The reality of the experience of Jesus was something I could take hold of. By itself, experience might be too subjective, but there was the experience of others and that of the community, along with the core experience recorded in scripture. (There is always an element of the subjective in experience; else we would not have personal experience.)
There were two important experiences during the time over the six months while I was working my way slowly back into the church.
First, there came the time when I began to read the Bible again, not as a linguistic or literary exercise, but for enlightenment. I have often wondered since this experience whether the devil can tempt one to read the Bible. One evening I was thinking about religion and the church and remembered how much I used to enjoy reading the Bible. So I decided to read some. I started with Hebrews, one of those books I had enjoyed. (Hebrews isn't one of the "introductory" sorts of books, for those who are not well acquainted with scripture.) I began to read and carried on until I reached chapter 6, where I read the following:
For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, since on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt.
— Hebrews 6:4-6 (NRSV)
I stopped right there. I read it again.
It still said the same thing.
I thought that perhaps this was one of the reasons why I knew Biblical languages. I could check out translations like these and get things straight! So I took out my Greek New Testament and read the verse in Greek.
It said the same thing.
Well, I thought, perhaps my language skills have deteriorated a bit. I have quite a number of Bible versions in my collection.
So I read the verse in several other versions.
They all said the same thing.
I could not think of any interpretation that I wanted to hear, so I even resorted to commentaries. Now several commentaries that I had gave explanations which were pleasant to hear, but all of them sounded to me like they were talking around the plain meaning of the text.
To me, at the time, the plain meaning of the text was, "You're lost. Period. No hope."
So there I was on the bed (I often read lying down) surrounded by Bibles and feeling thoroughly depressed. All my scholarship failed me at that moment. Then one text came to mind: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" 1 John 1:9 (KJV). Yes, I remembered it in the KJV, as I had memorized it. It struck me right then that I didn't need to figure out how to handle Hebrews 6:4-6 right then because I could simply know that I was confessing my sin, and the promise was there that God would forgive. At that moment I knew and experienced God's forgiveness.
My other key experience came during a revival at Pine Forest United Methodist Church, preached by Bishop William Morris of the Alabama-West Florida conference of the UMC. I attended because I thought it was likely that listening to a Methodist bishop was one of the better ways to gather what United Methodists believed. (There may be some doubt about this procedure, but I thought it was pretty good at the time!) It was during the simple but beautiful messages presented by the bishop that I made my decision to return to the church.
I didn't respond immediately, not because I was in doubt about what I was going to do, but because I was in doubt about many theological points and how those would affect my reception by a particular denomination or church congregation. When I finally did return formally to the church, I did so with a promise to the Lord not to allow the views of others to change my relationship to Him. Relationship became first and theology last. I have found this to be a good plan for living with the church. There will always be points which can be doubted. There will always be doctrines that various members will question one another about. But these don't need to be the critical issues.
One of the things that kept me at Pine Forest UMC was my Sunday School class, the Wesleyan Adventurers. The members of that class drew me in, included me, and loved me into their church. I appreciate every one of them. That class no longer exists at Pine Forest due to controversies surrounding the revival at Brownsville Assembly of God (Pensacola, FL), a situation I regret deeply. What is important, however, is that the personal touch and the fellowship often will have more to do with attracting someone to a church than the preaching or any of the other formal programs. Many churches would do well to consider these simple things in their outreach programs.
I remained at Pine Forest United Methodist Church, and in late 1994 I was involved in starting the Pacesetters Bible School. Pine Forest UMC launched the school and still hosts it, but members of other congregations and other denominations were invited to participate. I became director of the school. I worked along with the church staff through the interesting period of revival in the local area, but I stood back from many of the active details. I would teach, but I would rarely participate in altar prayer times or other such events.
In August of 1998, the Lord took me on, so to speak, in my office. It was a week during which I expected to be particularly productive. Pastor Perry Dalton was leading a mission trip in Costa Rica and very little was planned here in the way of activities. On Tuesday morning I came late to my time of personal prayer. I had been running around and was frustrated at the number of things which could get in the way even during a light week. In a perfunctory fashion I began to pray for my mental lists of people. I'm fairly good with lists. As I began to pray for some of the college age youth of the church, I was stopped. I did not precisely hear a voice, but the words were as clear—and as clearly not mine—as though it was a voice. I believe the Lord was speaking to me, to interrupt me and get me to take my ministry much deeper.
In four days of argument with the Lord I got nothing done—the conclusion was simply that I had to be prepared not just to mention names in prayer, but to bear these peoples' burdens before the Lord. Included was a call to intercession, but also a call to a greater concern for the experience of those I taught. It was not a time of correction for my doctrinal beliefs, but a call to application of those beliefs; a call to live up to what I taught.
Since then I have spent much more of my time in prayer, and much more of my teaching time in teaching about prayer. The key lesson I learned from this August experience was simply that the Lord continuously calls us to move in closer and to become more real in our ministry and in our activity.
I’d like to tell you, and I’m sure you’d like to see that as I became closer to God the troubles stopped. But that isn’t true. Since that time, I have experienced both great joy and considerable hardship. I don’t try to rank hardships, and neither should you. I found my particular set of hardships very difficult to bear. But God has continued to sustain me and to teach me through all of them.
One of the joys I experienced came in November of 1999 as I was married and acquired a family and even a grandchild at age 42. A year before, the Lord had led me to my wife-to-be, Jody Webb, who was a prayer warrior in our church, and particularly in individual prayer ministry. The Lord first directed me to her to hear her thoughts and ideas regarding prayer. I was working with a city-wide prayer movement at the time, and following