A Direct Quote

A woman I write devotionals for, an adjunct professor at a women’s college in North Carolina and a pastor’s wife, gave me a book to read a long while back. I have very, very strange reading habits that have been made stranger by the fact I am in school and have very little extra time to read what I want.

I have been reading the book she gave me for more than a year and finally came across why she gave me the book. She has been a dear and published some very heart wrenching devotionals and tucked most of them under the category of healing. She believes in it. In the meantime I want to write devotionals on victory, contentment, progress… anything but woundedness. But because I am obnoxiously straight forward, I haven’t written much like that.

I am dealing with what I am dealing with and it involves forgiveness as I encounter “triggers” that bring up memories that wound. I am not in control of this. I am doing the best I can. Recently the nature of the triggers has changed, also the responses. I have these very strong emotional currents that surface with these triggers. A kind word, something beautiful… really good things make me weep. There is something going on that I don’t understand, but it is powerful and healing. I feel a little wacked. But I think because I am aware of the phenomenon and I almost observe it and allow it, it doesn’t control me or even lead me to conclusions, it just is.

The passage… but I can’t explain how it relates to what I just wrote or the painting and the response to the painting I had on Saturday. I think if I tried to label this it wouldn’t do it justice and I would say, wacked.

From When Heaven Invades Earth, Bill Johnson, page 114.
About a spiritual experience he was having…

I didn’t know of anyone who would believe this was from God. I recalled Jacob and his encounter with the angel of the Lord. He limped for the rest of his life. And then there was Mary, the mother of Jesus. She had an experience with God not even her fiancee believed, although a visit from an angel helped to change his mind. As a result she bore the Christ child… and then bore a stigma for the remainder of her days as the mother of an illegitimate child. It was beginning to become clear; the favor of God sometimes looks different from the perspective of earth than from heaven. My request for more of God carried a price.

Tears began to soak my pillowcase as I remembered the prayers of the previous months and contrasted them with the scenes that just passed through my mind. At the forefront was the realization that God wanted to make an exchange – his increased presence for my dignity. It’s difficult to explain how you know the purpose of such an encounter. All I can say is you just know. You know His purpose so clearly that every other reality fades into the shadows as God puts His finger in the one thing that matters to Him.