When I was twelve years old, I came home from school and walked in on my dad and mom wrestling in the middle of the dining room floor. They were not playing. Mom had a 22 caliber pistol and was trying to shoot herself. Dad was trying to stop her and she was trying to shoot him. I jumped into the fray and Mom said, “If you don’t get out of here, I’ll shoot you too!” Somehow, mercifully, they stopped fighting, the gun was put away, Mom went to her room, Dad went to his shop and I went upstairs to cry.
There was a lot of arguing in our family and lot of threats of suicide. Mom would say she was going to the river and throw herself in, or dig a hole and pull the dirt in on her. Dad would grab his shotgun and slam the door saying he wasn’t coming home. I cried a lot; fearing that their threats would be carried out to completion. Fortunately, no one killed themselves or anyone else.
In my senior year of high school I met my first wife who invited me to her church. In my first seventeen years of life I had been to Sunday School a total of three times, and I never saw dad and mom set foot inside a church, except for my sister’s wedding.
When the congregation started clapping their hands and singing with enthusiasm, I knew that they were not Methodists or Brethren. Methodists behaved this way in their early days but had long since gone all prim and proper. There was no prim and proper among the Pentecostals. They just didn’t care what anyone else thought about their worship, they just got down like they were at a barn dance. I remember gripping the back of the pew, wondering what I had walked into. My new girlfriend smiled at me and encouraged me to clap my hands with her and the others. That’s when I began to forget about what I should be thinking and started to feel something that I was unfamiliar with at the other three churches. I was feeling the Spirit.
It wasn’t too many services before I made my way to the altar at the invitation of the Pastor and found myself bawling like a baby as I asked the Lord to forgive me of my sins and save me. A bunch of people gathered around me to pray with me and their concern and love was an overwhelming experience. I wasn’t used to this much attention, nor was I used to having so many people show so much concern for my well-being.
At home there was barking of orders and expectations of obedience. Mom was the only one who did any hugging and assuring me that I was loved. I don’t remember being told by my dad that he loved me, nor do I ever remember sitting on his lap and being held. Dad never knew his real father and his mom was a tough German lady who worked as hard as any man on her farm. Dad wasn’t able to give something that he had never received. It would take many months in church before Dad hugged anyone back when they hugged him, and even ’til the day that Dad died, it was like hugging a door post when you hugged him.
So when I was praying at the altar with tears running down my face, I was also smiling because I was feeling light as a feather. I not only was having my sins forgiven and the weight of guilt lifted from my soul, but I was feeling the Presence of God’s Holy Spirit flood me with love. It was like I was sitting on my Heavenly Father’s lap and I could feel His arms around me as He pulled me close to His chest and allowed me to soak up His love and Presence. I just totally relaxed and let the tears of repentance and joy flow from the depths of my soul. It was like I was stretched out in the farm field soaking up the rays of the Sun while enjoying the shapes of the white puffy clouds against the deep blueness of the sky, without a care in the world. Pure rest and contentment.
I became the center of attention at the church, for a season, as I was always going back to the altar for more of this feeling. I would always pray intensely and sincerely, seeking to be filled fuller and fuller with His Presence or Holy Spirit. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone except me when the call came from God to preach His Word.
Matthew 28:11, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Jesus tells all who are weary and heavy laden to come unto Him. Many today are weary of the fast pace of this life, as they run to and fro trying to continually keep the inflow coming in to match the outflow going out; and the outflow keeps exceeding the inflow. Many are also burdened down with the weight of unconfessed sins, unforgiveness of others who have wronged them, unresolved anger resulting from emotional and physical abuse from others and from their own selfish lifestyles.
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Jesus promises rest to our souls.
When our souls are at rest, then our spirit and body are also at rest. We all know how the mind affects the health of the body; and the body can cause mental and emotional illnesses.
Jesus also speaks of His yoke and His burden. Obedience to His Word and teachings are the only true path to eternal peace and everlasting rest. We show our love for Him by keeping His commandments. Just as our children show their love and respect for us by abiding by the parameters of the household. Pleasing and respecting the one you love is common sense, if we want to live in harmony in the same room. It is when we start to please ourselves at the cost of others that disharmony permeates the atmosphere. Fellowship is broken many times because we have withdrawn from right to justify our wrong. What has God done to you that has ever hurt you? Yet we stay away from Him because we know our behavior grieves His heart. All we need to do to restore fellowship is to change our behavior to one of love and respect; which always results in obedience to His Word.
David says in Psalm 16:11, “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” David was a man after God’s own heart because he understood that he was a sinner. He showed that humility by constantly acknowledging the glory of God shown throughout creation and by spending time alone seeking the Presence of his Creator in song and prayer. The book of Psalms is full of his seeking more of God. Take time to read the 150 Psalms straight through, and you will walk away refreshed and with a greater hunger to know God as David knew Him.
When I walked in on Dad and Mom with the gun, I felt anger, fear and danger. When I knelt at the altar I felt love, peace and security. Jesus taught us to worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth. (John 4:24) Our educated, self-sufficient society has forgotten the Spirit and gone straight for the mind; establishing truth solely by carnal reasoning alone. But God is a Spirit and we are spirit, soul and body. To understand a spirit being, we have to relate with our own spirit, before we can grasp any truth with our minds. Our carnal minds have to be transformed into the mind of Christ by continually partaking of His Word, and His Word is Truth.
Acts 17:22-31 says, “So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
How do you decide to relax in the presence of a stranger? It is not the words and mannerisms alone, but it is intuition of whether his or her character is genuine and honest or not. If people are continually justifying their actions we have to wonder why they feel the need to persuade us that they are right. My dog Buddy is looking for something more than words and actions from the stranger who walks onto our property. Buddy’s instincts tell him whether to trust or not to trust this individual. But we humans have become too prim and proper to follow our gut, and are easily fooled by those who can speak flattering, clever words that tickle our ears.
Moses was so accustomed to being in the Presence of God that he told God that if His Presence did not go with him into the Promised Land, then he would just stay in the wilderness. God promised Moses that His Presence would indeed go with him and also give him rest. Rest and the Presence of God go together, just like Love and obedience and Spirit and Truth. (Exodus 33:14-14)
It is time to get back to feeling after God, as the deer pants after the running brook of refreshing water. Only then will we find the nearness of His Presence; and only then will our guilt be lifted from our souls, as He floods us with rest and refreshment from His Holy Spirit into our human spirits. Open your heart, shut the world out, acknowledge your need of Him by expressing it with sincere and honest feeling, and lift your hands in praise and worship as He makes His Presence known. Then open your mind and search His Word for confirmation of what you are feeling as part of the New Birth experience.