A Meeting in Heaven

It was a pretty amazing weekend at Tierra Nueva. We were into our second of three weekends learning about the combining of the social prophetic (speaking out against injustice) and the charismatic prophetic (learning to hear God's voice to speak words of comfort, encouragement and building up). The class is called "Lift Up Your Voice."

Today we got to hear from Brad Jersak, a pastor from Abbotsford, BC and the author of "Can You Hear Me? Tuning in to the God Who Speaks." I have bought this book for and recommended it to more people than any other book. It is the most accessible book on learning to tune in and hear God. It has powerfully transformed my prayer life and the way I read the bible and talk to others about Jesus because it invites us into a dynamic interaction with Jesus instead of leaving messages on some divine answering machine in the sky. Throughout the book Brad has "tuning in" exercises and he led us through several today. I want to share one with you and then I will share how I met Jesus in that same exercise.

Brad called the exercise "The Pearly Gates" (unfortunate name). He was teaching on Revelation 3:20 where Jesus says, "Behold (look intently), I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them and they with me." He connected this directly to two verses later in Revelation 4:1 where John says, "After this I looked and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, Come up here and I will show you..." So, right after Jesus has made a statement, John steps into it. That is our invitation, so here we go.

Use your imagination to start. Our imagination serves all sorts of things for us, so let it serve your faith. Imagine the door in heaven and as the command of Jesus goes, "Come up here" -

• Go up to the door in your mind and what do you see?
• What do the gates of heaven look like? It could be anything.
• Jesus is waiting there. How does He greet you?
• What did Jesus' face look like? What was His expression? His eyes?
• What does He want to show you?
• Now, see His wounded hand. He wants to put His wounded hand on a wounded place in you. What happens?
• What promise is Jesus speaking to you in this place?

As Brad led us through this, even before I got to the door in my mind I saw a huge book lying open. When he asked what the gates looked like I tried to push the book image away, but let it come back when he said it could be anything. The book was enormous.

I pictured Jesus standing looking into the book - it was bigger than Him and He seemed to be peering down into it like a well. He turned and looked at me and smiled big and said, "Oh good, you're here! I've been waiting for you. I have so much to show you!" His smile was open and His eyes were fulled of unfeigned affection and delight, both in me and what He wanted to show me.

The next thing I knew, He took me by the hand and we climbed up onto the book. It was bigger now and it seemed alive and like we were going to sink down into it.

My neighbor sitting next to me in class kept exclaiming and crying and laughing. His meeting with Jesus was very powerful and real. Mine was cool, no doubt, but still seemed to be something I might manufacture.

About this time Brad asked us to see Jesus' wounded hand being placed on a wounded place in ourselves. I imagined the hand but before I knew it Jesus had placed it over my heart and waves of something I wasn't manufacturing starting coming out of me - it didn't hurt but it seemed that He was taking pain or grief or hurt away. The waves were so powerful that I was gasping for air between them and tears were running down my face.

Too soon Brad asked the next question. I wasn't ready to be done with whatever was happening, but I felt Jesus say, "I am always with you. Really! Not just in your imagination as wonderful as it is. I am right here. Now."

Thin Spaces

Many people have argued against going to specific places where God appears to be pouring out and healing and setting people free on the solid ground of saying that God is at work everywhere so why would I need to go somewhere else to "experience" God in these ways. I don't. I know that.

But there is something about getting away - first- to a place where I give God all my time and attention and I get to worship a lot and receive a lot of prayer. And - second - getting away to a place where other people are pressing in to worship and know God more for extended periods of time. But it is the third one that is unsettling - for whatever reason or for many reasons, God seems to pick places. We want to throw that out because the Temple is gone - we are the temple of God now; His dwelling place.

The Celts had an understanding of thin spaces; spaces where two things intersect - the sea and the land, the forest and the field, a burial mound; this world and the Otherworld. These were places where the unexpected happened, where the Otherworld and Eternity was bound to break through because it was a thin space. It makes me wonder about people and places that focus themselves on desiring God to visit, to show up, for revival; where worship and prayer and fasting desire more than anything to come into the Presence of God. Maybe God visits those places in particular ways because the first and the second thing are happening regularly there. Maybe its something else completely and isn't meant to be analyzed. I think we are meant to be thin spaces where other people encounter God.

Whatever the case, I've found some places like that. A prayer room in a church basement on Capitol Hill in Seattle. A church where people are getting healed in Redding, California. A church in Toronto where people are experiencing deeply the love of the Father that heals. If you want to hear an amazing testimony of that, go to www.fpcbellevue.org and click on Sunday, Feb. 1 sermon by pastor Scott Dudley, my long time friend. I got to be with Scott in Toronto a few weeks ago and prayed with him last Tuesday and I must say that he is a different man - the old has passed away and, behold, the New! It is a beautiful work of the Father, the Son and the Spirit that is beyond my description. Some other time I'll write about how God met me there.