A tale of two tales, Part 2: You say you don’t need God?
Return, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am a husband unto you. Jeremiah 3:14, English Revised Version
A microburst of revival hit the camp where I worked as a counselor during the summer of 1975. For all of the staff and many of the campers, Jesus was front and center—whether you liked it or not. When God moves, no one can box Him in or shut Him out.
I was a leadership counselor that summer, meaning I trained teens in a two-summer program to be counselors. I had also gone through the program as a teen, and now—at the ripe old age of 20—I was training 15 and 16 year olds myself. But I was not the bitter feminist I had been the summer before; I had been born again and was on fire for Jesus. For an up-close glimpse into the revival that happened the summer of ’75, see https://www.firstofallpray.com/?p=1447.
One 15 year old leader-in-training that summer had also recently been saved, and she and I had an instant connection in the Lord. Susie’s face beamed whenever I shared my testimony with the other teens, and I always egged her on to tell her story as well, which she was thrilled to do.
In 1976, I returned to help direct the same leadership program. Susie was back as well for her second year of the training, and I was eager to catch up with her to hear about all of her adventures in God. I figured that once you were saved, you stayed on fire. Was I ever shocked to learn that this was not always the case!
Susie had backslidden over her past year in high school. She was gracious enough but made it clear that she had no interest in talking about the Lord. I was stumped, but I just loved her and treated her like all my other counselors-in-training. And I prayed for her.
After their first session as a group under the tutelage of three other twenty-somethings and me, the teens then launched out into the various areas and programs of the camp as junior counselors (JCs). They were not paid for their first JC experience, but many plugged in to other areas after that to make a whopping $30 or so a session. Susie was one of those who stuck around after her first cabin of kids.
Third session arrived, and the leadership program was devoid of boys for that 10-day period—first time ever. So the two male counselors ditched Laura, my cohort, and me to fill in at other positions for the session. That was fine; we had a great group of seventeen rambunctious girls, full of life and fun, and they didn’t seem to care at all about the missing guys.
Each leadership session went on a three-night camping trip, usually somewhere out on one of Missouri’s scenic rivers. We typically chose remote locations—not the big campgrounds—and taught primitive camping skills and rudimentary camp crafts. And mainly, we just kicked back and enjoyed nature and each other. But with this group of seventeen girls, the camp director felt we needed a third leader to accompany us on the camping trip, so he asked Susie to fill the bill.
Off we went, along with an ecstatic Susie, piled with our gear into a van and the back of Big Red. Big Red was a ramshackle old truck that had been there ever since I was a camper, outfitted with wooden rails surrounding the wooden truck bed, and those rails were the only things separating sleeping bags, equipment, and teen-aged girls from bouncing out onto the winding two-lane highways and gravel roads. Our drivers flew down those country roads, and we sang and laughed and hung on for dear life.
We made it to our spot—a very remote location on the Meramec River. What an amazing site! The girls made camp under a thirty-five foot cliff, and the three counselors set up closer to the river, nestling our ground tarps and sleeping bags on the luxurious comfort of the sandy bar by the stream.
Of course, at night, there was the campfire and s’mores following my favorite camp supper of foil packs with hamburger, potatoes, onions, and cheese baked in glowing embers before we built the fire into a towering flaming giant.
After the last song was sung and the last tale had been told, with the fire dying back to quiet crackling, I shared about the Lord of nature who loved all of us so much that He gave His Son. The girls listened attentively, but I noticed that Susie was looking down, not giving eye contact. After the girls retreated to their sleeping bags, Laura decided to turn in for the night as well, leaving Susie and me to talk.
She told me that her past year in high school was incredible. She had made a whole new set of friends and had become very involved in everything. I asked about her relationship with Jesus, wanting to minister the love and grace of God to her.
“I’m president of student counsel,” she asserted. “I’m popular, and I’m doing just fine on my own. I don’t need God.”
She was flirting with danger. As I argued and pleaded and shared with her out of Scripture that she certainly did need the Lord, that He longed for her to return to Him, she rebuffed every word I said.
I crawled into my sleeping bag, praying quietly for her long into the night.
The next morning, at the crack of dawn, a couple of girls bounded up to the counselors—snoozing away in our sleeping bags—ready to hike.
“Mmmmphh,” I mumbled. Susie volunteered to go with them, so I told them to be back by breakfast.
And what happened next to the girl who “didn’t need God” would be indelibly branded onto my soul—and hers—forever.
Tomorrow: On the edge of the cliff without God.
Read MoreA tale of two tales, Part 1: God works all things together for good
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28
I am a firm believer that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him and who are called according to His purposes. Notice, I did not say that I believe that God causes all things, as some erroneously believe. I do not and cannot accept that about the Lord who died for me. He only does wondrous things (see Psalm 72:18, KJV), and according to the Apostle James, “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (James 1:17).
Now this truth in Romans 8 does not mean that you’ll “float by on flowery beds of ease” as one of my favorite Bible teachers used to say. It doesn’t mean that you’ll no longer live in a fallen world; it doesn’t mean that natural law will be forever suspended for you (although God will provide miracles galore for you); it doesn’t mean that you will never suffer consequences due to lapses in judgment or sin; nor does it mean that the devil will never seek to attack you again. It simply means this: As you follow the Lord and love Him with all your heart, your soul, and your strength, you can trust that He will turn everything that comes your way around for your good because you are called according to His purpose. His mercies never fail (see Lamentations 3:22), and He cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully (1 Peter 5:7b, AMP).
This Romans 8 truth is where I choose to park my car, to anchor my boat, and to camp out for the rest of my life. Joshua said, “…as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15b), and I choose to say, “As for me, God causes all things [even demonic attacks!] to turn around for my good because I love Him and am called according to His purpose.” Because of our loving Heavenly Father and His precious Son and the mighty Holy Spirit, all things will turn around for our good and will be made into stepping stones for our feet as we embrace our God and His call on our lives!
When you go through trials, it is critical to remind yourself that God absolutely does turn all things around for your good. And like everything else in His kingdom, you access this wonderful privilege that belongs to you by faith—by simply trusting Him to do for you what He has promised in His Word to do.
This week I will be sharing two experiences from my life which clearly illustrate this fact. And although these two stories are completely unrelated, you will be surprised how God tied them together supernaturally to bring blessing and comfort to me when I most needed it.
We live, move, and have our being under the wings and the protective shadow of an awesome God!
Dorothy
Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass. 1 Thessalonians 5:24
But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. 2 Thessalonians 3:3
Read MoreMy own personal Pentecost
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. Acts 2:4
I plan to continue discussing the shift in prayer direction God gave me in April, but May 10th is a very important anniversary for me in my walk with God. Therefore, I would like to share about it with you before I pick back up on last week’s topic.
It was Saturday night on the 10th of May, 1975. I had just finished finals and was back in my hometown to prepare for my camp counseling assignment starting in June.
I was visiting a church in town that night with a friend from the college Bible study and her mother. This church had been experiencing power of the “Jesus Move”, and I had heard a tale (confirmed since then by many unrelated witnesses) about a strange phenomenon that had happened there sometime before the evening I attended.
According to what I heard, it happened something like this. At some point in one of the worship services, while the congregation was praising God in song, flames of fires were seen—not inside the building by the congregants, but outside, shooting up from the roof—by individuals in the neighborhood and folks passing by on the highway. Those inside worshipping God were oblivious to the sign from God until their service was invaded by the local fire department after several calls had come in to the station, alerting them to the church fire. I’m imagining that the leadership of that church could have paraphrased Peter in Acts 2:15-19, “This building is not on fire as you suppose, but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel…I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind…and I will grant wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke” (emphasis added).
The night I visited was relatively tame in comparison, but first, let me backtrack before I describe what took place that evening.
I had gotten saved at the end of December, ’74, and was water baptized in April. I was sold out to Jesus who had visited me, saved me, and landed me in a fervent, intimate body of young believers. But I lacked something that I desired with all my heart—the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues.
I knew about it because when my Bible study friends worshipped God and communed with Him, I sometimes observed their mouths moving quickly but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Just about all of them did it; it intrigued me, so I asked one of them about it.
“Oh! We’re just praying in the Holy Spirit!” she explained. “We’re speaking in tongues. You can read about it in Acts 2.” That’s all she said, and I went away all the more hungry, on a mission from God to learn about this mysterious baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in other tongues.
I read Acts 2 and everything else in the Bible I could find about the subject and kept straining in the meetings to hear what it sounded like. But these young people were “stealth” tongues-talkers; they did it regularly, but no one could hear their heavenly language! To this day, I enjoy praying that way at times when I’m in a crowd—a stealth tongues-talker in the midst of the world!
I lived on the seventh floor of my dorm and often sat on the heating register that was by the window as I looked out on the campus. More times than I can count that semester, I sat in that spot, mirror in hand, and said to the Lord, “Fill me with the Holy Ghost now!” And I would look in the mirror to see if He was moving my mouth at all. Nothing. That only resulted in this: I became even hungrier for the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
And there I was, on May 10, 1975, sitting in this vibrant church next to my friend and her mom, worshipping God, when a very strange thing happened. My tongue started “jumping around” in my mouth and I began to make quiet clicking noises. It didn’t scare me at all; it was soothing, but I thought it was odd.
I leaned over to my friend and whispered, “My tongue is clicking around in my mouth.”
She began punch-slapping me in the arm and whispered enthusiastically, “Oooo! Ooooo! Ooooo! You’ve got the Holy Ghost!”
So this is what it’s all about, I thought and kept on clicking quietly, still rather puzzled by the clicks.
After the meeting, I told my friend’s mom what I had experienced with the clicking, and she repeated her daughter, verbatim, “Oooo! Ooooo! Ooooo! You’ve got the Holy Ghost!” But she added a bit of wisdom to that and said, “Keep practicing. You can speak in tongues whenever you want now as you pray, and as you practice, it’ll sound more like a real language; you’ll grow in it.”
So my personal Pentecost launched me into a new avenue of prayer and communion with God. I practiced whenever I was alone, my language started sounding more real to me—not just clicks—and I grew in it, just like Mrs. Belt said would happen.
But then, five or six years later, as a young teacher, I went to the movies and watched a quirky comedy. It was about an empty Coke bottle falling out of a plane over Botswana, Africa, and landing on the head of a sweet bushman who lived a primitive life there with his tribe. The chaos and comedy and national crisis that unfolded were memorable enough (I love good comedies), but what gripped my gut with holy awe was this: the bushman’s language—clicks made inside his mouth by his tongue “jumping around” in there—was the very language I spoke on May 10th, 1975, when I was first baptized in the Holy Spirit!
Thirty-nine years later I’m still praying in the Holy Ghost, and I am still deeply grateful for this wonderful gift!
Dorothy
For these men are not drunk, as you suppose… Acts 2:15a
Read MoreMy validation
I’ll be taking one more week off from the blog. However, I wanted to share something with you first. Last week I picked up a book I wanted to reread. As I finished the third chapter, I thumbed through the rest of it to look at the underlinings and notes I had written inside way back when I originally read it, and I found something I had jotted down in the back inner flap—a personal manifesto, of sorts. Hope it encourages you in your relationship with the Lord, because it is not only true of me; it is true of you, as well. Here it is:
“My validation comes from God Himself. If I never pray another prayer, read another Scripture, sing another song, or share with anyone else, I remain validated only by the Blood. I will never again do any of those things to assert my value; I am valuable because God deems me valuable.
“It is because of my union with God through Christ that I am compelled to pray. It is because of His wonderful love for me that I love His Word. It is because of His complete redemption for me from my sin that I can sing with joy and thankfulness to Him. It is only because His deep calls to my deep that I can reach out to those in darkness and extend the Light to them.
“It is a privilege to pray, to read, to sing, and to share. It is not a burden or a performance. It is not an obligation. It is a compelling from the Spirit of God and is not born of a need to appear spiritual. If I pray, read, write, sing, or share to get acceptance, to maintain appearance, to make a name for myself, or to ease into certain circles, then I am out of line and need to swing some braided cords at my motives (see John 2:15).
“All that I do, I do because I have a vital love relationship between myself and the living God, forged in the blood of Jesus, paid for at a price more costly than I could ever afford. I will walk free because He wills it. I will throw off all shackles because He paid the price for my freedom. I will move by His Spirit because He paid for my right to do so, and I will move by His Spirit because He wants to use me to help release others from bondages, burdens, and boxes imposed on them by devils, sin, religion, and men.
“He whom the Son has freed is free indeed!”
Thank God for this wonderful liberty!
Please check back on Monday, May 5.
Until then,
Dorothy
Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Romans 8:33
So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36
Read MoreAfter Easter update
Hi!
Hope you had a blessed Easter and were able to spend some time with the Lord, rejoicing in all that He has done.
I will be taking a week (maybe two) off from the blog again. God has given me some prayer direction for the nation, and I want to be able to focus on that for a season and find out if He wants me to share any of it here with you.
I want to encourage you to continue praying for the United States. God is not finished with this nation yet, but is seeking to give each one of us His wisdom about how to pray for the issues concerning America. And if you’re not sure how to pray, then pray in the Spirit! You’ll be praying mysteries (see 1 Corinthians 14:2). I don’t know about you, but a lot of the stuff currently going on in the nation and the world is a huge mystery to me, so praying out mysteries in tongues sounds just about right at this time!
Be encouraged that the truth found in God’s Word about prayer is true all the time, not just when everyone’s prospering and the world is safe. In fact, time and again, the biggest miracles in the Bible (and since!) have been during times of distress, turmoil, and confusion. If that’s so, then what must we be sitting on brink of? Trust God; He is one hundred percent trustworthy. He’ll lead you in your own life and in your prayers for others as well.
And if you want to check out some of my favorite devotionals while I’m away, here they are!
- My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers: http://utmost.org/
- Streams in the Desert by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman: http://www.backtothebible.org/index.php/devotions/classics/charles_cowman.html
- God’s Word for Today, Gospel Publishing House (Assemblies of God): http://ag.org/top/devotional/index.cfm
- Eagles’ Wings, published by the Free Presbyterian Church: http://fpcna.org/fpcna_daily.asp
- Jentezen Franklin’s devotional blog: http://www.jentezenfranklin.org/blog/
- Devotional by Smith Wigglesworth: http://annointing.wordpress.com/smith-wigglesworth-devotional/ (This site has listed every page of Wigglesworth’s Devotional. Click the month and then scroll to find the day. Every month is a PDF file.)
- World Challenge, devotions. http://sermons.worldchallenge.org/en/view/devotions This is David Wilkerson’s ministry, now headed up by his son Gary Wilkerson. (If the link takes you to the home page instead of the devotion, then on the menu bar at the top go to “SERMONS” and scroll down to “DEVOTIONS” and link there.)
Of course, if you want, you can also scroll back and check the archives right here at www.FirstOfAllPray.com.
Check back here at the website on Monday, April 28. I’ll either give an update or be back to blogging full time. In the meantime, enjoy pressing on in God!
Dorothy
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