FYI and the Wishing Well

I have been asked if I spend time in the silence. I used to be a meditator. I learned Transcendental Meditation in Claremont, California, late 1973, and practiced it for the better part of a year. I moved to Hawaii in 1974 and got involved with the occult "guided imagery" meditation classes at the metaphysical bookstore in Honolulu.

In my last meditation there, I encountered a demon. Probably a demon of my own ignorance, or one just taking advantage of my ignorance. And yes, I encountered it in my imagination. The odd thing was the intervention. The demon obviously did not want me to recognize it and its work of leading me toward possession, which was the exercise I was in, yet it was powerless to stop someone greater than it from opening my eyes to see it. And, of course, there was that someone greater than me who did not need my permission to open my eyes.

It is a bit humorous now, me looking at the demon and the demon looking at me, both of us realizing that our gigs were up because someone greater, on a higher level, had been in control of both of us without our realizing it. We were both as puppets on a string.

I closed that meditation and reflected on the situation. The course of my life had been influenced and guided by the demon who did not know that it was being used as agent for somebody over it. It had led me to cultivate my spiritual skills for what it thought were its purposes, when actually it was for that other person's purposes. I had unwittingly been in training the whole time, learning spiritual skills while going the wrong way, because that was the only way in which I could learn those skills. The church just didn't teach them any more. Now that I had learned them, I was being turned around.

I rode my bicycle back to my camper and dug out the old, zippered Bible my mother had given me when I was just seven years old. 'Deceive' in the concordance led me to Revelations 12: 9. I read to verse 12. Yeah, that pretty much looked like the program I had just found out was the real reality that we are dwelling in "24/7." Whether we like it or not, recognize it or not, or believe it or not, the Christian worldview IS what is going on in the world. Denying that is like closing your eyes on a sunny day and denying that the sun is shining.

After getting saved at the House of Praise in Kaimuki, baptized in the Holy Spirit at Grace Bible Church, and hearing Jesus speak to me from the cross (which interestingly was audible as a separate voice in the brain but not through the ears), I decided to find out what he had said to others. Going on forty years of finding out now, I can honestly say that the Biblical worldview is significantly different from the "contemporary" Christian worldview.

The difference is the world that language creates. We see the world according to our language, and the Bible speaks a different language than we are going to understand by learning Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Chaldee or Sanskrit. These are all fantastic and essential tools to learn: were I born again with my knowledge I'd start in on Biblical letters before I had weaned from my mother's breasts, but the most essential language to learn is THE VOCABULARY OF GOD.

God speaks to us usually in illustrations. The situations we find ourselves in all day long are shouting at us, if we but have ears to listen to what we see. In my pursuit of God, this is the silence I seek. It is a language that is sensed, felt; a language that strikes the emotions and empathy. A silent moment with God will leave me crying or shaking: Him with whom we have to do is awesome beyond the slang of contemporary Christian pop songs.

And so I write about jethro, the awesome increase that God bequeaths. Moses saw it and heard the voice of God: "I AM HERE. I AM BECOMING. I HAVE BECOME YOU, AND I AM BECOMING THROUGH YOU, BECAUSE I AM YOU, AND YOU SHALL BECOME ME."

"Oh."

Jethro seems to be God's program for evangelization. It doesn't always work, but it is Biblical. The closest thing I have found to real Biblical Theology is Neville Goddard. He at least told it like it is without trying to hide the truth. That is my pet peeve against the mystics of the Biblical religions: you have to dig perceptively through their tomes to eke out any revelation from them.

Hey, dudes, the Gospel is supposed to be preached. The Pentateuch is openly published all over the place; tell people what it really says. Whatcha hiding? Neville preached for three decades outside the church; he published at his own expense when nobody else would publish him; he went on radio and on television in its infancy to share the Gospel. He'd bore you to death trying to get you to listen to what you see, but he was driven to reveal what he had seen, and he spoke in clear, direct language that people could understand. The other mystics? "Hey, let's keep this under wraps. It can be a goldmine for just us." Or at least that is my perception.

Uh, have I gotten off track? Do I spend much time in the silence--meditating, that is (I assume), or praying for this or that? No, I do not spend as much time as I would like in prayer and meditation, and the reasons for are my 28-hour days and the Lord. My 28-hour days should take care of themselves after I retire next year. And the Lord knows what I have need of, and that is precious little. In any given moment of silence, I tend to worship or listen to Him rather than ask for or cause things. I think in tongues. Yes, I know God is not separate and all that, but he is worthy, and, as I found in Honolulu, he is fully conscious of me and my needs and status and is fully capable to provide whatever I need. So why should both of me be concerned?

Do I take a hand in providing for myself? Certainly. I could not possibly have maintained my marriage without the two graduate programs I went through. I haven't made a nickel off them, but they equipped me for my particular marriage and I still have my wife, who is far more valuable to me than any monetary return for study, work or time. The programs were wise investments I was led to by the Lord, who understands real riches. Which leads me to . . .

THE WISHING WELL.

I'll make this brief: we are to wish each other well. We are to uplift each other. When it comes to the silence, prayer, believing, causation, imagining, WISH WELL FOR EACH OTHER. Were they to wish at a wishing well, BE THAT WISHING WELL AND GRANT THEM THEIR DESIRES.

"I really need another job." "You have another job, a better job, a more satisfying job, a better paying job." Take the ten seconds or so it takes to hear them tell you in vision, "I have the job of my dreams. It is better, more satisfying, better paying than any other job I could have found."

Dr. Frank C. Laubach practiced this, at least some of the time, for whomever he saw. He said that quite routinely, whomever he was praying for--strangers on the train, for instance--would turn around and look at him. The spirit hears. "Go higher. Your needs are met. Protection is all around you. Grace is upon you. You are strong for it. Peace is upon your house."

Wishing well for you and yours . . .