JOURNEY OF FAITH
Day Two Hundred Eighty-two
WHY DO I EXIST
INTRODUCTION
EYES OF COMPASSI0N
For those 38 years leading up to that momentous day October 17, 1981, I lay in the spiritual gutter of sin, wallowing in its muck and mire…utterly destitute, hopeless and helpless, without hope and without God. On that wondrous day, Blessed Jesus, You saw me lying there and, with eyes of compassion, reached out Your nail-pierced hand to me, inviting me, “My child…come with Me. I have prepared a place for You in My Father’s House.”
The moment I reached up and took hold of Your hand, You drew me to Your Bosom and embraced me. You removed the filthy rags of sin that clothed me, and immersed my body and my soul in Your Precious and Priceless Blood…to soak there in Your Blood. You soaked away all the filth that was caked up on my soul…all the sin, all the wretchedness, all the degradation. You bathed my body and my soul in Your Own Blood…washed me, cleansed me, and made me clean. Then You dressed me in the white robes of Your Own Righteousness, and presented me before the Father. As I stood there before the Father…washed in the Blood of the Lamb, dressed in the white robes of Your Own Righteousness, pure and holy now in His sight, without spot or wrinkle or blemish, accepted now in the Beloved…I heard, with ecstatic wonder, the Father say, “My child…this day I have adopted you…through birth and by Blood… into My Family. You are now and forevermore My child, and I am forevermore your Father and your God.”
A NEW CREATION
My life was never again the same…a wonderful journey into the depths of God ever since! This Scripture became a literal reality: Therefore, beloved, since you are now joined together in a living union of oneness with Christ Jesus My Son, you are a new creation. You are no longer the same person you formerly were…your previous moral and spiritual condition has passed away. Behold, a fresh, new life has begun!
For so long…so many, many, years…I had sinned against God. I had sinned against Him so often…so very often, and so deeply…so very deeply. Up to that point in time, for the 13 years of my adult life, I had tried everything to fill that felt-sense of emptiness…a void, a relentless aching…in the depths of my soul for something…I knew not what…that was missing. Nothing satisfied that emptiness; nothing filled that void. Having been raised Catholic, I came to the conclusion that it must be God that I was missing. But how do I find God was the pressing question of my heart. I wondered, Who am I that God would care about me, or have any concern for me? I wasn’t somebody who was important or significant that God should have any thoughts about me. That was my mindset in those years.
Even so, I set out on an intense, consuming search to find God…a relentless search that would continue over the next six years. I didn’t really know what “finding God” actually meant; I just knew that whatever it meant, I needed to find Him. I went to different priests and asked them, “How do I find God?” They weren’t much help; actually, they didn’t really know the answer. Sometimes they would point me to a book to read, written by a priest. I would read the book, and a number of times I made an appointment to meet with the author of the book…even traveling out of State to meet with him! Still…they had no answer. I diligently tried practicing different methods I had read about… “Centering on God” and other types of meditations and concepts…all to no avail. I became involved with pursuing several different philosophies concerning God…such as “The Power of Positive Thinking,” and even had sessions with Albert Ellis, a prominent psychologist who had written numerous books on a new theory he had developed called “Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.” All of my desperate searching came up completely empty.
Meanwhile, my life was spiraling downward at warp speed. By October 1981, in absolute desperation, I reluctantly accepted a suggestion to meet with a local Baptist minister. For a Catholic in those years, this was absolute rock bottom; a Catholic would not be caught dead talking to a Baptist minister, let alone meeting with one! But I was desperate.
On Saturday morning, October 17, 1981, I poured out my heart in Pastor Lester’s office concerning my desperate, yet fruitless, search to find God. He patiently listened, and when I had finished, presented so simply a child could understand…what I had spent six long, intense years searching for! He asked if I would like to follow him in a prayer to accept Jesus as Lord of my life and Savior of my soul, and enter into a personal relationship with Him. As we prayed, there were no flashing lights…no sound of bells and whistles…just a deep satisfying sense in the depths of my soul that now, at last, I had found God…or rather, more accurately, that God had found me. On that day the Scripture verse became true for me: You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. [Jer 29:13]
OVERWHELMING GRATITUDE, ETERNAL THANKS
Abba Father…I owe my body and my soul to You. If it were not for You, my body would be in the grave, and my soul would be in Hell long ago…15 times I should have been dead that I am fully aware of and can testify to, and surely many more times that I am not aware of. Though I had sinned against You for so many years, so very often, and so very deeply…even so, You Personally, consciously, and deliberately intervened in my life to stay the hand of death! If it were not for You, Father, I would be in Hell right now…and I full well deserved to be there. The angels of Heaven would have acknowledged Your righteous and just judgment. But in Your boundless mercy and infinite grace, You would not have it; You were not willing that I should perish. How many times Satan had come for me to claim my life and to claim my soul, but You would not permit it. No…You were my Shield and my Protector. You protected my soul, and You kept me safe, even from the very pit of Hell…until that wonderful day of my salvation!
TOKENS OF DIVINE LOVE
I don’t know whether in the depths of your heart you really believe there is a God in Heaven or not, but this I do know…for six years I desperately searched for God and did not find Him…until that momentous day He found me and revealed Himself to me!
Now that I am His and He is mine, my Father’s ear is attentive to the voice of His child, and He loves to give His child little tokens of His Divine Love whenever my requests are within the framework of His plans, His purposes, His will. Scripture tells me, “You have not because you ask not…or you ask with wrong, selfish motives.” My Father loves to show His child His Glory…that I may see it with my own eyes, and thereby have occasion to testify to His great Name and mighty Power! I have testified to it, and I will do so again…continually: https://preservechristianfamily.org/category/testimonies/
HOW GREAT THOU ART
That is my motive…to proclaim Your Glory. I do not have a selfish motive, a self-serving agenda, something I want to gain for myself. I want the people of the world to know how great You are, Abba Father! Show me Your Glory; bring Glory to Your Name, and bring Your blessings and Your salvation before the souls of Men!
I have gazed attentively into the Sanctuary and I have beheld Your Power and Your Glory many, many times! Formerly, my ears had only heard of You; but now my eyes have seen You and have seen Your Glory! In the presence of the congregation, I will proclaim Your Great Name and Your Mighty Power according to all that my eyes shall see!
UNBEARABLE EMOTIONAL AGONY
A few years later, on that late February, 1984, winter night on Long Island, I lay on my bed crying out to God…immersed in deep sadness and sorrow, intense crying and pain, overwhelming grief, loneliness, and broken-heartedness over a deep sense of loss that had just blind-sided my life. I had only just become the bride of Christ 28 months prior, on October 17, 1981. And now this was the third night of intense emotional agony. I remember thinking that if Hell were like this…and I knew it was ten thousand times worse, infinitely worse…I couldn’t bear it. The emotional pain was entirely debilitating…I don’t know how I made it through the work day. I felt hopeless and helpless…crushed and immobilized by a consuming sense of loss. When I got home in the evening, all I could do was collapse on my bed, crying out to the Lord in utter despair. A whole array of verses from Psalms went through my mind as I just poured out my broken heart to Him.
AWE-FILLED PRESENCE OF GOD
Quite suddenly…out of nowhere…the Lord walked into my room! I didn’t visibly see Him; my room was just as dark as it was before. But I was so filled with His Presence entering into my room and into me I felt like I was going to explode! My physical body could not contain His in-dwelling Presence! I remember exclaiming in awe, “Oh Lord…I can’t bear any more! I feel like I am going to burst!” Not that I wanted Him to leave; I was just expressing how I literally felt…that my human body just could not contain Him for any longer and live! At that moment, it didn’t matter to me whether I lived or died…I was experiencing an eternal weight of Glory beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent Glory and blessedness in His Presence!
The inaccessible Light [although there was no literal light] of the Glory of His Presence lasted maybe five or six seconds…but that experience is just as fresh in my memory today as it was in reality those 40 years ago! At that moment…the heretofore unbearable, debilitating emotional pain I had been feeling did not diminish in intensity, nor was it removed. It just became so insignificant and so meaningless in the light of what I had just experienced, that I literally thought, “Who cares!” And from that point on, though the source of the pain was never removed or resolved, it never again mattered to me, nor bothered me. I had seen the Lord; with my own spiritual eyes, I had seen Him! I would never again be the same!
Just one second in the inaccessible Light of the Glory of His Presence…a foretaste of Heaven itself…even now here on Earth is more than enough to wipe every tear from our eyes…all of our sadness and sorrow, crying and pain, grief and loneliness and broken-heartedness! And in that glorious coming Day, the ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. [Isa 35:10]
Beloved…don’t become discouraged and lose heart! For your light and momentary troubles during this life are achieving for you an eternal glory beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness nevermore to cease! [Cor 4:16-18]
AS A DEER PANTS FOR WATER-BROOKS
Not long after that incredulous experience, I began to hunger and thirst for a continual felt sense of the Presence of God. As I read through Psalms, I knew in my mind that I wanted to have the cry of David’s heart: As the deer, in the heat of summer, pants for water-brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God! My soul thirsts for You, my body longs for You…as for streams of water in a dry sun-scorched land where there is no water! My soul thirsts for You, Lord…for the One True Living God! When, Lord, shall I come into Your Presence and behold Your Face, the Face of my God? When will You speak to me face to Face, as a man speaks with his friend?
I realized, though, that I didn’t long for God in that way. I didn’t feel a longing for God as a heart-cry; I didn’t feel a yearning for God from the depths of my soul… yet I wanted to. It was the desire of my heart. And so my continual prayer was, “Lord, I don’t long for You in the way David did…but I want to. I long to long for You in that way. My heart is inflamed with yearning to long for You with a consuming desire for the felt-sense of Your Presence.”
HUNGER AND THIRST FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS
During that same period of time, I also began to hunger and thirst to live a holy and righteous life in my everyday manner of living. I had only become a born-again Christian a few years prior [October 17, 1981, at the age of 38], and I was struggling with several besetting sins from my past unsaved life. I made a conscious decision to fully embrace the words of Jesus, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be completely satisfied.” [Matt 5:6]
I began to hunger and thirst for a purity, holiness, and righteousness of my own that comes from obedience to the Law of God in living out my everyday life…not to be good enough to earn salvation, but because I was already saved…by virtue of the Eternal Power and the Eternal Worth of the Blood of Jesus, which He poured out on my behalf on that cross at Calvary for the forgiveness of my sins. I just wanted to be like my Father and my God as the apostle Peter exhorted me to be: As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as He Who called you is Holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am Holy.” [1 Peter 1:14-16]
HE WHO HONORS ME, HIM WILL I HONOR
Well…the Lord so wonderfully answered those two prayers not long afterward! One day I became aware…and actually remarked to myself, “Whoa, Lord! I no longer feel the least bit tempted by those besetting sins that used to plague me and torment me…that I had been struggling with for much of my prior life! I can’t believe it! Hallelujah!”
Not only that, but I was filled with the joy of the Lord! I would wake up in the morning singing to the Lord, and fall asleep at night singing softly to the Lord! All throughout the day I felt an unclouded child-like carefree joy, and was resting in Him with an unruffled child-like rest! I was continually experiencing the fullness of joy in the felt-sense of the Presence of the Lord!
ALONE TOGETHER WITH MY FATHER
My life had been so wondrously changed! The Spirit of God then led me to a book written by Hudson Taylor [missionary to China, latter 1800s] entitled, “Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret.” I read how it was his habit to get up early in the morning, well before dawn, and spend time alone with the Lord. And then I remembered that Jesus Himself often did the same thing to be alone with the Father…well before dawn, while it was still dark. I found myself wanting with all my heart to do that also…just as they had done.
I began setting my alarm clock for 4 AM every morning…seven days a week. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I just reached over and shut off the alarm when it went off…only to awaken later in the morning feeling so sorry I had failed once more! It only reignited my determination to try again…to plead with the Lord to help me be able to do this which had now become the most intense desire of my heart!
The Lord heard my heart-cry, and answered my prayer…and after a lengthy period of successes and failures, I finally acquired the habit of rising at 4 AM every morning to meet alone together with the Lord in our designated trysting place! It is a wonderful place of blessing, just sitting at His feet, to be alone together with Him, just to commune with Him! It is there where He continually pours more and more of His Blessedness and His Goodness into me, where we have intimate fellowship together, where He reveals to me something of the rich eternal treasures of the spiritual realm, where I become ever more one with Him in our sacred Covenant relationship…mirroring as They are with One Another in Their Blessed Holy Trinity! A number of years ago I moved my time to be alone together with the Lord back to 3 AM, so we could have more time alone together before breakfast!
For 40 years now, I continually look forward with a joyful expectation, an excited expectation, to our meeting alone together in those early morning hours just to commune face to Face, as a man speaks with his friend! I guard that time jealously, so that nothing would ever interfere with it; I wouldn’t miss it for anything!
TARGET OF SATAN’S FURY
Whenever a born-again child of God places their entire life on the altar of sacrifice…wholly surrendered unto God, wholly given for the blessings and salvation of souls, and walks in the Power of the indwelling Holy Spirit the path that our Blessed Christ Personally walked and dedicated for us, a new and living way to God through the veil, that is to say, through the veil of His flesh…the path of obedience and suffering, self-sacrifice and self-denial, death to sin and death to self…you can be sure you will become a target of Satan’s fury! All Hell will break loose against you!
Several years ago, beginning in June, 2020, the Lord allowed Hell’s onslaught to take place in my life. I was tormented and terrorized with overwhelming evil thoughts, images, and imaginations in my heart over continual stretches of time, day and night… beyond anything I had ever experienced before! It became clear that Satan’s intent was to destroy me!
I had known in my mind, and written about, that in my physical life, maturity is growth from the utter dependence of a baby to the complete independence and self-reliance of an adult. In my spiritual life, however, maturity is growth from independence and self-reliance to utter dependency upon God. He is most spiritually mature who lives a life of unreserved child-like dependence upon God. Just as a baby opens its mouth and cries whenever it has physical needs, so I open my mouth and cry whenever I have spiritual needs. Just as a baby is utterly and hopelessly helpless to satisfy its physical needs… and will surely physically die if no one hears its cry and comes to satisfy its needs…just so am I utterly and hopelessly helpless to satisfy my spiritual needs…and will surely spiritually die if God my Father does not hear my cry and come to satisfy my spiritual needs.
It is one thing to know this truth in your mind, but it is quite another to know this experientially! My Father allowed me to experience in my soul the horror of realizing that unless He came to rescue me…I was going to surely spiritually die! There was absolutely no question, no hope, not the remotest possibility of my being able to do anything about it! And I was frightened and scared experiencing this reality in the depths of my being for the first time in my life…continually crying out for my Father like a little child! I was experiencing something of the emotional agony that Jesus Himself experienced in the Garden that night when He began to be deeply distressed and troubled at the prospect of the cross. The Greek verbs used in the Biblical text describing what took place that night in the Garden described an extremely acute emotion, a compound of bewilderment, fear, uncertainty and anxiety, nowhere else portrayed in such vivid terms as here: shuddering awe; deep distress; overpowering mental distress; full of terror and distress; surprised and terrified; fright and anguish.
ANOINTING OF PROMISE
It was Thursday evening, July 23, 2020, when the Spirit of God led our weekly Home Disciple Group Meeting into a discussion on Adam’s sin of disobedience against God on the one command given him to test his obedience, the resultant expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and the heretofore undefiled human nature as created by God now becoming a sin-enslaved human nature. As our discussion continued along that evening under the guidance of the Holy Spirit’s leading, we were discussing Scriptures concerning how the Lord Jesus sets a believer free from the bondage of sin…that all human beings by nature have a sin-enslaved human nature, and can only be set free by Christ through His atonement for sin by virtue of His death on a cross on our behalf. When I am born again, it is as literal and real a birth as was my physical birth… and I become a new creation…a new person, whereby my former moral and spiritual condition has passed away, and all things have become new. I no longer live my life out of my sin-enslaved human nature, but now live my new life out of the Divine nature of God’s Holy Spirit dwelling within me by virtue of being born again. That is why only those born-again can know, and have, and experience, the indwelling Holy Spirit.
During our discussion, the Holy Spirit swept over one of our group members and so opened up his mind and heart to this truth…in a depth he had never seen before…that he literally, visibly, was filled with a fullness of joy! He could hardly contain himself! He was wired in the Spirit, and began to testify with power about what God had done, and was continually doing, in his life! He testified that when he is tormented and terrorized with overwhelming evil thoughts, images, and imaginations in his heart [and he knew nothing about what I was going through], his God and Father reaches down and plucks His child out of Satan’s grasp and into safety, declaring with determined purpose, “No! You can’t have My child; he belongs to Me!” He was anointed…and continued to testify about the utter weakness of his flesh and how helpless he was to resist by his own efforts and strength, and that if he tried to do so it would only guarantee his failure! He testified how the Power of the Holy Spirit in his life was the source of his strength, and apart from Him he could do nothing! He just went on and on, carried away in the Spirit into the heavenly realms for the remainder of our meeting, continually praising God, proclaiming the Word of God with boldness and power!
I just sat there and listened, thanking God for how He was touching this brother whom He was calling, and using, as the “pastor of Walmart!” And it brought to his mind a song that had so touched him…a powerful song with a powerful message…so he pulled it up on his phone and played it for us. The link is below, if you want to hear it. It is not my particular choice in Christian music…but I put myself in his place, and could embrace its powerful message as we all listened to it! The song is by CASTING CROWNS, entitled SET ME FREE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2HwtWLokSc
I myself was so blessed by the manifest Presence of the Holy Spirit in our meeting that evening that I never realized that God had quietly touched and anointed me as well with the “anointing of promise” that I had been desperately crying out to Him for! Over the past several weeks [actually, for a number of years…but now with an intense desperation] I had been pleading with Him for this anointing that I had been granted once before, in the Fall 1984 when I was just 3 years old in the Lord as a child of God… an anointing that I had lost because I had carelessly let it slip away, not appreciating in my spiritual babyhood how precious this treasure really was. I was pleading with my Father…that I could not live without it…that I could not serve as His messenger, His ministering spirit, His watchman, His emissary, with boldness, freedom, and confidence, with spiritual power and authority, unless I had this anointing of promise. I wasn’t asking for an anointing of privilege; that is God’s prerogative. No; I was asking for the anointing that was promised…that I had been granted once before. I knew what it was; and I knew I no longer had it. The anointing of promise is the full blessing of Pentecost…and it is only granted to those who hunger and thirst for it…to those who are wholly surrendered unto God, wholly given for the blessing and salvation of souls…to those who by faith abide in the Holy of Holies in the unclouded Presence of the Father.
Blessed Jesus, You assured me: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…a purity, holiness, and righteousness of my own in living out my everyday life. You assured me that I will be filled…that my longing will be completely satisfied, and I will be filled up to the measure of all the fullness of God, to the richest measure of Your unclouded Presence, a soul wholly filled and flooded with God Himself!” [Mt 5:6] That is the anointing of promise! And even more beyond that…“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” [Mt 5:8]
MY FATHER HEARS HIS CHILD’S CRY
On that evening God my Father heard the desperate cry of my heart, and quietly, silently, granted me the anointing of promise. From that evening forward, the evil thoughts, images, and imaginations in my heart still came a number of times expecting to torment and terrorize me as they had always done…but now they had absolutely no power at all, were of none effect, and weren’t even the least bother. The anointing is not just a greater power than what had been coming to torment and terrorize me; no, the anointing completely neutralizes their power so that they are meaningless and have no effect whatsoever. The anointing of promise is the second greatest gift granted by God…second only to the gift of eternal life. No child of God should ever be satisfied without having it; but as you can see from this testimony, there is a cost to the anointing. Child of God…are you willing to pay the price?
EPILOGUE
Abba Father…it is literally true, and I really know and believe that it is literally true: my body would be in the grave and my soul would be in Hell right now…and many times over during the course of my life since birth…had You not Personally, consciously, and deliberately intervened in my life to stay the hand of death.
Words can never sufficiently express the depth of gratitude due You as I begin to fully realize that I literally owe my soul’s eternal destiny of Heaven solely, only, wholly, to You…to Your boundless Mercy, Your infinite Grace, Your fathomless Love. How could I ever possibly give You sufficient thanks for such an incomprehensible eternal blessing… a River of unceasing glorious and rich eternal pleasures at Your right hand…eternal pleasures at Your right hand beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations…rich eternal treasures that no eye has ever seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of Man to ever begin to imagine, what wondrous things God has prepared for those who love Him…a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness nevermore to cease!
The only expression of heartfelt gratitude that could possibly even approach being an adequate response to this incomprehensible gift of eternal life is to freely and voluntarily, consciously, and deliberately, lay my life on the altar of sacrifice for You, Blessed Jesus, even unto death…death to sin and death to self…just as You freely and voluntarily lay down Your life on that altar of sacrifice as the Sacrificial Lamb of God for me, even unto death…death to sin and death to self.
Abba Father…You did no spare Your Own Son, but freely gave Him up for me and on my behalf. In the same manner, I also do not spare my own life but freely give it up for You…to be Your bond-slave for the duration of my physical life on Earth.
This is my only and true act of worship…worship that is good and pleasing and acceptable to You. Anything less than wholly-surrendered life service is merely lip service, and is not worship at all. It is a stench in Your nostrils, and subject to Your rebuke: “These people honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.”
RICH ETERNAL TREASURES GRANTED TO GOD’S CHILD
Friends & neighbors; brothers and sisters…
It is my prayer that you will feel the leading of the Spirit to seek these rich eternal blessing with all your heart. You will most assuredly experience these same blessings for yourself, and will have this same testimony to share:
I proclaim to you Christ Jesus…the One Who existed from the beginning, from Eternity Past, Whom I have heard with the ears of my own inner being, and have seen with my own spiritual eyes. I have gazed upon Him and have spiritually touched Him with my own hands. He is the Word of Life. His Life is continually being revealed to me; I have seen it and testify to it, and I proclaim to you that He is the One Who is Eternal Life. He always existed with the Father, and is now continually being manifested afresh and anew to me. I proclaim to you what I have personally seen and heard in the depths of my soul, so that you also may enjoy this same fellowship together with us. The fellowship I continually enjoy is with the Father and with His Son, Christ Jesus. I am writing these things so that you also may fully share together with me in this fullness of joy! [1 John 1:1-4].
This is our birth-right as children of the Most High God! Hallelujah!
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Preserve Christian Family 