SENSITIVITY TO OFFENDING
Literally dozens of people over many years have spontaneously said, “You need to write your book” in response to Julie’s and my God-stories. My (Bob’s) struggle is how do I deal with the apparent fact that most people do not experience God in these ways*. I would hate for anyone to feel like second-class spiritual citizens if they don’t have things like these happening in their lives*. A leader in one of our early prayer groups asked us to “tone it down” because some of the people who were not experiencing God in these ways were saddened. Perhaps our relating focused more on us than on our good God. Our desire is to present our story from a place of brokenness, a place of weakness. So that more people can expect MORE of the Father’s goodness. *YET!
SCIENCE LAB
As we hope you will agree, so many of these life-events are way beyond coincidence. Our stories really happened, and almost universally each was a surprise, but they were couched in a hunger to have more of the Lord in our lives. I often sought the Lord’s answers to why did that happen or what is the meaning of that spiritually. I make the analogy of a science course, where usually the lecture is given and then the lab is done to show what things look like in the real-world experience of the theory. My life seems filled with spiritual labs with periodic lectures, insights, revelations to explain what just happened.
WHATCHAMACALLIT
Decades ago, we started to write down some events on scraps of paper and later into the computer. We mulled over what we would title a book. At that time, I looked at my life and gloomily gave it a mental title of “Squandered Grace”, remembering often-extraordinary actions of God in our lives which we did not allow to deeply affect us. I saw my life as “ordinary” but knew that was not God’s plan for me. We were blessed in so many ways and had an active faith life, but something important seemed missing. The Lord reminded me that He was not ignorant of how I would respond when he poured out super-abundant blessing in my life, yet He did things in our lives repeatedly that are “our story”. He offered, an alternative title focusing on Him as giver and not me as receiver, “Extravagant Grace”. Still we procrastinated….
AND NOW, A BLOG
To this day, I Julie and I have no clear understanding of what unifying theme we should have to tie things together, but we know that our Lord can and does act supernaturally (His natural) in many different ways. The idea of writing a Blog is changing how I think about this. As Julie has said many times, “Writers write”. My sense now is to just begin and allow things to flow.
MOST EMBARASSING
Not long after my experience of the Holy Spirit, when it was my turn to be the weekend acting hospital commander, I paid a VIP-patient a courtesy visit. It was one of those “God-incident” moments and I absolutely knew it at that time. We started with chit-chat and within minutes were deep in discussion about that person giving up on God when a daughter was killed the day after in a tragic car accident – the day after she chose to be baptized. It seemed as we were both getting a sense of what God was thinking with every question and answer. It went on for over two hours and ultimately resulted in my being told about intimate family details that in retrospect should have remained family secrets. Our meeting ended with jointly searching out the Gideon Bible with a promise that it would be read. I went home positive that God was “off-the-charts” active in that meeting. The next day as I was about to give another courtesy call, the doorway was physically barred by the chief nurse, who greatly outranked me. I was told that a complaint had been lodged that I had harassed that VIP. I was new to the hospital at the time, so most people did not know me, and rumors flew through the hospital about the new religious-nut doctor. The only one who did not believe them was the hospital commander, who confided that he had been thrown out of that same VIP’s room, so he knew I could only have been there with full permission. Things got so bad that the Chief Army Chaplain in the region passed word down through channels that I, as a doctor, should “stay out of Chaplains business”. I was confused, felt left out to hang by the Lord, and that led to my decision / silent vow to stay a committed Christian, but to be “respectable”. In a bizarre twist the shared experience with the hospital commander probably contributed to his selecting me to be his full-time Deputy Commander several months later, and in that capacity the chief nurse had to report to me when the Commander was not around. Ultimately that nurse and I prayed together, but there is much more to that story… About a year later I was at a cocktail party of high-ranking officers and that same VIP came over to talk to me and asked, “do you still think that God loves me?” I responded, “I know it!” We both smiled.
