April 2019
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My level of excitement was high as we moved to Portales, New Mexico to teach at the Church of Christ Bible Chair. My salary would be paid by the churches and Eastern New Mexico University would give credit for the courses. I was not aware of the dilemma I would be facing in this new position. I was still heavily influenced by the legalistic view of scripture held by the "Bible Belt" Churches of Christ. This was 1970. The "hippy movement" was in full swing and the "Jesus movement" was beginning. My students would be my teachers in this new position.
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In my first semester at Eastern a student wanted to do her term paper on "Speaking in Tongues" for my class in Acts. I wondered why anyone would be interested in that topic, but I allowed it. When she brought me her paper at the end of the semester, she sat down and began to testify to her experience with the Holy Spirit. All that was totally foreign to me, but I listened. I noticed a "sparkle" in her eyes that reminded me of the "liquid love" experience I had in Japan in 1957. I was hooked again. I knew I must seek and find what I had left behind.
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Yesterday's post exposes a serious problem in the church at large. Many tend to think religion is a high level of mental activity as though a spiritual person is one who can quote scriptures and read the biblical languages. If spirituality is an operation of the mind (a function of the soul), there is no place for revelation in the biblical sense because revelation is God showing his way of life to the spirit (or heart) of man. True spirituality is doing only what you see Father doing. As I would eventually discover, this "seeing" is a function of the spirit, not of the soul.
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One question plagued me through the years. I never shared my "liquid love" experience with anyone until many years had passed. The student who so openly shared her experience caused me to wonder why I had shut it out of my mind. The church of my childhood had something to do with it. I naïvely assumed the leaders in our church must have had similar experiences or they would not be leaders. I thought we were supposed to keep it quiet and move on beyond the experience. But there is no such thing as "beyond love." Love is all in all. God is Love.
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The first time I shared my story of liquid love was while teaching a graduate class on The Prophets. I introduced what I called "the prophetic experience" to help students see that the prophets were not political analysists who studied the events of their day. Using Isaiah 6, I showed how Isaiah did not draw conclusions about what needed to be said. God encountered him, purged his lips and gave him the word to speak. I used my story from Japan to illustrate the point: The experience did not come from studying love; God revealed himself to me as love.
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A student, Dick, came to my office after the "The Prophetic Experience" class (yesterday's post). We became friends and often had coffee together. He told me later that in that first visit to my office he knew I did not understand my experience. He had come in to talk because he thought I had experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He had had an experience with the Holy Spirit which was more profound than the girl's testimony mentioned earlier. I had taught from my soul; my spirit was not engaged. The story was "only" a memory with no implications for life.
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Dick also help me with the distinction between soul and spirit. He came to my office one day and began to talk of that distinction. I had just read where the living word divides soul and spirit (Heb. 4:12) and was pondering what that meant. "Why are you sharing this with me?" I asked. (I had not told him I was confused about it.) "I was driving to a meeting and God told me to come share this with you first," he said. This answer was as shocking as the girl's testimony. "God actually speaks to people?" I thought. I was "undone." Back to the books. I must know.
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I began an intense study of the Holy Spirit. I read everything I could find in the Bible and in current books. Without realizing it, I was trying to accomplish with my mind (soul) what can only be received by the spirit. Several months passed as I was trying to understand how God could speak to man. I thought I had to understand with my mind through study of the Bible. I thought God's ability was limited to man's mental capacity. Later I realized that, if that were true, only intellectual people could advance the Kingdom. Only smart adults could be saved.
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Review posts: #MyStory 59 #SoulorSpirit 7
One evening, in the spring of 1971, I was reading Pat Boon's testimonial, "A New Song," and explaining away the miracles as "coincidental." Suddenly Jesus' presence filled the room. It was as real as the liquid love of 1957 but this time he came as Lord. I "heard" something deep within that caused me to begin sobbing, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I had no idea what I was sorry for. I knew he had spoken. But I didn't know what he had said. I had not yet learned to consciously connect with my spirit. There was a blockage between my soul and my spirit.
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When Jesus appeared as "Lord" (yesterday), I was "drawn out of myself" (without ceasing to be me) and "pulled into the Christ of God." I didn't understand what had happened, but I knew it was more real than the dining room table where I was reading. I wanted to understand. I would soon discover that one must give up the right to understand before he can receive spiritual understanding. My academic training was working against me. Even though I had heard, I thought I must study HOW to hear from God before I could hear from God. Really?
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Even though I did not know what he said, there was something uncanny about the experience of hearing the voice of God. As I search for words to describe my "feeling" in that experience, I find the word 'fear,' but that is a word referring to an experience of situations in the natural world that threaten us. I was not afraid, but I was seized by the reality of his presence. I cannot doubt his presence any more than I could doubt my own presence there. I can say that his presence was more real than my presence. I experienced that with my spirit, not my soul.
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I had already heard him speak but had no awareness of what he had said. The only thing I knew to do was study harder. Weeks later I was reading (I Cor. 2:14), "The soulish man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God..., for they are spiritually discerned." I saw it! I was trying to hear spirit-words as though hearing were a soul-work. I had already heard months earlier. Something within broke. What he had spoken was still echoing deep inside: "Fount, you haven't been believing me, have you?" No blame in his voice, only love. No wonder I was sobbing.
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Another insight before we leave the experience of his presence as Lord (last 4 posts): I believe the "wall" between my spirit and soul was constructed by academic training. Colleges train their students to use their intellect and logic. That is a good thing unless the spirit is ignored (as it was in my training). Paul refused to use "plausible words of wisdom" because he knew that would "empty the cross of its power" (I Cor. 1:17 & 2:4). Intellectual interpretations exclude the "mystery" of the gospel. When you "explain it," it ceases to be "mystery" and loses its power.
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One final insight from the experience of being "seized but not afraid" in his presence. Some only see God's gentleness. They misunderstand the biblical concept of the wrath of God mostly because they think his wrath is a response to our sin. But the holiness of God marks him off as so "Other" than any created thing that it strikes us with awe. We want to withdraw and draw near at the same time. My "fear that was not afraid" was a response to the presence of a holiness which is majestic beyond compare. It was not from shame but from reverence.
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Another insight just came to me. The mysterious nature of experiences with the awe of our God is due to the difference between his Being and our experience of it. He is what He IS: "I AM THAT I AM." My experience of him may include feelings of fear and feelings of bliss at the same time. We have trouble explaining what happened because it cannot be explained conceptually. We can only point to the mystery by metaphor and analogy. The mystery can't be understood, but it can be known. "I know in my knower," someone said. The "knower" is the human spirit.
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During that period of upheaval, Dick and his wife visited Lynda and I one evening. The ladies were in the back room, Dick and I were in the living room. Dick got a phone call and left for a few hours. I decided to read Romans while he was gone. Something had so radically shifted within me that I was suddenly seeing the text with new eyes. Even though I had personally translated Romans from Greek and taught it on the graduate level, every verse was exploding in my spirit. I read all of Paul's letters before Dick returned. Scripture came alive in me that night.