The reason for our departure from the church we mentioned in the last blog is critical to the story we are telling here. Before we deal with that, however, it is important that you know about a revelation the Lord gave me in the early morning hours sometime in 1998.
I was laying in bed awake very early in the morning when a moving picture of sorts started to play in my mind. In it, I saw a man, who I knew was me. He had some sticky paper on his hand. He was shaking his hand vigorously to remove the paper, but to no avail. When he grabbed it with his other hand it became stuck to that hand. He bent down, put it on the ground and stepped on it. The paper became stuck to his foot so that even a violent shaking would not dislodge it. Again he stooped and pulled it from his foot only to have it stick once again to his hand. In desperation he smacked his hand on his forehead and when he removed his hand, the paper was stuck to his forehead. Now in abject confusion as to how to resolve the situation he stood and pondered. A hand reached down from above and pulled the paper from his forehead, removing it into the darkness. God spoke to my spirit and said, "That is how it is with your sin. You can do nothing about it, but I have taken it and removed it as far from you as the east is from the west." (If that phrase sounds familiar try looking at Psalm 103:12.) I do not really take pride in the fact that I can be a smart aleck in virtually any situation, but I said--and it is as though the Lord knew I would--"I know, and you have forgotten it." I sensed Father God looking down and shaking His head at my statement. He said, "David, that is an anthropomorphism. I do not forget anything. But it is as if I have forgotten it because I will never bring it up again. And if anyone else ever brings it up again you can know they are not speaking for me." This was to become a pivotal revelation. Although it contained no new theology to me, it gave me a concrete way to tell if another person was speaking for God in certain situations.
One Friday afternoon in the fall of 2008, the pastor called me on the telephone and asked if I would be attending the men's breakfast the following day. I said I would and he asked if I would come to his office afterward to speak with him. Although I have discovered over the years that an invitation like that usually portends an uncomfortable conversation, I agreed. After the meeting the two of us adjourned to his office. He told me he had talked to a woman the previous week who had told him I owned a collection of pornographic videos and had even appeared in one. I am not certain I have ever felt quite that level of shock at anything that was said to me previously. For the record, I have never even seen a pornographic video. As a young adult, I had been invited to view an X rated movie during an Army National Guard drill weekend. Within about the first five minutes I decided that was not my kind of activity. It was only upon reflection that I realized this accusation was the devil escalating his attacks against me to another level.
The pastor had no empirical way of knowing whether the woman was telling the truth or not. However, he explained his reasons for giving any creedence to her allegations. By way of evidence, he reminded me of several other things I had been accused of over the previous fifteen years. I knew a few of those things to be true, but in my mind it is still questionable as to whether there was ever any actual wrong done. I will, however, admit to less than excellent judgement in failing to avoid even the very appearance of evil. I would later discover the majority of the accusations were unknown to me at all or were incidents that had never been verified. I declined to discuss any of the allegations because the most recent of them was already a year old at that time and I have some understanding of the spiritual power of our words. I fully believe that to give voice to those things would be to give them life when they should have died months or years ago. Naturally, I also had a problem with him even bringing up those things. I have a revelation, by direct word from the Lord and validated by scripture that says God will never bring up past sins. I question whether any of the things he mentioned could be considered sins. If they were, they are covered by the blood of Jesus and he was reminding me things God does not remember. If they were not sins, could they be anything other than spiritual attacks against my personal credibility?
The pastor offered counseling if I were having such a problem. He was courteous when he said that if the woman's allegations were true, I might very well be the reason the church was not doing any better than it was. He felt he had to ask for my resignation from the church board. I had sensed the beginning of the end of my ministry in that church almost a year earlier, but had remained faithful because that is who I am. It had not occured to us that we would be leaving under such unfortunate circumstances. In fact the pastor was very disappointed when my letter of resignation from the board also indicated that we would no longer be part of that church.
We were out on the street, without a church home, one more time. This time there were more potential churches to visit. We decided to revisit some churches we had passed on previously and to check out a few churches that had been started while we were attending our former church. We even visited one of the churches mentioned earlier in this blog, but knew when we visited that nothing had changed in the years since we had left.
In searching online for the telephone number of a church we wanted to visit, we came across the website for a church we vaguely knew existed, but had not previously considered. In perusing their website, we discovered the church belonged to an association of churches with which we were familiar and believed to have sound doctrine according to our understandings of scripture. We had one other church left on our list to visit so it was two weeks later that we made our visit to that church. What we found when we entered that building was a group of people who had good concepts of worship, teaching, fellowship, giving, and ministry. Within the next few months we attended the mandatory, introductory class for those wishing to be part of the church. That particular church has no official membership. Instead those who wish to be part of that fellowship, exchange vows with the current participants on what is known as "committment Sunday." Prior to our committment to the church, I felt it was important to inform the pastor of the allegations that had been made to our previous pastor about my participation with pornography. My feeling was that if that allegation had walked into one pastor's study, it could certainly walk into a second pastor's study. I felt it far better that he hear it from me.
Having completed the basic requirements for inclusion in the life of that church, we participated in committment Sunday and settled into getting aquainted with the other people who attended the church and finding exactly where we fit into the body life.
A few weeks later, I received an invitation to visit with the pastor in his office. We set the date and time. When I arrived at his office, I found there was only one item on his agenda for the meeting. He had visited our former pastor and had been told about the allegations against me. All he wanted to know is if I were ready to confess my faults and repent. He said he had a list of twenty different allegations given to him by the other pastor. I am not sure if he realized that list was compiled from allegations over the previous fifteen years or not. I am aware of no more than half the allegations on that list myself. (If you have read the post entitled, "Back to 1987" this may sound hauntingly familiar. It did to me.) When I mentioned that many of the things he had heard had never been verified and might not even be true, he said he knew they were true because another pastor had given them to him. He did not want to hear any defense.
This catches us up to the present day. It is clear to me that history is in the process of repeating itself (and has already in some ways) in an twenty year cycle. It seems anyone should be able to see the similarities between the events in that first church we attended in Santa Maria and the one just mentioned. Harold Hill, in his 1970s era book, How to Live Like a King's Kid, defined coincidence as being when God performs a miracle and chooses to remain anonymous. Using that as a working definition, we must consider the possibility that we are facing a work of God in the present situation.
Tom Demaree of Pentecost Walk says he hesitated to start that ministry thinking himself unworthy of such an undertaking. In the middle of his argument with God he heard, "You are the third person I have asked to do this. Shall I go on to the fourth?" Obviously we know the answer to that question.
Now we are faced with two, strikingly similar situations, separated in time by twenty years. Not long ago I was complaining to the Lord that the devil had stolen the past twenty years of my life from me. I have to wonder, had I recognized the spiritual battle that was going on those twenty years ago, if we, the Christians in the Santa Maria valley would already have won. How many people might have been born again and entered into everlasting life had the conflict been understood? How much more abundant would our collective lives be? How many more people would be worshipping Lord Jesus as they go about their daily lives and participate in church services? Twenty years later, we have another chance to enter the conflict. This time we are going to fight and we are going to win. God promises us, "...the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits." (Daniel 11:42)
No comments:
Post a Comment