“Everything God has spoken, we will do.”

God Has Spoken:

One day, after breakfast at a little café in Alexandria, I was told,

Don’t go to work

It seemed to be a training in obedience.

“Lord, do you know we have to get that grant proposal in today?”

Of course.

My organization lived on grant money. But the voice said not to go in. What to do? Well, the sky is not going to fall if the proposal goes in the following day. I would go back to my apartment.

As I turned on the ignition, the voice spoke again.

You can go to work now.

I remember that incident because something was at stake, but usually I was told do something trivial, such as to listen to a different radio station or sit in a different chair. As these arbitrary commands continued—mounted as it seemed—Abigail expressed concern.

This sounded more like Boot Camp than spiritual guidance.

Maybe I shouldn’t do everything I was told. Maybe I should, as she put it, “use your intelligence.” I was puzzled. Was I supposed to second-guess God?

The next day I stopped at Border’s bookstore near Pentagon City. On the way out, I felt guided to move in a particular direction, like a dowser following his stick: first straight ahead, next to the right, then straight ahead, now stop. I was at the religion section. I felt guided down to the third shelf on the right, and finally to a particular book.

It was a book I never would have chosen on my own: John Calvin’s commentary on the Gospel of John.

I know that Calvin is one of the great theologians of the modern era, but I had an impression of him as stern and rigid. I picked up the book and it opened to John 8:28, where Jesus says, “I do nothing on my own.”

Calvin explains that “Christ wants to prove that he does nothing without the Father’s command … he depends entirely on his will and serves him sincerely … he does not just partially obey God, but is entirely and without exception devoted to his obedience.” It was a lesson in obedience.

Near the register, there was a display with another book I never would have bought on my own: The Ten Commandments, by Dr. Laura Schlesinger and Rabbi Stewart Vogel. Many people like Doctor Laura but the few times I had heard her on the radio, she seemed harsh rather than loving. I believe in tough love, but she just sounded tough. However, I opened it and my eyes fell on a line bold-faced in the text. It is where the people of Israel accept the covenant: “Everything that God has spoken we will do!” Another example of total obedience.

I had been led to one other passage in Calvin’s commentary. John 9:4 says, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.” Calvin comments, “as soon as God enlightens us by calling us, we must not delay, in case the opportunity is lost.”

The note of urgency reminded me of the story a village chief in eastern Brazilia told of his own encounter with a divine being.

He had encountered the being while out hunting, but was too scared to speak and the being left.

“At night while I was asleep he [the divine being] reappeared to me. … He led me some distance behind the house and there showed me a spot on the ground where, he said, something was lying in storage for me. Then he vanished. The next morning I immediately went there and touched the ground with the tip of my foot, perceiving something hard buried there. But others came to call me to go hunting. I was ashamed to stay behind and joined them. When we returned, I at once went back to the site he had shown me, but did not find anything any more.”

He had missed his moment. I did not want to miss mine.

“I Am Pulling Life Forward.”

Go back to My loneliness.  Feel it along with Me.  The universe has exploded into being, and I scramble to order it.  Then there are long eons, though remember that “long” doesn’t mean exactly the same to Me.

The following came to me as God’s experience:  “I am dwelling in the vast loneliness.  It is the loneliness of a huge figure who does not know He is alone, since the idea of others has not yet appeared, so it is just this huge unexplained emptiness.”

I was beside myself.  I had reluctantly given up my happy agnosticism—and for this?  I had higher expectations.  “Lord, that doesn’t sound like much of a god.”

You are diverting yourself from the task of describing My life because of fears that you will say something wrong and embarrassing.  Don’t let your fears guide you.  Just listen to Me and dwell within My heart and tell My story from that vantage point.

However disappointing, the voice was still authoritative.  I relaxed and, once again, was taken back to the Creation, in (for me) uncomfortably anthropomorphic language.

I am awake.  I rise and shrug off the cramps of night.  I stretch my arms, move my feet.  It is good to be alive.  I look at the world, matter, around me.  Dead.  Nothing there.  I am ready for action, for interaction, but there is nothing.  Just whirls and splashes and explosions.

Matter has a subjective side, a “within,” that subliminally experiences its surroundings, but that is too limited to interact with, too limited to be satisfying.  It is like the story of the tar baby—you can poke it but you do not get much of a response.  The Mayan myth of making men out of clay and wood is not far off.

In Popul Vuh, the Mayan creation story, God aims to make men who can “walk and talk and pray articulately.”  He first tries making them of wood and then of clay, and finds those don’t work very well.

So I infuse My spirit into matter, as if trying to blow life into it.  (Like blowing bubbles) I blow and blow molecules, complex molecules, the building blocks of life.

This was a meaningful image even if anthropomorphic.  Even for scientists, the origins of life—even the answer to “what is life?”—is a profound mystery.  If there is a God, then surely He would be part of that story, and “blowing life into it” might be about as precise as anything.

“But why did it take God so long—millions of years—to develop life?”

Long?  It was the twinkling of an eye.  Time is much more relative than you imagine.  Those millions of years were no longer than the first six milliseconds of the universe.

“Death and the Hope of Immortality . . .”

“The next phase is what I wonder about.  It looks to me as if You communicate some sense of moral order and hierarchy, reverence for life and death, a sense of the meaning of life … I am feeling that this is Your voice, not mine, Lord.”

Yes, it is.  They were understanding Me well enough to understand that life has meaning—a beginning and an end and the sense of a meaningful movement from one to the other, summarized (judged, reckoned) at the end.  Death and the hope of immortality, which isn’t merely the fear of death but the understanding that there is a vertical  dimension to life and (that) its meaning does not stop with death, that there is a larger story the individual is part of, and his (and her) spiritual development is not limited to just one life.

Current Spiritual Transformations

“As You tell me things, am I supposed to ‘use my own intelligence,’ as Abigail urges, to interpret or reinterpret what You tell me?”

You have to use your intelligence, but you have a very direct line.

“Will we include the present age?”

No, the main goal is not to talk about some crisis or transformation in the current age.  A new revelation about the past is relevant to current spiritual transformations.

 

 

Putting Me First Rather Than Last

 

I had now accepted the assignment, but God wanted more.  He wanted me to “purify” myself.

You need purification.  Transformation is a good word.  It is obedience, which at its fullest is transformation.

“What does that involve, Lord?”

Putting Me first rather than last.  Living every moment, making every decision, in response to My call.

“How do I go about doing that?”

You know this—start every day with prayer and let prayer guide you through the day.

The Right Way to Ask

“Walsch reports You as saying, ‘God will grant whatever is asked, without fail.’  Whatever is asked!”

The trick is in “ask.”  Not everything you “want” has been “asked” in the right way, with fulsomeness of soul.

“But then the statement is completely misleading.  It depends on a verbal sleight of hand.”

Not so.  Some might be confused by it, but it is a way of focusing attention on the right way to ask, to believe and feel fully, and to motivate this change in people.  But it is not a lie, not even a Noble Lie.  It is the direct truth.  When you come into the fullness of Being, of partnership with God, everything you truly seek will be granted.  That may seem like a bait and switch, but that is not the way you will see it when you get there.  You will see that this is indeed what you really wanted all along.

 

Think of Joan at the Stake

I was told not just to read books but to look at “religious lives.”  Receiving an honorary degree from a small Catholic liberal arts college, I spoke about Joan of Arc.  She had the most well-documented life of anyone in history up to her time.  We still have the records from her two trials.  She had been convicted of heresy and burned at the stake at the age of nineteen as a result of a trial rigged by her English captors.  Some years after her death, a new trial was held, which exonerated her.  Both trials took evidence from people who had known her since childhood.  In the twentieth century, she was canonized.

“Lord, what can I learn from Joan of Arc?”

Think of Joan on the stake.  What are her feelings?

This is what came to me:  “Glory to God, blessed savior and lord, redeemer, I love God and am happy to sacrifice all for Him; a feeling of joy and triumph over this world, a rapture and sense of rising to heaven, to join God, to be received and welcomed by a chorus of angels; a peace, calm, inner togetherness, centeredness, kindness to mankind, to their suffering, to their burden of sin, smiling also in triumph.  They ‘know not what they do’ to their own souls!  They do not know they are the losers.  They are the ‘fools’ who do not know what’s really going on.  Radiant love sweeping out over the world, embracing the world, as soul-like awareness of the pain of the body and its frailty and vulnerability and impermanence, a deep understanding of the nature of reality, an immersion in the really real, a closing of the old eyes and opening of the new ones, a succumbing, a resignation, a withdrawal.”

 

“This is not a renunciation”

I want you to model the spiritual life. Live it deeply. Theology is not just an intellectual exercise. It must be grounded in an intimate relationship with Me, an intimate openness to My Word.

“Aren’t I already open, Lord?”

Yes, but you turn away. You know the problem. You hold Me at arm’s length and listen to Me only part of the time, and only partially, not as a whole person. You need to draw Me into yourself totally—live through Me—and let Me guide you totally.

“But that sounds miserable. I couldn’t have fun and enjoy life any more.”

No, it doesn’t mean that. You will find life perfectly pleasant. This is not a renunciation. It is an affirmation, a growing in a certain direction, in a certain domain.

This reminded me of saying a sad farewell, before getting married, to all I would be giving up—having my apartment as messy as I wanted, living on pizza, watching the Late Late Show. It’s amazing what a bachelor can cherish as the good life.

“Lord, what do You want me to do?”

Nothing dramatic. Just pause in the course of the day to take Me in. It doesn’t mean you have to interrupt other things you’re doing. But I will be co-present and a co-participant. Try that now, as you eat your lunch.

“Okay, Lord.” I drew Him in and unwrapped my sandwich. “Let me share this with You, Lord.”

Good.

That day I ate lunch “with God.” But most days I do not.