Interactions with God #90
Probably around August or September of 2002, I decided to fast for a week. The last time I did this, in Houston, I had a rather odd Interaction with God. So, why should this time be any different? Yes, this one was odd too.
Fasting, like prayer, does not have some magical property. Nor is it a means of putting God’s arm behind His back to make Him do what we want. Rather, it is an act of faith. For if you willingly forgo food for a set time in order to focus on seeking God, it will take faith…or you will give up and eat a sandwich within a few hours. Like the last time I did it, this was to be a whole seven days with only water. I started on Friday.
When you are unemployed, a seven day fast is not quite as difficult to do as it would be with a full time job. I can’t imagine that it would even be possible. By day three your saliva glands don’t produce much and sleep becomes rather difficult. The weakness is unbelievable. You feel like you are sick all the time. Prayers are not as “spiritual” as you might think. Most of the time, I think I just moaned or grunted…”Lord, I need a job”…”Lord, Can you bless our church?” Other than that, all I thought about was eating food.
Nothing happened all week. I didn’t feel closer to God. I didn’t get any dreams or visions…nope, nothing. The next Friday finally came after what seemed to be an eternity. I broke the fast at lunch with a bowl of soup. After not eating for a week, eating light is extremely important. If you eat too much, like you really want to do, you can do some serious damage to your digestive system. Oh, and “light” should continue for a few meals. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT eat Indian food just after breaking a fast. Yea, this is how my latest Interaction started…
Ok, so I was starting to feel pretty good by that afternoon. I had eaten my soup, but still felt starving. That weekend, there were a couple of speakers coming in to one of Vineyard Churches. The one in Gilbert, AZ pastored by Jack Moraine. Jack was a good guy. He was more supportive to me than all of the other pastors I worked with there. I liked Jack. He too really wanted to see God move. On the counsel of some other Vineyard pastors, he brought in the two guys who supposedly had “something” from God.
Heroes. We all like heroes. Especially in the Church. The uncharismatic types just love to prop up these “intellectual” guys. The charismatic folks, well, they can prop up the goofiest people. Unfortunately, we ALL tend to prop up arrogant men and woman. Why? Well, I think it’s because we like those who seem to be smarter, stronger, faster or more spiritual. Unfortunately, the truly spiritual, from a God perspective, will never Self-Promote. These guys are really much harder to find and will run from being propped up. That is why we end up with the smart arrogant ones or the crazy loons who say they eat lunch with angels. Yes, loons.
Jack had invited a guy named Todd Bently to his church. Todd was running around the country speaking at churches with another guy, who I just don’t remember his name. Curious and hoping that these guys were real, Martha and I planned on going to these meetings. The first meeting was on Friday night and was with the guy Todd travelled with. Todd, as the headliner, would speak Saturday. Making the most of the time out, Martha and I went on a date before the meeting. We went to an Indian restaurant.
You know, when you are hurting for money for a long time, you still need to get out now and again. Dave Ramsey would not like it, but frankly, we had not heard of Dave yet! We went out to eat…just hours after I broke my fast with soup. No, I didn’t go mild. Are you kidding? Mild is for sissies. The food was glorious! At first…
The problems didn’t start until an hour or so into the meeting. The guy taught for a short time and then prayed for folks afterward. The teaching was rather “word faithy”.
I won’t go into the “Word Faith” movement much here. I used to have a great book on it years ago called A Different Gospel. I recommend it highly. In short, the Word Faith movement has its roots in Christian Science. Christian Science was a cult founded by a non-Christian named Mary Baker Eddy. Word Faith folks basically believe that “faith” is an arbitrary force that ANYONE can tap into…even God. Yes, this is absurd. Sadly, there are MANY Christians who either believe this or are influenced by it.
I have said before and will say until I die, Faith is TRUST. Faith in God, is just what it says, FAITH or TRUST in GOD. Trust in God doesn’t manipulate God to move, no, but it does please Him. When God is pleased, He is much more likely to do some really cool stuff. You know, like kick demons to the curb, heal disease and raise the dead. Through FAITH in God, we walk in the authority of God. Faith grows by our knowledge of God, which builds up our relationship with God. Just like a relationship with our spouses, all of this comes from contact, physical, spiritual, emotional and intellectual. We need to KNOW God in all of these avenues to grow in Faith. So, sometimes, we need to investigate things…like word faithy teachers to see if God is really involved.
Ok, so the teaching was off. Let’s see what God will do in the ministry time. People began dropping like flies. That Slain in the Spirit thing. I didn’t feel anything and God didn’t speak anything to me about what was going on. It was loud. Well, the guy was anyway. Shouting and jumping around. After a while, I went up for prayer. I was, as usual, hoping for a word or something from God to let me know why nothing was working. The guy pushed me.
No one had done this to me before. I had heard about it many times from others, though. Like the shouting, this is a tactic. I really believe they think that by building excitement in those they minister too, they can “generate” this faith energy they believe exists. What it really does is intimidate people into acting a certain way. Yes, they do drop like flies. I didn’t. Which clearly annoyed him. Sorry, if I go down, it’s going to be God doing the pushing. You can’t generate real faith with noise. Faith comes from within and is pointed at God, not some man.
During that night of odd events, I developed a case of heartburn. At first it wasn’t out of the ordinary. I did eat rather spicy Indian food that night. However, by the time Martha and I got home, it got worse and a case of hiccups added to the problem. These hiccups were not your ordinary hiccups, no. These were hiccups from hell. Never before had I had hiccups like them and hopefully never will again. They were like full body convulsions. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much at all that night.
The case of hiccups and heartburn lasted all night long and continued into the morning. Even so, I intended to go to the Saturday meeting to see this guy, Todd Hunter, at the Gilbert Vineyard Church. You have to understand that these “teachers” are very into the “spiritual” things. I fully expected someone in the meeting to look at me with my cycles of sour face with convulsive hiccups and try to cast a demon out of me! By the grace of God, that didn’t happen.
I didn’t know why I was going there. I felt awful and I was exhausted. During the meeting, I had even gone into the bathroom of the church to try to remove the contents of my stomach with my little finger, several times. The heartburn was very painful. Tums, were totally useless at this point. Yet, I felt I had to be there. God wanted me to see something. So I stayed and watched the events transpire.
I had gotten there early, before too many people had arrived. After the antics of the guy the night before, Martha had opted to stay home. I didn’t talk to Todd, but watched him to see if he was real or not. He was talking to people and acting normal. Nothing odd here. Then the time for the service started. The change was startling! This guy took the microphone and suddenly acted like a game show host. One minute he could have been lost in the crowd, the next he was shouting and jumping around. The only change was the microphone. Yea, “this is a show”, was my only thought.
I watched this man grab hold of people by their shirt and, with his other hand, act like he was pouring something in their mouths. Yea, it was supposed to be the Spirit of God. It was a disturbing sight. His teaching was unbiblical, but that was to be expected from a Word Faith guy. I ignored all those things and just kept watching. I knew this wasn’t all of what God wanted me to see.
Still in pain and convulsing from the constant hiccups, the show ended. I was not to leave yet. I sat there as people were leaving, waiting and watching. When most everyone had left, I overheard two men talking. One of the men said to the other, “I have been waiting for a true man of God for a while. None of the guys around here have a clue. When I walked in here though, Man, I could just feel the Spirit of God. This guy is anointed!”
This was what I was there for. You had to see this conversation, the arrogance, the pride, the error. This whole thing was a show and the audience was full of people who believe so strongly how “spiritual” they are that they don’t’ see the obvious lies that are mixed in. Satan gave the lie at the beginning. “Eat this and you will be like God.” Ascending, raising ourselves above. This was evil, yet held as “spiritual”. God hates arrogance…in any form.
Once I saw this, the Spirit of God said it was time to go home. Still in pain and starting to get worried that I may have done some serious damage to my digestive system, I took a Hydrocodone that I had left over from the “bike off the cliff” incident. It did calm my raging stomach and help me to sleep. I woke up without heartburn or hiccups a few hours later. Also, a bit wiser regarding “spiritual” arrogance and what not to eat when you break a fast.