Reply to Phaul: Conversation with God and Submission/Infilling: My Born From Above ExperienceS, Part Two
A Reply to Phaul About Being Born From Above, continued (from):
I went with the minister into the area where they were trying to help Ralph receive the gift of tongues.
I knelt before a folding chair as we had before the service, and I followed their instructions to give my voice to God to speak with. Nothing. How about my mouth? Lips? Nothing. I gave God my jaw, my tongue, my throat, my larynx, my body, my muscles, my lungs, my mind, my volition to speak, my life, my future, any children I might have in the future. Nothing. I felt God wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole. He rejected me. I was unacceptable to him.
This surprised and dismayed me. I was an earnest believer. I had encountered what I felt to be a real demon; I had been saved from deception and demonic possession by Jesus Christ. I had praised God among the zealous, Pentecostal tongue-speakers at the House of Praise. I seriously believed in God, Jesus his son, and the whole Biblical world view. I knew this stuff was real. I had given God my life, and now he wouldn't have anything to do with me. Why? I didn't know. The only one who could tell me was God, and he wasn't telling. To whom could I go? Instead of turning away from God in disappointment, I turned to God in tears.
I think that is what did it. I was dead serious and listening, reaching out for him with everything in me. Then, in my mind's eye, I entered another world. Well, no, it was this world, but I lost all association with the place I was physically. I saw a sandy dirt path before me in a riverbed like the wash I played in as a youth. The path wound around through the brush and to the left, upstream. As I followed the path, concrete walls rose on either side. I was in a flood control channel. The path came to a huge, off-white and very heavy cube. The path seemed to go through a gap in the right hand wall, but the cube blocked me from following it. I couldn’t budge the cube. I tried to jump up to climb over it, but couldn't reach the edge of the cube. I thought of doubling back to where the wall was lower and coming back on the other side, but realized that under the cube the path went down to a lower level. The cube was blocking my access to the path going down. Going back to get to the other side would not help. I simply could not make any progress on my own.
To get to that lower level, I had to find out what made me unacceptable to God. The thing that blocked me from finding out was the very thing that made me unacceptable to God in the first place. What a quandary: I couldn't name it to give it to him! I searched the gray block for a name. I couldn’t find one. I knew it was something about myself that I had not given to God. What could it be? How could I give God what I didn't know what it was? Could I trust God to give him carte blanche what I do not know? What might be the obligations, the unforeseen consequences of such a deal? In utter despair I finally decided to go ahead. I bawled, "I don't know what it is, Lord, but whatever it is, I give it to you." I cut the rope and grabbed the gunwales: "Here we go, folks."
The cube disappeared and I found myself descending to a lower level. I still did not know what I had just given God. The lower level was dark, like the Combat Information Center (CIC) on the destroyer I was stationed on in Pearl Harbor. The CIC was right behind the bridge I worked on as a quartermaster (quartermasters in the Navy do the navigation). The lights were always spookily low in the CIC. Anyway, standing on that lower level, I looked out on an expanse of muddy soil. The earth curved away in the distance. I was surprised, for I had walked down to an underground level, but seemed to be looking out toward the horizon, blue sky and all. Weird. A few feet in front of me I saw an impression form in the plain of mud. An invisible man-shaped cookie-cutter spoon of spirit scooped out a man-shaped mass of mud and stood it before me. I watched as the mud became bones, muscles, organs, vessels, and flesh. Finally, the man was given life. He looked out at the world for the first time. From lifeless mud the man had become a consciousness, living being.
I wondered what he might be thinking. He had never seen anything before, never had thoughts before. How can a freshly created being make sense of anything it sees? Does he see in amazement? Fear? Question what things are? Think without words?
The mud-man looked at the expanse it had just been created from. I watched from a bit behind it. "This is earth," it thought. "This is day, for it is light. Darkness will come, and it will get cold. I had better find shelter in those hills."
The man started off toward some wooded hills in the distance. Following along behind him, I saw what he saw and heard his thoughts. We entered a forest. Look for a cave or build an enclosure? Wild animals (what animals are possible?) might be in the caves. How do I keep from being eaten? Could I build a secure enough structure among the trees to keep me safe? I will need a fire. I had better collect firewood while I look for a cave. I will be hungry. I had better look for food, too. What does food look like in the bush, anyhow? How can I tell what is edible if I have never eaten before? Should I plant seeds so that I will have food later?
My mind was going a mile a minute (that used to be fast, kids). My mind. MY mind. Somewhere along the line the man's thoughts had become my thoughts. Or was it vice versa? I was thinking as him, seeing through his eyes, talking to myself as if I were him. And as the man I had oh, so much to do. I could barely fit it all in.
OH!! I think I paled. A sickening feeling. I was doing everything in this life I thought I needed to do, but I had just been created. I knew that. Who told me that I could do anything at all, that I was 'free'? The only one who could tell me what to do was God who had created me. I belonged to him. He had made me. He had given me life by his grace. HIS life. I had taken it upon myself to do whatever I thought was fit and necessary. I had STOLEN "my" life from God! He had made me to live for HIS purpose, and I had absconded with HIS life to use for MY purposes. I was a rebel, a thief, guilty of insurrection: "Rebellion as witchcraft." I hadn't even turned to say, "Thank you," to him for the life he had given me. I had never given God a thought, had never asked, "What did you created me for?" He must have had some purpose in mind when he created me. He wouldn't have made me without a purpose. I saw clearly that I had robbed God of his purpose for me all the twenty-five years of my life, and now had absolutely nothing to show for it.
And I had had the audacity to "give" myself to God as though I was his peer. I had NOTHING to give. Everything about myself was already his. No wonder he wouldn't touch me: I was still in the delusion of being in control of "my" life. I had given myself with reservation: if I did not like what he did with me, I intended to cut ties with him and take myself back. What a deluded dork! I saw that this had to stop.
I had lived all my life for my own purposes and under my own control. I figured that the only thing I could do avail myself to his purpose was to stop all of my self-control and wait for his instruction. Maybe it was the relaxation techniques or the abandonment exercise for levitation I learned in occult meditation, but somehow I was able cast self-control out of myself. I completely abdicated of any and all self-lordship. I thought I might fall to floor like a blog of jelly because of my utter abandonment, but I felt "caught." With no effort on my part, I stayed up.
Inside, I was as dead. I tried to not think, to not talk to myself. I listened for my commission of God's purpose. Whatever he directed me to do, I was going to do it. I saw myself high on a mountain side. In a clearing there was a large felled pine tree. I was kneeling next to it with my head bowed. I sensed above me the sky filling from left to right with the rosy glow God's glory. It looked like alpenglow, but it was his presence. God was there, and I was afraid to look up. With some trepidation, I said, "You are glorious God. I am a mudman. Whatever you want me to do, that is what I will do." I shut up and waited again, listening for my commission of God's purpose.
Thank God for the patience of those ministers at Grace Bible Church. I don't know if their arms got tired or if they went out for sandwiches. I also do not know if anything or everything I said was out loud or only in my mind. I only know that I waited, and after awhile I heard a faint, soft voice say, "Remember this, and it is all right." I rehearsed that a few times in my mind. "And it is all right." Does that mean that I am forgiven everything, that I am accepted? Yes.
The flood of relief, joy, and euphoria that went through me, or rather swept into me, was amazing. Astounding. I was filled with gratitude, love, and adoration. The sensation of living waters filled me, rising from my deepest bowels and approaching my throat. As it rose my jaw quivered and began to work on its own. The minister next to me said, "Don't try to control it." I didn't, and for the next minutes I sat with my hands raised, observing my mouth speaking in another language completely on its own as praise, gratitude, and adoration flowed out.
I finally came to. I realized I was making a spectacle and looked over to see Raphael staring at me in disbelief. He had not broken through to the mindset I had achieved. I had gone to God in my mind, and there he had met me. In my imagination we had conversed in images, illustrations. I desired his revelation, listened for the picture, and he had showed it. He showed me that I was his, that I had been “ignoranced” in the flip into humanhood, and that I was in the rebellion of independence. He also showed me that he is lord over all. Everything is happening according to him--his purposes shall be. What he showed me put me in a place of humility and complete submission to him. I was packaged, and everything there was all right. I discovered his acceptance and the ecstasy of pure love. I entered the experience of being born from above: the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the Living Consciousness of God.
It was a visual and emotional mind trip—no drugs necessary. Just as in an illustrative way God spoke to Neville for Neville, God illustrated the truth for me. Same truth, but different illustrations. Because in my case my mind had to be adjusted to get to where he wanted me to go. I am sure that God will show you the truth that applies to you. You do not need anything else to be born from above. You do not need to wait until any particular time. Time has nothing to do with it. It is a matter of getting our heads, i.e., our attitudes, into the right frame of mind. Until then we are in some way resisting the utter submission and humility required: respect toward God, the full acceptance of his lordship. We have to get past simply saying that we are fully surrendered as a philosophy and into the real attitude in heart.
My sister received the baptism in the Holy Spirit while she was sitting in her bathtub. J. Rodman Williams, one of my mentors in theology, was sitting alone in his study. Their need became apparent and they had their conversations with God in their imaginations, and they yielded to the Lord. Others, like Raphael and myself, found help in the laying on of hands by those who have gone before. Seek them out if you need to, but be wary: if I had received the Spirit among snake handlers, I'd probably be a snake handler now, too.
The thing is, if you are humble, honoring God as your Father and fully submitted to him, you need only receive the Holy Spirit as an open bucket receives water.
My experience, by the way, has become my theology. God has not revealed anything to me that he does not reveal in scripture PROPERLY READ. Moses' experience in Exodus became his theology. The trick to getting there is GOING. You have to DO it. God in your imagination is ready whenever you are.
"Remember this." He is here in the conversation, and he is Lord--Eil the Almighty, YHWH--God in covenant with us. His anointing on us is Jesus--they are all one guy. And he has a message for you today:
"Converse with me. Let’s have the Eternal Experience. I will help you get there."
I went with the minister into the area where they were trying to help Ralph receive the gift of tongues.
I knelt before a folding chair as we had before the service, and I followed their instructions to give my voice to God to speak with. Nothing. How about my mouth? Lips? Nothing. I gave God my jaw, my tongue, my throat, my larynx, my body, my muscles, my lungs, my mind, my volition to speak, my life, my future, any children I might have in the future. Nothing. I felt God wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole. He rejected me. I was unacceptable to him.
This surprised and dismayed me. I was an earnest believer. I had encountered what I felt to be a real demon; I had been saved from deception and demonic possession by Jesus Christ. I had praised God among the zealous, Pentecostal tongue-speakers at the House of Praise. I seriously believed in God, Jesus his son, and the whole Biblical world view. I knew this stuff was real. I had given God my life, and now he wouldn't have anything to do with me. Why? I didn't know. The only one who could tell me was God, and he wasn't telling. To whom could I go? Instead of turning away from God in disappointment, I turned to God in tears.
I think that is what did it. I was dead serious and listening, reaching out for him with everything in me. Then, in my mind's eye, I entered another world. Well, no, it was this world, but I lost all association with the place I was physically. I saw a sandy dirt path before me in a riverbed like the wash I played in as a youth. The path wound around through the brush and to the left, upstream. As I followed the path, concrete walls rose on either side. I was in a flood control channel. The path came to a huge, off-white and very heavy cube. The path seemed to go through a gap in the right hand wall, but the cube blocked me from following it. I couldn’t budge the cube. I tried to jump up to climb over it, but couldn't reach the edge of the cube. I thought of doubling back to where the wall was lower and coming back on the other side, but realized that under the cube the path went down to a lower level. The cube was blocking my access to the path going down. Going back to get to the other side would not help. I simply could not make any progress on my own.
To get to that lower level, I had to find out what made me unacceptable to God. The thing that blocked me from finding out was the very thing that made me unacceptable to God in the first place. What a quandary: I couldn't name it to give it to him! I searched the gray block for a name. I couldn’t find one. I knew it was something about myself that I had not given to God. What could it be? How could I give God what I didn't know what it was? Could I trust God to give him carte blanche what I do not know? What might be the obligations, the unforeseen consequences of such a deal? In utter despair I finally decided to go ahead. I bawled, "I don't know what it is, Lord, but whatever it is, I give it to you." I cut the rope and grabbed the gunwales: "Here we go, folks."
The cube disappeared and I found myself descending to a lower level. I still did not know what I had just given God. The lower level was dark, like the Combat Information Center (CIC) on the destroyer I was stationed on in Pearl Harbor. The CIC was right behind the bridge I worked on as a quartermaster (quartermasters in the Navy do the navigation). The lights were always spookily low in the CIC. Anyway, standing on that lower level, I looked out on an expanse of muddy soil. The earth curved away in the distance. I was surprised, for I had walked down to an underground level, but seemed to be looking out toward the horizon, blue sky and all. Weird. A few feet in front of me I saw an impression form in the plain of mud. An invisible man-shaped cookie-cutter spoon of spirit scooped out a man-shaped mass of mud and stood it before me. I watched as the mud became bones, muscles, organs, vessels, and flesh. Finally, the man was given life. He looked out at the world for the first time. From lifeless mud the man had become a consciousness, living being.
I wondered what he might be thinking. He had never seen anything before, never had thoughts before. How can a freshly created being make sense of anything it sees? Does he see in amazement? Fear? Question what things are? Think without words?
The mud-man looked at the expanse it had just been created from. I watched from a bit behind it. "This is earth," it thought. "This is day, for it is light. Darkness will come, and it will get cold. I had better find shelter in those hills."
The man started off toward some wooded hills in the distance. Following along behind him, I saw what he saw and heard his thoughts. We entered a forest. Look for a cave or build an enclosure? Wild animals (what animals are possible?) might be in the caves. How do I keep from being eaten? Could I build a secure enough structure among the trees to keep me safe? I will need a fire. I had better collect firewood while I look for a cave. I will be hungry. I had better look for food, too. What does food look like in the bush, anyhow? How can I tell what is edible if I have never eaten before? Should I plant seeds so that I will have food later?
My mind was going a mile a minute (that used to be fast, kids). My mind. MY mind. Somewhere along the line the man's thoughts had become my thoughts. Or was it vice versa? I was thinking as him, seeing through his eyes, talking to myself as if I were him. And as the man I had oh, so much to do. I could barely fit it all in.
OH!! I think I paled. A sickening feeling. I was doing everything in this life I thought I needed to do, but I had just been created. I knew that. Who told me that I could do anything at all, that I was 'free'? The only one who could tell me what to do was God who had created me. I belonged to him. He had made me. He had given me life by his grace. HIS life. I had taken it upon myself to do whatever I thought was fit and necessary. I had STOLEN "my" life from God! He had made me to live for HIS purpose, and I had absconded with HIS life to use for MY purposes. I was a rebel, a thief, guilty of insurrection: "Rebellion as witchcraft." I hadn't even turned to say, "Thank you," to him for the life he had given me. I had never given God a thought, had never asked, "What did you created me for?" He must have had some purpose in mind when he created me. He wouldn't have made me without a purpose. I saw clearly that I had robbed God of his purpose for me all the twenty-five years of my life, and now had absolutely nothing to show for it.
And I had had the audacity to "give" myself to God as though I was his peer. I had NOTHING to give. Everything about myself was already his. No wonder he wouldn't touch me: I was still in the delusion of being in control of "my" life. I had given myself with reservation: if I did not like what he did with me, I intended to cut ties with him and take myself back. What a deluded dork! I saw that this had to stop.
I had lived all my life for my own purposes and under my own control. I figured that the only thing I could do avail myself to his purpose was to stop all of my self-control and wait for his instruction. Maybe it was the relaxation techniques or the abandonment exercise for levitation I learned in occult meditation, but somehow I was able cast self-control out of myself. I completely abdicated of any and all self-lordship. I thought I might fall to floor like a blog of jelly because of my utter abandonment, but I felt "caught." With no effort on my part, I stayed up.
Inside, I was as dead. I tried to not think, to not talk to myself. I listened for my commission of God's purpose. Whatever he directed me to do, I was going to do it. I saw myself high on a mountain side. In a clearing there was a large felled pine tree. I was kneeling next to it with my head bowed. I sensed above me the sky filling from left to right with the rosy glow God's glory. It looked like alpenglow, but it was his presence. God was there, and I was afraid to look up. With some trepidation, I said, "You are glorious God. I am a mudman. Whatever you want me to do, that is what I will do." I shut up and waited again, listening for my commission of God's purpose.
Thank God for the patience of those ministers at Grace Bible Church. I don't know if their arms got tired or if they went out for sandwiches. I also do not know if anything or everything I said was out loud or only in my mind. I only know that I waited, and after awhile I heard a faint, soft voice say, "Remember this, and it is all right." I rehearsed that a few times in my mind. "And it is all right." Does that mean that I am forgiven everything, that I am accepted? Yes.
The flood of relief, joy, and euphoria that went through me, or rather swept into me, was amazing. Astounding. I was filled with gratitude, love, and adoration. The sensation of living waters filled me, rising from my deepest bowels and approaching my throat. As it rose my jaw quivered and began to work on its own. The minister next to me said, "Don't try to control it." I didn't, and for the next minutes I sat with my hands raised, observing my mouth speaking in another language completely on its own as praise, gratitude, and adoration flowed out.
I finally came to. I realized I was making a spectacle and looked over to see Raphael staring at me in disbelief. He had not broken through to the mindset I had achieved. I had gone to God in my mind, and there he had met me. In my imagination we had conversed in images, illustrations. I desired his revelation, listened for the picture, and he had showed it. He showed me that I was his, that I had been “ignoranced” in the flip into humanhood, and that I was in the rebellion of independence. He also showed me that he is lord over all. Everything is happening according to him--his purposes shall be. What he showed me put me in a place of humility and complete submission to him. I was packaged, and everything there was all right. I discovered his acceptance and the ecstasy of pure love. I entered the experience of being born from above: the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the Living Consciousness of God.
It was a visual and emotional mind trip—no drugs necessary. Just as in an illustrative way God spoke to Neville for Neville, God illustrated the truth for me. Same truth, but different illustrations. Because in my case my mind had to be adjusted to get to where he wanted me to go. I am sure that God will show you the truth that applies to you. You do not need anything else to be born from above. You do not need to wait until any particular time. Time has nothing to do with it. It is a matter of getting our heads, i.e., our attitudes, into the right frame of mind. Until then we are in some way resisting the utter submission and humility required: respect toward God, the full acceptance of his lordship. We have to get past simply saying that we are fully surrendered as a philosophy and into the real attitude in heart.
My sister received the baptism in the Holy Spirit while she was sitting in her bathtub. J. Rodman Williams, one of my mentors in theology, was sitting alone in his study. Their need became apparent and they had their conversations with God in their imaginations, and they yielded to the Lord. Others, like Raphael and myself, found help in the laying on of hands by those who have gone before. Seek them out if you need to, but be wary: if I had received the Spirit among snake handlers, I'd probably be a snake handler now, too.
The thing is, if you are humble, honoring God as your Father and fully submitted to him, you need only receive the Holy Spirit as an open bucket receives water.
My experience, by the way, has become my theology. God has not revealed anything to me that he does not reveal in scripture PROPERLY READ. Moses' experience in Exodus became his theology. The trick to getting there is GOING. You have to DO it. God in your imagination is ready whenever you are.
"Remember this." He is here in the conversation, and he is Lord--Eil the Almighty, YHWH--God in covenant with us. His anointing on us is Jesus--they are all one guy. And he has a message for you today:
"Converse with me. Let’s have the Eternal Experience. I will help you get there."
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
10:25 PM
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