Hide and Seek With God Part:2

My first exposure to church after getting out of juvenile detention was a charismatic church. These  people seemed to know God personally, and He had given them his power. They always had big smiles on their faces and were quick to give you a word from the Lord or some kind of encouragement. It was almost impossible to be discouraged in their midst. They were always so sure that God was going to intervene in your life in a powerful supernatural way, and they had many bible verses to back it up. I believed them, and I took it in hook line and sinker. I especially believed the supernatural healing part.

I was reading my bible constantly in my room and playing worship music. I would sit in my room for hours and do this. I was convinced that if I lacked any closeness to God that it was on me, and that it was up to me to seek Him until I found Him. I sought out sick people to pray for their healing. I read all the books by John G. Lake and Smith Wigglesworth that I could get ahold of. These books made God seem so big. So did the bible. I remember I flipped a poster I had in my room over so I could have a clear canvas to write scripture verses on, and I wrote in very small print and filled the whole thing up. I even started a bible study group in my high-school and we would meet at lunch time and do a bible study.  Looking back it was a very manic and exhausting state to live in.

As my emotional high would hit its peek, I would be so terrified that it would go away that I sought God even harder, spent more time and energy in prayer and worship, I would even fast. I was 16 years old at this time, no one in my family was following God, and none of my friends were as committed as I was. I was doing this on my own. I was desperate to know Him. I remember telling a youth pastor once that his uncle could have been healed from lung cancer if he would have had enough faith.

In high-school a friend of mine’s mom was in the hospital fighting her last battle with some kind of cancer, I cant remember what kind it was, but I offered to come to the hospital to pray for her healing. She was my friend and she agreed to have me come, I remember telling her not to worry that “God had the last word.” I was confident that my faith was going to move God’s heart and heal her mom. Her mom died within a couple days. This was my first disillusionment, and I remember thinking for a brief second that it was weird that I couldn’t just be there for her, and deal with the death. The veil was lifted briefly, I thought wow I really tried to insulate myself from the pain of death, but I couldn’t deal with it.  I didn’t understand this, I had mustered up as much faith as I could to have God heal her. I wasn’t playing games with God I put my whole heart into seeking him.

I came to the conclusion that somehow I hadn’t had enough faith. I thought maybe had I prayed out loud and not in my head then she would have been healed. I felt like Jesus saved me, the least I could do is be bold for him. My next cancer patient I prayed for was a lady with breast cancer. I got several friends together that I knew believed in healing and we knocked on her door. She allowed us to come in and pray for her this time we prayed out loud and laid hands on her,one of my friends even prayed in tongues over her, and when we finished she thanked us and we left. Eventually after several chemo treatments and radiation, I believe her cancer went into remission, but of course we attributed the success to God.

I realize now how much impossible pressure I was putting on myself, but I figured Jesus bore the sin of the world and he was living in me, so through him I could bear all the pressure of seeking Him. I was intense, Paul the apostle was my hero. I attributed all of my perceived failures as discipline from the lord so that I could learn to be closer to Him. I realize now how egocentric this was.

Fast forward a year or two to 18 years old, my senior year in high-school. I had continued to believe in healing, and was determined to find the key. I figured I was so obsessed with divine healing because it was my gift, and I needed to develop it by praying over people. By this time I had added to my inner spiritual life the idea that my sins could effect the success of my prayers. So even if I was praying all the right prayers and had faith, if I hadn’t basically punished myself for my sins by being “sorry enough,” then this could prevent prayers from being answered.

This habit of blaming myself for every disillusionment followed me all the way to the end of my faith, though it was more sophisticated. I mean I later understood grace and not to expect too much from God, and I called that surrender to His will (Fatalism basically).If I could blame myself for my failures and not God then there could be no abandonment. The goal was always just out of reach and I mystified all my previous disillusionment.

Back to 18 years old. I was really into the faith healer Benny Hinn, and I remember telling a friend, while watching his program, that I was going to meet him one day. He just kind of looked at me funny, no way he believed me, but I did meet him. I thought when I meet him, he is going to pass me the torch and I will be the next faith healer.

The time came when I would meet him. My uncle Jeremy was born deaf and was I think around 28 or so at the time, and I heard Benny was going to be in Portland, OR for a healing crusade. My grandma, Jeremy, and I went to it. We were in the nose bleed section, but I was determined to get on the stage. I talked my uncle into heading down to the stage to try to get Benny Hinn to lay hands on him and ask God to heal him. There were thousands of people at this crusade, we made our way down, and got in line to get on stage. I remember a guy in a wheelchair wheeled up to me and said “You’ll never get up there I’ve been to 15 of these things and never got up there.” I turned around and told him “You have to have faith!”

I remember a woman announcing “Benny wants all people up to 25 years old if near the stage, to press in toward the stage.” I made a run for it, kids had climbed up on stage and the crowd was pushing me into the edge of the stage and I thought “I’m gonna be smashed,” so I jumped up on the stage and joined the large crowd up there, but my uncle had stayed behind.  Benny walked right through the crowd and grabbed my wrist, and pulled me to the center of the stage. He began prophesying over me to the thousands of people in the auditorium. As he was doing this I was shaking and crying.

In the middle of it though I remembered my uncle, and I stopped Benny mid sentence and told him my uncle was out in the crowd, that he was deaf, and asked him if he would call him up, and pray for his healing.  I pointed to my uncle in the crowd and motioned for him to come up. Benny looked a bit nervous, like it wasn’t in the script, but he called him up, put his fingers in my uncles ears and shook his head back and forth and yelled “in the name of Jesus.” He did this over and over again. I heard the desperate prayers of the little kids praying for him as Benny was doing this. I am still appreciative of all their love for my uncle. At that time for me it was actually beautiful.

Then Benny started playing to the crowd, although I didn’t realize it at the time. He had my uncle face the people and Benny had me sign to my uncle to clap after him, and Benny would clap by Jeremy’s ears. Jeremy would clap back after feeling the wind of the clap, and then Benny would throw his arms up and yell to the crowd “PRAISE JESUS.” I didn’t realize it was a sham at first because I was so caught up emotionally. Then he had Jeremy try to speak and this just got awkward, but Benny played it off like my uncle was healed. When we walked off stage some of his cronies walked up to us and asked if he was really healed. I felt obligated to say “yes” because I didn’t want to doubt the healing. I thought “maybe the healing will be progressive, and it will be dependent on me continuing to walk by faith and not sight.

I held onto the hope that he would be healed, but of course as I couldn’t keep up the emotional hype, I assumed I hadn’t had enough faith for the healing. For awhile I felt my uncle was doomed to continuing to be deaf because I had failed him. I thought “I didn’t care enough about him to continue fasting and praying for his healing.” Again this was a way for me to rationalize why God didn’t show up though I had faith, I didn’t have enough—once again! I briefly turned back to my old ways after this. I began drinking and partying again and not giving a shit anymore. I didn’t quit believing, I was just convinced that God had rejected me for all my faith failures.

After some time doing this I began to think that maybe my failures were because I had believed the wrong brand of Christianity. I thought “oh, Jesus didn’t heal my uncle because I was following the health wealth gospel, and Jesus didn’t promise us everything would be rosie. It was a misunderstanding on my part. When I wondered why God allowed me to experience this in the first place; I reasoned that he showed me this so that I would never make the same mistake again. I reasoned that I needed to learn how to surrender more, but I didn’t feel like I could be accepted back because I had missed it so bad. After all its God’s will not mine. I was about 20 years old here.

Eventually I believed God could accept me back, I was still 20 years old and I had been exposed to a christian singer Keith Green. His message of no compromise and his deeply spiritual songs spurred me on to a greater commitment to God. Anytime I listened to his music I felt so close to God. I avoided charismatic churches like the plague, and opted for the more balanced churches like Evangelical free and baptist churches. I was terrified of feeling the pain of disillusionment again, and the pain of letting God down. I had more wisdom and I was extra determined to know God like the people of the new testament did.

Somewhere along the timeline I had picked up the idea that God will not work miracles here in America because of our unbelief, our wealth, and all our distractions, and so I once again dangled the carrot just out of my reach. I think I heard God wouldn’t work miracles in America from KP Yohannan, the leader of Gospel for Asia a missionary organization that focused on reaching people for Christ in the 10/40 window. I read several of his books that had the same undertones in them as Keith Green’s music. The impossible standards, the pressure to reach the lost, and no compromising. I could always convince myself that I was falling short in some way.

I eventually learned to give myself some grace and joined a local American baptist Church. I still held the no compromise standards, but I was a little more patient with the visions of future mission work and miracles coming to fruition. After all I had a lot to learn before I could go. But I felt like I was aligned with God’s heart. I still blamed myself for every time God didn’t show up even though theologically I had learned that I needed to submit to the will of God. The will of God eventually looked like whatever happened. Imagine that! I wasn’t convinced though until I did Hospice nursing which I will talk about in part 5. That’s when God’s ways became too mysterious for me to trust.

Part 3 to follow