God is Real

I got out of the car, iPod in hand, Bible open. It was time for worship. I strolled into the church, looking around at the different people standing outside and inside the lobby. My thoughts weren't even on what was going on - my eyes were glazed over with passion.

Earlier that day I had sat in on a guy speaking. His name was Shawn Bolz. And he brought it. That afternoon he taught all of us oldschool Pentecostals how to hear God accurately, and speak those words over people.

"You gotta realize that God speaks in parables," the 6-foot-something, 35-year-old single pastor from Hollywood spoke over the microphone, "and we're not supposed to just give that parable, we're supposed to interpret for them. That's like speaking in tongues without giving an interpretation, they won't understand what the heck God's saying to them!"

He waited for the mmmmm's and the ohhhh's to come from the crowd, and, giving a slight smirk, continued: "What's more powerful for someone - saying, 'I see an elephant, and he's coming to crush you, but God says jump on his back and ride it,' or 'You've been in a season of your life where you feel like there hasn't been a way out, but God is saying that He wants to use this situation to get you to where you need to go"? Or better yet, when you get the picture and a vague interpretation, start asking the Lord for a more specific interpretation. Ask Him for the first names of the people involved, the field of interest they're in, and ask them about it! Learn to hear God!" And then went on to demonstrate how this is done and we echoed it back to him. I was sitting forward in my chair, my legs going up and down like a dog wagging his tail, being filled with hope and passion.

The second I got out of that afternoon training time, I went and found the first person I could on the street of Meridian. He was a scruffy-looking hippy guy with a long beard and glasses. I pulled over. God said he's a man of power, and that he has more power over his current situation than he realizes. His eyes light up as I tell him this. "Yeah, I just got a DUI, and I dont' know what to do about this situation," he said, "Man, you just made my day!" I talked with him and walked beside him for a while as he shared more of his life and I told him about how God had impacted mine when I was addicted to drugs just a few years ago. I was pumped that it had worked so well.

I'm convinced that even if you completely mess up and get it wrong, thinking that God is speaking to you when you're not hearing Him at all, the simple fact that you want to bless people and love people, stepping out and being bold makes an impact on people. This is especially true when your motivation isn't "get people saved" - it's just having fun and revealing a supernatural God to those that don't really know about His existance and how He actually interacts with people and is real. And trust me, God is real.

That night at the church, I walked in and saw a woman with a cast on her arm. Her name was Molly. She told me how she had dislocated her thumb and it had caused her pain. I prayed for her. 25% gone. I called over my friend Sam. Sam has a lot of God inside of him, and it's really obvious. We pray together. Molly is in shock. The pain is completely gone.

She gets up on stage later (because I called her out to the pastor!) and says, "Not only was I healed," she holds up both of her thumbs, side-by-side, the tops of them level, "but one of my thumbs was half an inch shorter than the other one, and now they're both the same size!"

"Whoah!" I say, and Sam started his Holy-Spirit-drunken laugh. If God was real, He definetely showed it that night.

Play Station

The commons area hummed and murmured with activity. A larger, quiet woman spoke to a younger man with large, gauged ears and a squeaky voice, probably brought on by a cold, about her English assignments. Sitting right beside them were two men with gray hair, one of them having a head-full of it, the other talking to him about the Bible. In the corner, an elderly woman whom I recognized from my math class was selling pizzas for 5 dollars, an offer I took up in a moment.
My fingers tapped the keys on my computer. The image on the screen changed from a facebook page to IGN.com, the website of the International Gaming Network, and on the homepage is a CG photo of a young, slender woman in shorts and a vest with short hair, with the title “Final Fantasy XIII” is here. I look at my page history, and the last few days have the IGN logo splattered all over it.
At the moment that I am about to click on the link to watch the intro video just one more time, I hear the fast drums and heavy chug-chug of guitars from my pocket, and my brother's angry face on the display. I answer.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Matt, how's it goin?”
“Good man, you?”
“Goooood. So heeeey I'm sitting here staring at about 13 PS3's on the shelf...”
“Where?”
“Best Buy.”
“What the heck, seriously?”
“Yeah. So... you want me to get one?”
I sit there for a millisecond or two. Opposing thoughts ran through my brain. One said Dude, you just got back $2500 on your tax return! Get 'er done! Another said You know if you just get it you'll play it all the time and get sucked in. Remember when you threw away all your PS2 games in ministry school? The last, and finally the one that took over, said Man, you made a promise to your brother that you'd go in on one with him, and I know it'll be really fun. Just do it.
“Yeah, man, let's do it. I just got my tax return back and we definitely need to get a PS3.”
“All right, sounds good. I'll see you when you get home.”
I hung up. Sighing, I bent over and ran my hands through through the one-inch-long extrusions of protein that shot up from my scalp, finally gripping the back of my skull as my elbows touched my knees. Looking for answers up at the ceiling, I pack up my bags and head off to work.
The next few hours of janitorial were spent tormented by thoughts. I'd come so far! I was seeing people get healed miraculously in front of my eyes, I was having encounters with God in heavenly places, I was hearing Him for myself and others with pin-point accuracy. I've come so far, I thought, and now I'm going straight back to something I was freed from. I felt like the dog in Proverbs, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.” It was just a PS3, though, it wasn't like I was going back to doing drugs or anything. But I had high hopes for my life, and I didn't want something as stupid as this to drag me down. I vacuumed the rug, sucking up all the garbage into my backpack.
As I pondered this, my thoughts turned to God. Up until now I just assumed I knew what He wanted for me, and what He wanted to do. I didn't try to contrive an answer like I had so many times, I just waited and listened. I gave it up to God and started sweeping Victory Academy.
Then a random thought came into my head. I hadn't even considered this, it just snuck into the stronghold of my mind and checkmated its king.
Matt, said the thought, I'm allowing you to have this PS3 because you've been through the trials of life and I can now trust you with it.
I stood dead still, staring intently into space. A tear began to well up in my eye. God trusts me. I'm worthy of trust. For so long the church has taught the doctrine of “Sinners in the Hand of Angry God.” They mean well, for without God we truly are nothing. But I believe that what we're missing is a revelation of what Jesus' blood actually does. It doesn't just make us go to heaven when we die – the blood of Jesus changes us, from the inside out. His death put our own sinful nature to death, and His resurrection raises us anew from the dead, not just theoretically, but as a spiritual reality.
At one time in my life, I wasn't strong enough or trustworthy enough to have a PlayStation 3. Now that old man has been buried in baptism, so that I may walk in newness of life. He's turned my life into His Play-Station, and the joy I get to experience is beyond words.

Weak Knees

As I slouched in my purple cushioned chair, my black-and-white-stripe DC shoes on the bar of the chair in front of me and my knees higher than my head, Pastor Jim announced that the students from the School of Supernatural Ministry were going to be giving prophetic words today. I sat up straight in my chair. These six students came and lined up in a row at the front: a tall, dark-haired man in his 30's, a woman with red, medium length red hair in her 40's, a sharp-looking 20-something with curly hair and a huge grin, a short little giggly 18-year-old, and two older women with passion-gone-crazy in their eyes. Tagged on the end, however, was a 5'2” 49-year-old woman that didn't look a day older than 35, wearing a shirt of bright yellow and designer jeans, with shoes to match. The glory of God seemed to emanate from her face, her ear-to-ear smile forcing my lips wide and my eyes soft as I watched.
This is my mother.
As the students were each given the mic as they received words from God, they began to minister. Some of the students spoke to everyone at the same time in a sort-of preaching fashion, while others had specific congregation members stand up as they gave a fresh word to them from the Lord. The 20-something, Jack, pointed out a young woman in the back of the sanctuary, who stood up, almost surprised that she had been picked. I turned around in my seat, looking back and forth from Jack to this woman as he spoke. Her expression went from a closed-lips stare to a near-teary-eyed smile in moments, and as they finished I noticed a shiver shooting down my back. A “whoah” escaped my lips, followed by a sinister chuckle that seemed to spur on the excitement of the woman next to me.
After all of the students shared, it was finally my sweet Mommy's turn. She took hold of the mic, still smiling, gazing toward the sound booth. “Yeah,” she said, affirming the other speakers, “yeah.” She paused, exhaling off the mic. “So this is for Dan Hammel, back there in the sound booth.” She gave a chuckle. “I have a question – do you have any metal in your body?”
Dan nodded. “Yeah, in my knees.”
“Whoah!” I said, raising my voice.
“Oh, wow,” my mom said, her smile growing larger, “Well that...fits pretty well,” she said, “because the verse I got for you was in Hebrews 12, where it says 'Strengthen your feeble arms and your weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.' And I feel like God does want to heal your body, but he also wants to strengthen you so that you can stand up under pressure and against the attacks of the enemy.” Dan just nodded and smiled.
“Whoooaaah!”
As she handed off the mic to Pastor Jim, the audience all stood up and gave the students a round of applause. I was applauding them, but mostly I was applauding my mommy.
I love her so much.
Growing up in a highly spiritual family has always been a huge blessing for me. Even when I was going through my rebellious stage as a teenager, there was never a question in my mind about the reality of God and who He was. I knew he still loved me and cared about me, even if the only interaction I had with him was praying that he'd help me win at my Star Wars computer game.
My mom was the one that kept my brother and I afloat spiritually. While I was out with my “policy debate friends” doing drugs and partying, she was losing sleep praying for me, crying her eyes out and not knowing why. She was my anchor, my true-north.
She was there with me while I was screaming in my room, “Fuck God! Fuck you, I don't fucking want anything to do with a God that would let people die!” She was there for me while I would spend days depressed, wanting nothing to do with life and getting lost in the world of Final Fantasy VIII. She was there by me when I came back six months early from an internship in Chile, having deeply wounded a family there, resulting in me no longer wanting anything from life. She loved me through it all, and continues to speak my destiny to me over coffee and cereal every morning.
Sometimes in church I'll go up and give my mommy a kiss and a big hug, telling her she's the greatest mommy that ever lived. I think it inspires people. And even if it doesn't, I could care less.