Heading For Healing 11: How I Got Right: I Cast Out The Weight
I was in high school from 1963 to 1967. I was a Christian because I went to church with my mother. I sang the songs, wore a suit. It seemed like the thing to do (she did not make me), and I had some social life in the Methodist Youth Fellowship. I did believe whatever God is, God was. But the church never taught me anything spiritual. Maybe God was watching us somehow, but it was irrelevant. I did what I wanted. I did the determining, made the decisions. I can't think of any good ones I made, but my life was mine to live.
Influenced by music, friends, the media, and society, in the 1970's I got into e.s.p., psychic phenomena, the ouija board, the I Ching, Edgar Cayce, and dream analysis. After Transcendental Meditation, I took meditation classes at a metaphysical bookstore. In 1975, in a meditation I encountered a spirit which tried to foist itself off on me as the "ascended master, Jesus." I realized then (after Jesus intervened) that the world is as the Bible says it is. I confessed Jesus as lord and savior at the House of Praise in Kaimuki, but nothing happened to me.
I eventually found myself giving myself to God for the gift of tongues. Again, nothing happened. This time it bugged me: I wasn't accepted by God. Long story short, I realized that I had always done whatever I wanted with my life. I did the determining, made the decisions, but it wasn't "my" life! It is God's. He had animated this body of mud with HIS life and spirit. I belonged to Him! I had never as much as said, "Thank you," nor had I ever asked what He had made me for. He must have had a purpose. Taking HIS life for MY purposes all this time was rebellion. I had robbed God of whatever He had made me for. I couldn't pay God back, but I could stop robbing Him and do whatever He told me to. The big thing was to get the spirit of self-lordship out of my life.
Now, here is the thing: I couldn't have cast that spirit out of myself if I hadn't taken those meditation classes which taught me things the church never could. Or at least never would. I believe God sent me into the course I had taken to engender the spiritual talents I had accrued in it (I am not saying to embrace the occult; I am just saying there was a baby thrown out with the bathwater; that baby was real spiritual experience). When it came to casting that spirit out of myself, it was as a tangible weight to me. In total surrender to God, I cast self-control out of myself to the point I thought I might fall flat on my face as a blob of jelly. And I was cool with that. With no willed effort of my own, I did not fall. I was caught! Surrendered and submitted, the weight gone, I was all ears listening to what God would tell me to do. For the first time in my life, I was in the right relationship with God. THAT was when I heard a small, faint voice say, "Remember this, and it is all right." I rehearsed "it is all right" in my mind's hearing. "All ... right." I WAS ACCEPTED!!
My heart soared to an ecstasy I could not contain, and as the "water" rose up to my throat, it flowed out as an oriental tongue. I couldn't fake that; I could only observe it (my mouth was moving entirely on its own). I do know that I was pouring forth love and adoration and gratitude to God for accepting me, for HEALING MY RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM.
PS: In the mass of confused teachings I read and hear on the Internet is the question, "Is there healing in the Atonement?" My friend, THERE ISN'T ANYTHING ELSE! The Atonement is healing.
Influenced by music, friends, the media, and society, in the 1970's I got into e.s.p., psychic phenomena, the ouija board, the I Ching, Edgar Cayce, and dream analysis. After Transcendental Meditation, I took meditation classes at a metaphysical bookstore. In 1975, in a meditation I encountered a spirit which tried to foist itself off on me as the "ascended master, Jesus." I realized then (after Jesus intervened) that the world is as the Bible says it is. I confessed Jesus as lord and savior at the House of Praise in Kaimuki, but nothing happened to me.
I eventually found myself giving myself to God for the gift of tongues. Again, nothing happened. This time it bugged me: I wasn't accepted by God. Long story short, I realized that I had always done whatever I wanted with my life. I did the determining, made the decisions, but it wasn't "my" life! It is God's. He had animated this body of mud with HIS life and spirit. I belonged to Him! I had never as much as said, "Thank you," nor had I ever asked what He had made me for. He must have had a purpose. Taking HIS life for MY purposes all this time was rebellion. I had robbed God of whatever He had made me for. I couldn't pay God back, but I could stop robbing Him and do whatever He told me to. The big thing was to get the spirit of self-lordship out of my life.
Now, here is the thing: I couldn't have cast that spirit out of myself if I hadn't taken those meditation classes which taught me things the church never could. Or at least never would. I believe God sent me into the course I had taken to engender the spiritual talents I had accrued in it (I am not saying to embrace the occult; I am just saying there was a baby thrown out with the bathwater; that baby was real spiritual experience). When it came to casting that spirit out of myself, it was as a tangible weight to me. In total surrender to God, I cast self-control out of myself to the point I thought I might fall flat on my face as a blob of jelly. And I was cool with that. With no willed effort of my own, I did not fall. I was caught! Surrendered and submitted, the weight gone, I was all ears listening to what God would tell me to do. For the first time in my life, I was in the right relationship with God. THAT was when I heard a small, faint voice say, "Remember this, and it is all right." I rehearsed "it is all right" in my mind's hearing. "All ... right." I WAS ACCEPTED!!
My heart soared to an ecstasy I could not contain, and as the "water" rose up to my throat, it flowed out as an oriental tongue. I couldn't fake that; I could only observe it (my mouth was moving entirely on its own). I do know that I was pouring forth love and adoration and gratitude to God for accepting me, for HEALING MY RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM.
PS: In the mass of confused teachings I read and hear on the Internet is the question, "Is there healing in the Atonement?" My friend, THERE ISN'T ANYTHING ELSE! The Atonement is healing.
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
2:18 AM
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