Secret Journey

"The easy, comfortable and predictable road, that is not the road to take.  The road that God has for you is difficult, narrow, windy with many curves, and it will take you to somewhere you could have never imagined yourself."

In my brokenness and despair at the end of 2014, all I knew was God telling me to study everything I could about dreams and visions.  I never would have imagined how this took me deeper into scripture and deeper into the lives of the saints.  The great spiritual fathers and mothers of the past and present not only have God encounters but heavenly visions and spiritual dreams that change their lives.  God teaches them how to completely die to self and live in the realm of heaven on earth.  One can not give peace away unless one is peace.  One cannot pray for heavenly fire if one is not already fire!

Little did I know how this road to discovery would take me on a new turn in my spiritual life, a secret journey ascending the mountain of God and into a secret garden full of mystery and unimaginable beauty.  Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, one travels a strange path marked out for you only to find in the end that it leads you home.  The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end.

The world has so blinded me that I failed to recognize myself much less the incomparable glory of my Creator.  As a graying adult, I am becoming a child again.  As God draws me deeper into Him, I am coming to realize this is not for my sake but for the sake of others.  God is preparing me to be a spiritual father to others.  God is teaching me how to be a son so I can be a father.  God is teaching me how to be a lamb so I can be a shepherd.

As a Protestant minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I have been like a biological father who has seen many children born anew into God's kingdom but I have not been a spiritual father and caregiver of their souls.  I have experienced the joyous rapture of new births but I have rarely experienced the joyous rapture of seeing God's children grow up as warriors for God's kingdom.

It's like I have awaken from a dream from a long sleep and for the first time clearly see what it means to be a spiritual parent.  What it means to lead God's children out of the darkness completely renouncing this world and into God's kingdom of heavenly light.  I am starting to learn what it means to teach others how to purify their souls and no longer walk as slaves to this world.

What God is teaching me, I am to pass onto to others.  God is forming and designing me to be a spiritual father.  I don't know what this all looks like or how it will happen but it's all in God's hands.  I simply resign myself in all this to God.  Whether I face miseries or pleasures, failures or successes, poverty or riches, it's all the same.  Here my prayer O Lord,

"O Masterful Architect of my soul,
So conform me to Christ that I am stripped, naked and poor in spirit before You.
O Ravisher of my soul,
Let me lose all to gain all,
I give all that I am, all that I have,
So give me all that You are and all that You have.
Hide me in the secret chamber of Your heart.
Amen."