Interactions with God #30
When something miraculous happens, it isn't always something that God is doing. The devil does have his counterfeits. In Houston, many miraculous things happened that seem to prove that what Ray said was true. This compounded my deception problem and caused me to think I had “reasons” to ignore entire books of the Bible. Funny thing though, I didn't know I was ignoring them until God's Spirit pointed it out. The process that lead me to that point really started with a girl named Jackie.
Jackie Huggins, was a black girl from England. Jackie was dark, really dark, exotic even. She was just gorgeous. I met her at a church called Victory Chapel. The House of Israel Church was not a church so to speak. It was a para-church ministry. In other words, we didn't have Sunday services and any meetings we did have weren't open to the public. We just wanted to reach the lost on the streets of Houston. Since we didn't have a Sunday service, we all attended a regular church each Sunday. That church was Victory Chapel. It was pastored by a guy named Charles Taylor.
I really believed Jackie to be way out of my league. She was really pretty, and I was not exactly stud muffin material. Not only was I not handsome, but I also didn't have a job. I was in full time ministry, not drawing any kind of salary. I only got a room at the house, food and all my incidentals. So, at the time, I was by no means a chick magnet. Yet here she was, showing an interest in me! Yea, I was rather pleased about it.
We started dating. I don't remember how long, but it had to have been for three to four months. She was a really nice girl or so she seemed to be. As I said she was from England and she lived with her mother who was from Jamaica. Jackie had this awesome English accent and her mother had a Jamaican one too. It was fun just hearing them both talk. They lived with Jackie's younger sister (14yrs old I think) and two little ones that were the children of another sister, who I never met. This sister had gotten into drugs and all kinds of stupidity so the mom and Jackie were taking care of her children. What I didn't know at the time was that neither Jackie nor the mother had US Citizenship. This was to become a problem.
The situation at the house was starting to get itchy. I was slowly beginning to realize that some of the things Ray was doing were unethical and even illegal. He would get hired for a construction project, and then purposely buy more materials than he needed, keeping the leftovers. He was basically stealing from his own customers. This and quite a few other things started to stand out to me. His honesty was coming into question. Jackie ended up becoming the breaking point. This happened when I started sitting with Jackie at Church instead of our little House of Israel group. Ray didn't like this at all. He came up with several lame excuses as to why I couldn't sit with her and had to sit with the teens we brought. Basically we ended up at odds over a girl. It was really annoying.
It all came to a head one weekend. I went out with Jackie to a movie or something and stopped in to talk to her and her mom when I got her home. I started to open up with her mother about my issues with Ray. From my doubts about his truthfulness to the stealing materials and such. Jackie's mom had some interesting things to say about it. Then, out of know where, She claimed to be some sort of prophetess and believed God sent me to Houston not to work with Ray, but to work with her and Jackie. Yes, this had warning lights all over it. Finally realizing that none of them were US Citizens, I came to the frightful conclusion that my dating relationship with Jackie was a sham. They needed me in order to stay in the country! I needed to get answers and I needed to back out of this mess for a while. This was a pretty serious situation, so it called for serious God seeking. I decided to do an extended fast...no food, only water for exactly seven days...or in other words...a week.
Ray, as I had said earlier, had a rather bizarre testimony that was full of fanciful stories. At the time, I did believe he was telling the truth, even though they were really out there. After he came out of the gay lifestyle, he claimed to have gone through a period of really difficult testing by God himself. This test, he said, God called “the week”. This week was a competition of sorts between two or more people and only one person would succeed. The winner would be fully accepted into this “God's commando's” role that the elite of Rays team supposedly were. Yes, none of this is biblical other than the fact that it fits squarely into what the Apostle Paul said was “adding to the Gospel”. Paul said that those who do this should be cursed. That is a pretty big deal.
In this so called “week”. God would bring really difficult trials on the participants. At the end of the week, God was supposed to speak to the one who succeeded and tell them something specific. They were then to repeat this message to Ray as proof that they “won”. I had seen several people go through this “week” and was stunned by the odd things that took place to test them. From old bad influences showing up out of nowhere, to strange illnesses, I really did see evidence that seem to prove this testing period to be true. So when Ray approached me Sunday night, the night before I was to start my fast and just after I broke up with Jackie, telling me that God wanted to start my week, I was not all that surprised.
He didn't know that I intended to break up with Jackie, and he definitely didn't know I intended to fast the upcoming week. I had told no one. The timing of this was bizarre at best. It, like the Austin bathroom experience, seemed to give weight to the crazy stuff Ray was saying. Incredible as the timing was, it didn't diminish my resolve to seek God and find out what was really going on. I was going to ignore the week thing and just focus on God and my commitment to fast.
Ray didn't make it easy. He started off by saying that a fast throughout “the week” had never been successfully done. He also made me work that week. We had a job painting a house. This job involved scraping the old paint and then applying several new coats. Now, for anyone who has ever done a fast like that, you will know how hard this was. By the third day, my saliva stopped its normal production. Sleep became something I only hoped for and the weakness feeling was overwhelming. By the fourth night, I would just lie in bed most of the night an ache.
That Friday, I got a break from the house painting nightmare. I was given the job to drive two girls, from the house, down to Port Lavaca, TX. We went there in order to work with a guy named Jack. Jack was setting up a christian movie to do street evangelism. We had done some work with him in the past, so he had requested our help for this event. Plus, one of the girls was his daughter. Her name was Mary.
We got there just in time to help with the set up in a local parking lot. I started to set up chairs, but just could not do it for long. Every muscle in my body hurt and I had the strength of an eight year old girl. I stopped and just sat in a chair until the set up was done.
After the set up was complete, they started to run through the sound check and other technical things. God spoke to me. “I am going to give you your strength back.” Within seconds of that thought, the ache was gone and I felt completely normal. I stood up rather thrilled in what had just happened. I had no idea why he did it or what he did it for, so I went and told Jack and the others what happened. They had no idea why either.
The movie started. It was the “Cross and the Switchblade.” Yes, the one with Eric Estrada. No, the movie is not that good. Truthfully, it is really bad, but it did have a half decent salvation message attached to it. There were quite a few people there as the movie was being shown right there just off main street of downtown Port Lavaca. I watched the movie, asking God what he wanted me to do, there at the ministry event and with my life at the house in general...crickets.
The movie ended with several pastors again pitching the salvation message. Several lay people went around to talk and pray with anyone who showed interest. I joined in that effort. Nothing exciting happened. I didn't lead anyone to Christ, but I did pray with several who just accepted Christ. Afterward, I helped dismantle the equipment and stack chairs. We went back to Jacks apartment and crashed. I fell asleep right away only to wake up at midnight, on the dot, to my aches and general crappy starving feeling. After several hours of just lying there, I got up before dawn and went down to the beach. I sat on a rock and prayed till the sun came up. Still nothing happened.
Disappointed, I went back, packed up the girls and headed home toward Houston. It was Saturday of my week long fast and my “week” according to Ray. I had not yet heard God speak, other than the strength returning thing, and frankly didn't think I would. I was beginning to get a bit nervous that maybe this week was real and I was going to fail.
In the middle of that night, Ray came to my room and poked me in the side. He said come with me. We left the house and went to a park somewhere nearby. He sat me down on a bench and went back to his car, leaving me alone. I sat there in the dark waiting much the same as I did the prior morning, hoping to hear some guidance from God...I didn't. When the sun was fully up, Ray came over and sat down. He asked me if God told me what to say. I said no. After a few minutes, Ray said that God spoke to him in the car and told him I did win my week. He said because I doubted Ray, God would not speak to me directly. He said that God wanted me to trust Ray. Yes, this was extremely cult like.
I didn't trust Ray and my doubts continued to nag at me. I was confused by the timing of my fast with this supposed week. I was hurt by what happened with Jackie and began to feel like God had abandoned me. However, I didn't know what else to do other than put on a pleasant face and keep plodding forward. So, that is what I did. The confusion ended a short time after this, when I got the second dream. You know, the pair to the Snake in the Lake dream. That was the answer I had prayed for and then the fun part began. This was when I had to open up the pages of scripture that I had been avoiding and really walk with an individual faith in God.