Dear Love,

I keep a book on the self where I will at least occasionally see its title: YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL. I need the reminder: my conceptions of God are always too small. This keeps me mentally stretching. My experiences with God, though, for instance being baptized in the Holy Spirit, seeing Christ crucified, hearing his voice, healings, etc., and my much reading, have given me perhaps a bit bigger "God" than yours, and I would like to share some of mine with you.

When I discovered the active presence of Jesus in my life, I had been much removed from my traditional Methodist church. I was into the occult and meditation. Confronted in an occult meditation with the presence and power of Jesus, I repented and went with a friend to the House of Praise in Kaimuki, Hawaii, and got saved. The House of Praise was an outreach, I believe, of Youth With A Mission (YWAM), which is headquartered on the big island of Hawaii.

As the name House of Praise suggests, the emphasis was praise and glorious worship, and from then on my life majored on the praise and worship of God. I should say that it has majored on the love of God, for which we praise, worship, and adore Him. He sent me to a Charismatic seminary, Melodyland School of Theology, where again the emphasis was praise and worship for God's love.

In the bookstore of the Christian Center, I happened upon a small booklet, Open Windows, Swinging Doors: a personal diary of Dr. Frank C. Laubach (1955: Regal Books, G/L Publications). It had a picture of an old man, who looked like my grandfather, sitting on a tropical island, like my Hawaii. I read the book at a retreat, and it centered on the praise, worship, and love of God. The book became my retreat. I cannot tell you how much Frank C. Laubach means to me. I am crying even now: I miss a man I never met so much. It took me seven years of haunting used bookstores to find a copy of his Channels of Spiritual Power (1974: Fleming H. Revell), and then You Are My Friends (1942: Harper and Brothers). I got everything I could find by him or about him. He taught me to fill my heart, mind, thoughts, and life with the love of God, and I cannot tell you the appreciation I feel for the man.

Long story short: your traumatic life is something you have not been able to let go. No one blames you for that. My former life was not traumatic, but it certainly was regrettable. I found, as Frank Laubach taught, that the love of God displaced my regrettable life. It was dead to me. You have heard Neville's testimony, that, embraced by God, he absolutely fused with Love. You are afraid of that? No one blames you for that, either, because it entails letting go of an awful lot. You have tried valiantly for years to correct your life and have read an awful lot of material to help you accomplish that. I am recommending another approach: first of all, the form the field takes on to communicate with us, Jesus Christ. That guy is real to your mind. You can accept him as Lord -- YHWH -- which he is. As I watched Jesus being crucified for my sin, the price for the perfect life given me I could not repay, I heard in my mind that he did it to win the right to me, for the joy of forgiving me, for the love of God. That's the love we give up to, releasing everything else to get to.

And secondly, I recommend you concentrate your reading and ruminations on the love of God. Read the likes of the afore mentioned books by Frank Laubach, if you can find them, and books by T. L. Osborn (and listen to his evangelistic crusades' preaching on youtube!), E. W. Kenyon, Andrew Murray, They Found the Secret by Edman (1984: Clarion Classics, Zondervan), Smith Wigglesworth, Hannah Hurnard, D. L. Moody, Eldon Ladd, Merlin Carothers, John Deere, Reigning With Christ by F. J. Huegel (1963: Zondervan; 1969: Bethany Fellowship), and any number of missionaries -- just to name a few.

And aside from those, I mentioned books by Richard W. Wetherill on books.google.com. Scan and consider what he says in Tower of Babel and Dictionary of Typical Command Phrases. It is something we all do, and we should all know about it. Just to know that we are doing it helps.

And if there is anyone reading this who isn't Love, would you please remember to think of her as happy, healthy, satisfied, and much loved? Imagine "she-whom-God-knows" having been filled with joy and praise, thanksgiving and gratitude, sane, serene, secure and having whatsoever she had desired.

Thanks.