You need to hear the voice of God for you and I need to hear the voice of God for me. We both need to trust that this voice is true.
Micquette, the kids and I moved into our new house a few weeks ago and I just set up the television today. I don't watch much TV. I prefer to live life, rather than watch it. You'll notice that rarely are the people on television shown watching it themselves. While searching through a few boxes in my office, I found several VHS tapes of old concerts and sermons. During the 1990's I had a Christian rock band and traveled throughout the mid-west and southern US. I have stacks of cassettes, VHS and DAT tapes with the music and message from church services and concerts.
This afternoon, I popped in a VHS tape labeled simply "Overflowing Cup". http://www.overflowingcup.org/ I am ordained through this wonderfully chaotic church in Beloit Wisconsin. The tape turned out to be a concert by my then band "The Apostolic Groove". I could not remember the event at first. We played a heavy schedule of gigs in the few years leading up to this. The band name those days was "Number 8". In 1997 alone, we performed over 250 times. After about forty five minutes of music, most of which I fast forwarded over, I spend ten minutes talking. Talking to the me here in Tucson AZ. Talking to my future.
Prior to this particular show, I would have told the audience of their need to repent and be saved, given an invitation to come forward and prayed with people as the band played behind me. I did not realize at the time of this taping, but I had already given my last "Alter Call" a year earlier. Their was no invitation to this crowd, just a clear word to future me.
I was married for two decades to someone also in ministry. We had one child, a house in the rolling farm land of Southern Wisconsin, a small construction company to pay for it all and a dream lifestyle. I worked about nine months a year and had the time and money to enjoy the rest of my time. On many levels, it was a perfect life. And yet...
...and yet, I hated working in the construction field. My marriage was an unholy mess and my ideas about God had already changed in ways that would take me a few years to sort out. I was about to have my world ripped apart. What follows are random lines from me that night.
"One time we were baptizing in that tank right over there. The tank is on wheels and was over here at the time. So don't think we were tossing people from the stage to the tank. ALTHOUGH THAT WOULD RULE!! Like dwarf tossing for Jesus. I'm sure I just offended someone. Oh well. Dave had accidentally over filled the tank. A rather large young man was being dunked and, when he went under, the water went everywhere like the parting of the Red Sea. It was SO COOL!!!"
"If you plan on my dunking you, remember, I never charge for ministry. The dunk is free, but if you want me to let you back up you should probably have a $20 in your hand. We always ask the person being baptized if they have anything to say before they go under. This one guy took the mic from me and talked for almost half an hour. He was standing in COLD water. It hurt to watch. I had shrinkage for him. A half an hour of that was painful and funny, all at the same time. Someone asked me why I didn't take the mic away from him. I had a television camera pointed at my face the whole time and it was his moment to shine. I just smiled."
"The whole time I have ministered in this church I have had one simple message. I believe that every person on this earth has the right to hear the voice of God for themselves. You need to hear the voice of God for You and I need to hear the voice of God for me. We both need to trust that this voice is true. It doesn't always look pretty. It doesn't always look right or traditional. Sometimes it can look downright strange. Like starting a church in a bar."
"The Lord works in different ways in different seasons. As He is changing and moving, we need to change and move. We need to trust that the Holy Spirit is working this all like a giant jigsaw puzzle to make it picture perfect."
"As I have said many times, God is not up in heaven wringing His hands worried about how this all works out. He is outside of time, knows the end from the beginning and that has to be good enough for me."
"I say all this because I am entering a season in my life where I have no idea what is going to happen. I'm not being all "spiritual" on you here. I have no clue what happens next and I am afraid. For the first time in my life, I am unsure of everything. Something is about to change, I do not know how and I have no control over it. Nothing makes sense and I find myself laying awake at night wondering."
"When Moses was at the Red Sea, Pharaoh's army was coming up fast and his own people had to be complaining. They were up against it and there was no earthly way it was going to workout for them. Am I the only one that wonders if he wet himself? Because these days I'm right on the verge."
"I am trying to hear and trust the voice of the Lord in my life right now. Speaking for myself, I sometimes judge others harshly for the way their life looks without knowing what is really going on with them. I have no idea what is going on in my own life, let alone anyone else's. Making judgements without knowing all the facts was the original sin of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil of Adam and Eve fame, and I am still stumbling over it today. How can we rightly judge anyone or anything without knowing everything? Only God knows. That's why it is better to follow the Voice"
Within a year of these words I had lost my home, my wife, my ministry and my business. No one will ever know how many times I lay on the floor with thoughts of ending it all. Over the next few years I cried enough tears to make the desert bloom. I had moved to Arizona: a place I have come to love, but at the time I considered it Hell's Lobby. Everything was turned upside down and shaken.
My life is very, very different now. God has redeemed the years the locust have eaten (Joel 2:25-29). I am blessed beyond anything I could have hoped for. Those things that consumed my nights with worry a few years ago are all gone. Just shadow, not real terror.
I posted the line from the top of this page on facebook this afternoon. Someone commented, asking if it was from a song. I guess it is in a way: the song of my life. The one thing I was able to hang on to, when everything else around me failed, was hearing the voice of God and following that voice. My ex-wife used to tell me that if I thought God was telling me to jump off a cliff, I would. She was right, only if it was something that would harm me, it wouldn't be that voice speaking.
I used to think "Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick" was my life verse. It seemed everything was just slow and painful. Galatians 6:9 says, "Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." That's another way of saying "hang in there, it gets better." I hung in there and it's true when it says "Surely we will come again rejoicing." ... and don't call me Shirly.
I wrote a song before everything went bad. A song, also speaking to the me of today from the me of the past. Here are the words:
These are the days after my heart's been melted like wax by the holy fire of the risen Lord
I have been burned down, a city left in ruins, but I have been lifted up by the hand of the Lord
Dancing days are here again
Pass me the tambourine, I want to dance before the Lord
If the Lord had not been on our side when men attacked us
When their anger flared against us, they would have swallowed us alive
The flames would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us
The raging waters waters would have swallowed us alive
Dancing days are here again
Pass me the tambourine, I want to dance before the Lord
Dancing Days (Archambault) copyright 1999/2003 Humnal Music ASCAP
hear it here www.myspace.com/moremark
The painting you see here hangs in my dinning room and was done by artist Kyle Reinbold of Beloit WI. I know him from my days ministering at the Cup. Check him out at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000188717805
Until next time
May the Lord bless and keep you, May He make His face shine on you
Mark
i
