The Hand of God

It was three week later.  The day after I had met the fallen angel at Three Brothers in Murfreesboro, TN, God had given me a message for Sunday.  It wasn’t an easy message to give, but I gave it to the Pastor of the church I was attending anyway.  After I gave the message God’s anointing fell upon me for the first time, and was like a raging fire in my chest.  My leg started shaking uncontrollably, and I had to sit down.  As the gospel choir sang a beautiful song that glorified God, his spirit came full into that church.  For a second I saw a vision.  I saw a hill with three crosses, the middle one higher than the others, under a blue sky, I felt sand and gravel, and I felt the hot air hit my face like I was physically there for a moment.  It felt like stepping off a plane in Kuwait. I put my head between my legs and clenched my teeth for the feeling was intense, and the realization of what I saw was heavy upon my soul. 

For the next full week the hand of God was heavy upon me, like a fire blazing in my chest.  It was both Glorious and burdensome.  I looked as if in pain to those who saw me because I was.  I was tempted to ask him to take it away, but I did not.  I say “I can take it God.”  I bare it.  I have dealt with worse. 

When I was in the Army, and even for some time after, I wanted to die.  For four years or so I woke up every day wishing for death, hoping for it.  Divorce and war are the two most difficult things a Man has to deal with in life, and I did both within a six month period of each other.   Add into that a broken heart, some shattered dreams, loneliness and despair, shame, and a work week that was twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and doing one of the most stressful jobs in the Army makes for a pretty miserable time.  I was hating life.  I felt like at twenty five years of age I had lived a good life, and was comfortable dying.  We would come under rocket attack, and Men would run for cover.  I would walk calmly not caring.  If I ran it is because I had a job to do, a duty to fulfill.  I trudged through this four years by making myself mentally tough.  

There was a good gym at FOB Salerno, Afghanistan.    My favorite thing became running on a treadmill.  I would pick a distance and speed I knew would challenge me, and I wouldn’t stop or slow down until I had finished.  I would actually speed it up towards the end.  I knew that if I ever quit during my runs because it was too hard or a wanted to stop the pain, then I might just quit on life.  Once you quit and let that weakness into your mind it becomes like a cancer that takes weeks to cut out.  

God taught me a lot from running.  When you start running, you set a goal, and you finish your goal.  Children have a hard time with this, and when things become hard they quit.  Finishing through your goals is a sign of maturity.  Sometimes God asks us to do difficult things.  Do you have the resolve to see it through? 

For me there was another lesson here as well.  I would become tempted to do more than what I set out to do.  It is good to seek excellence, but for me, and where God was taking me, I needed to be patient and obedient, and only do what I was told.   

Before I joined the Army I was a 279 pound Offensive Tackle at Eastern Washington University.  I was never a distance runner, and running long distance for a time was the thing I hated most about any of the training I did.  By the time I came home from Afghanistan, I was running four miles in 28:28 which is very good, and running became almost religious to me.  Whoever I was before I joined the Army died in Afghanistan.  When I came home I was someone completely different, and it took me two and half years to figure out what happened.  

After what I had been through, God’s hand upon me was harsh yet bearable.  God wants us to know, and have faith that, when times become tough, that we will not quit or back down.  He knows what is going to happen, but we don’t.  We have to develop faith.  When we see injustice and things that are wrong he wants us to speak out against it.  Not because it is easy, but because it is right.  God’s way isn’t always easy.   Without realizing it, God had started training me in Afghanistan. 

God started sharing insights with me.  Every day he would share wisdom with me through his spirit, and my entire perceptions of the world would be challenged.  For example, it is custom in traditionally Christian countries to remove your hat when you come indoors.  It is a custom that we have been neglecting.  Man needs a hat to keep his head warm in the winter, and to keep the son off of it in the summer, but when Man is indoors he might pray or prophesy, the Lord says that Man is God’s Glory, and he wants Man to shine, and any Man that prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors God. (1 Corinthians 11:4)  Man has forgotten God.