I am sure she knows he is in his temple with her all week.

Uncle Rich seems to have had his most powerful experiences with God when he had himself in big trouble. I think even after he was devoted to the Lord he subconsciously walked into another big mess a few years ago when he needed to draw closer to God. It was stupid what he got himself into, but there he again found a powerful experience with God. Shortly after that he volunteered to smuggle Bibles into a foreign country. He walked deliberately into a dangerous place to enjoy his trysting place with God. And he had a wonderful, powerful time the first year. The second year it was not as good when he went back. Just a guess, but I would say Father did not want him to get addicted to that specific trysting place. Father was leading him into a new experience--an anointing of oneness with his missing side.

I, opposite of Aunt Ginny, found God when I was at home alone when I was in grade school. I attended Lankerville Elementary School through second, third, and fourth grades. Sometime in there I saw that I had no control over a lying spirit (not my words for it at the time--I was totally ignorant of all spiritual truth). I just believed that God was real because my parents told me he was. The church we went to never ever mentioned being born again, baptized in the Holy Spirit, or speaking in tongues--much less being delivered from a lying spirit. I had gotten caught almost red-handed at something at school, but I could not own up to it. I lied vehemently in the face of condemning evidence.

When I got home alone, so help me I don’t have any idea how, but Father saw how distressed I was that I had been unable to own up to my guilt and he sovereignly gave me wisdom to cry out to him about it. When I did, I met God. If believing because my parents believed did not mean I was born again, at that moment I certainly was born again though I did not hear the term born again for many years after that. I also at that same time was baptized in the Holy Spirit (whom I had never heard of), and I spoke in tongues as the Spirit gave utterance (though I did not with my understanding accept speaking in tongues until twenty years later). I remember speaking in tongues because I was filled with great joy [Hey, this little tot had just had a great burden lifted] and I went outside to a pile of ashes beside our back door, stood on the ashes and spoke in tongues as though I was speaking to an audience seated below me. After I did that I told either your deceased uncle David or Aunt Syl about the funny language I had been using. Although I do not remember which one of those two I told this to, I do distinctly remember that he or she was not at all impressed or interested. After that, thinking I had made the language up, I quit speaking it for twenty years.

So my experience in churches is that I come home emptied out even as Aunt Ginny comes home filled up. When I taught Sunday School, my highest spiritual time of the week was Saturday night and Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon, I was spiritually drained. I needed to get alone with God again to get recharged though Ginny is among the majority who do all their recharging in a church building on Sunday mornings.

It is no surprise that my latest pleasant renewal in the Lord Jesus Christ has come when I am alone again. I have been inside an established "church" only one time since I retired almost two years ago, yet I am more charged up than ever before.

Lesson--don’t ever, ever try to put God in a box. He does not fit in a neat package. There is no formula to post on the bulletin board telling people how they must draw near to God. He works in mysterious ways. Jacob’s trysting place was actually outside on the hard ground with a rock for a pillow. For many it is in the church. The apostle Paul seemed to find Christ best when he was getting his butt viciously kicked. Mine has always been alone and in my own house.

Keep drawing near to God. In other words, let the Flow go.

Love,

Dad

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