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Something Doesn't Add Up
By John Gavazzoni
Jump to: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Something's not adding up for me. When one compares scripture's portrayal as a whole of what is normative for the believer in this life with the experience of so many of us, something doesn't add up. Don't expect anything too precisely conclusive on the subject I'm taking up here....I'll be taking a rather general look at what perturbs me. To begin with, John in his first epistle, informs, or maybe I should say reminds, believers concerning a special Source of knowledge, and since "(God's) people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," it behooves us to pay attention to what John had to say especially since he wrote the epistle in his very senior years, rich in experience and insight on issues so very fundamental to our walk on the Way. No epistle in the New Testament is more fundamental than first John.
John wrote, as the KJV has it, that we have an unction from the Holy One and we know all things. A better translation, depending on which Greek manuscript a translator is referencing, might be, "we have an anointing from the Holy One, and we all know [the Truth]." I suggest checking out Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of the New Testament, "Amplified, Expanded, and with Multiple Renderings." The verse is verse twenty of the second chapter, and really any translation will give one a basic sense of what John means to convey.
I can imagine having a conversation with the apostle about a matter of importance in my walk with the Lord that involves my physical life, and have him answer, "check with the anointing within which you have from the Holy One." Or, "ask the anointing within you." This would stand in stark contrast to what...it seems to me....is the propensity among us today to rather (as we're constantly admonished by the medical wing of this world's system), "ask your doctor," and/or "check with your doctor." We treat such advice as mature and reasonable. "Ask your doctor;" "check with your doctor." It's drummed into our heads by constant repetition.
We unwisely presume that our well-being is our doctor's highest priority when we seek his help. Well, it's not! Listen to me, dear brethren, your well-being is definitely not a top priority for the great majority of physicians. I've been through this before, as I've sought to gently bring up in a conversation with a brother or sister in the Lord suffering from some ailment of the body, the subject of medical malfeasance, and that the third greatest killer in the U.S. is medical error, and that doctors are wrong as many times as they are right, and possibly more wrong than right usually, and the answer I get is something along the line of, "oh, that might be true of some doctors, brother John, but not mine. He/she is wonderful."
Sigh! "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." Do you know what you are to the medical branch of this evil world's system, the dominant system of this age? You're a cash cow. In all probability, your doctor....yes your doctor...is definitely not among those rare physicians who really know what they're talking about, and go to great pains to prescribe for you what will really work in the long term, addressing the root of your problem, and not just treating your symptoms to give a measure of temporary relief.
Doctors have a practiced manner, a way of presentment that is meant to assure you that they know best, that their education has fitted them to do what's best for you, so don't bother thinking for yourself. Don't be some religious nut who checks with the anointing within. Here's a fact: most doctors, by far, are mostly ignorant on the subject of nutrition, and they're not about to go out of their way to educate themselves, since the system honors and rewards them for selling drugs. Mostly, they're drug pushers. There's a general agreement, if not stated publicly, that, for instance, if you're over 50, you ought to be on at least 5 medications. It's a kind of 5/50 rule.
It's a fact that more than half of heart-related surgeries are unnecessary, but they pay, on average, $150,000. Some of us, and I include we sonship/kingdom teachers/preachers, are suspicious of what the average mainstream preacher is dishing out, while we treat doctors as if they're motive-pure, and practice-perfect saints. I could relate story after story of loved-ones, dear friends, dear brethren in the Lord, co-workers of mine in the wholesale business I worked in for many years. The truth was too obvious: they were harmed, and in most cases, killed by the treatment they trusted. Got cancer, can't waste any time. Gotta get you on chemotherapy treatment. Got heart problems: quick, jump up on the surgical table so we can cut into you. You're diabetic, you need insulin. Your total cholesterol numbers are too high, got to get you on a statin drug. Bad science, bad doctoring, most of it, and you swallow it all whole...hook, line, and sinker.
Something's wrong. We've got an ear to hear what the world is saying, and suffering, because of it. Brethren rich in revelation, but super-stupid about into whose hands we entrust our bodies, these temples of the Holy Spirit. I know, whatever is going on falls under the sovereign will of God, and I know our lives are in His hand, but something is being indicated to us, confronting us with the fact that an alarming number of God's people are suffering a disconnect from the knowledge that keeps us from being destroyed physically. There's a connection between how we relate to the body of Christ, and our well-being, for some are weak and sickly among us, tracing to not discerning the Lord's body. Maybe we're sovereignly being confronted with the fact that while we have been favored with revelation and understanding in some ways, when it comes to experientially working out the defeat of the enemy, death, we just might, in that dimension, be "poor, miserable, wretched, blind and naked."
Am I saying that sickness necessarily and always equates to being unspiritual, or that to be free of any illness means you're particularly spiritual? Most certainly not! But check with the anointing within; ask the Holy One to teach you by sharing His anointing with you. For some reason, as a matter totally of His work of grace in me, I have been led time and time again to distrust establishment medical advice, with that grace motivating me to search out the facts about what I've suffered from physically down through the years, especially the last several decades. And I can testify, there is a better way in almost all cases than the establishment's way. At the time of this writing, at age 85, I'm on no medication for anything, AND it has become almost a rule in my life to avoid doctors as much as possible, with the possible exception of things like needing a visit to the emergency room because of a broken leg.
Scripture says,"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, for if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." In some dimensions of our life, at certain times of crisis, out of sync with what is normative for and of us, as God's children, we turn in love to what the world has to say to us and for us, and we are in those occasions, loving one master, and hating the Other. There is a connection between who you trust and who you love. In regard to how practical it can be to check with the anointing within even in respect to our physical well-being, I'm remembering the testimony of a brother in Christ who found that to be so.
Back when I was co-pastoring an interdenominational charismatic church, I attended a pastor's conference hosted by Church on the Way in Van Nuys, CA. Church on the Way is part of The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a Pentecostal denomination with the Church on the Way being among those within the denomination that at that time had made the transition from classical Pentecostalism into the charismatic movement, while still holding to the Foursquare/classical Pentecostal theology. Brother Jack Hayford was the pastor, and very respected within his denomination and within the extant Neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, and even within the larger evangelical community, and in my opinion, deservedly so.
At one point in the conference, whether planned or not, one of the veteran pastors of the denomination....and I gathered, something of a mentor of Jack's....shared an experience about the anointing. He also, was someone who had come to recognize the spiritual freshness of the charismatic movement in contrast to much of the extant classical Pentecostal churches, and had "gone with the flow." He told of the time when he was on a mission trip of some kind when he was suddenly overcome with weakness physically and couldn't understand why. It occurred to him, as he put it, to check with his spirit, in other words, check with the anointing within. Immediately, he heard, "you need salt." Whether from excessive perspiring on the mission, or because of some other reason, his system had become deficient in salt. (Low salt diets are, for the most part, stupid; more injurious than helpful. We need salt. Get yourself a good form of it; I recommend Himalayan salt.)
He had checked with the anointing within, immediately ingested some salt, and almost just as immediately his symptoms cleared up. There are external signs that reflect spiritual normalcy, signs that express visibly how the spiritual and physical normatively intersect and converge, such as Paul writing that the signs of an apostle were evident in him in all patient endurance and in signs and wonders. Let's not let ourselves get so super-spiritual that such things are beneath us who "have heard the call to sonship," and "are pressing toward the mark of the prize of the high-calling of God in Christ Jesus." Let us agree: we are still falling short of demonstrating experientially the defeat of the enemy of death.
Allow me to adapt a verse of scripture to our subject: trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not without any skepticism upon thy doctor's diagnosis and prescription, but in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He, as Himself, the anointing within you, will direct your path forward into that well-being of spirit, soul, and body that is yours in Christ Jesus.
Something Doesn't Add Up
Part 2
(Concerning Authority)
John R. Gavazzoni
Jump to: Top, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Jesus released His disciples to go forth in His name with the proclamation, "All authority is given unto Me in heaven and earth, go ye THEREFORE....." (emphasis, mine). (The KJV has "power," but the better translation is, "authority.") Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of heaven. In the place of "kingdom" we could put "rule" or "sovereignty." Kingdom/rule/sovereignty/authority, these have to do simply with God being God purposefully, willfully, relationally, imaginatively, with a unilateral singleness of vision regarding all of heaven's and earth's situations, circumstances, and incidents down to the minutest detail. This is the kingdom of the God who is described as Light, as the One in whom there is no darkness nor shadow of turning.
Yet, Paul wrote of the existence of "the authority of darkness" (here again, the KJV has "power," but it is "authority," in the Greek.)
Light, truth, reality, genuineness, authenticity, these describe the nature of God and the rule of God, and can be summed up with one word, love. Love enlightens. Love beneficially instructs. Love is without deceit, artificiality, pretense, or fakery. But what about "the authority of darkness." We have to deal with its existence, though the religious mind scrambles about trying to reconcile the existence of both the authority of God and the authority of darkness. One is true, the other false, but false does not mean non-existent. Beware of the childish conclusion that if the kingdom of God is the kingdom of light, truth, reality, genuineness and authenticity, then nothing unlike it can exist.
We have to deal with the actual existence of all that is contrary to the nature of God and His authority. I found the word in a big, unabridged dictionary: contrariety. If you're a lover of words as I am, you might want to include that in your vocabulary. Contrariety exists. Deal with it. It can be a head-scratcher. For instance, Jesus said the devil was a liar from the beginning, and went on to say that "he" was the father of lies. Hmm: as the father of lies, that makes "him" a lie. Like begets like. From my wife, Jan, and me, have been born three girls. They are the reproduction of our composite genetics: Italian, Scotch, Irish, English and Hungarian. That's what those girls are, from what we, Jan and I, are.
If you say all contrariety is just a figment of our imagination, by saying it "IS," you acknowledge its existence. If only love, light, truth, etc. exist, then such a figment of contrary imagination could have no existence, but it does, otherwise Jesus died for nothing. Few things more stubbornly and pervasively confront us like what's in our minds, what's in our imagination. Brings to mind Mary Baker Eddy who claimed that materiality does not exist, yet she wrote a material book that the faithful are urged to read, and read in a Christian Science Reading Room that doesn't really... uh... exist? Folks try to pass this crap off as sublime theology, when it's really intellectual sloth.
Well, where am I going with this? As one Bible teacher said, describing his ministry: "I comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." Yeah, that's where I'm going, because many of God's saint's heads are full of the voices from the authority of darkness and need to be disturbed out of their incredible gullibility. What gullibility, you ask? Well, if I may generalize; just about anything and everything the government tells you. Governments are the biggest liars on the planet. Then, we have the mainstream media colluding with said lying perfidy. If you grant any credibility, for instance, to the official version of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the murder of Robert F. Kennedy, the official version justifying nearly every war the U.S. has taken part in or initiated, what caused the fall of the Twin Towers, the global warming/climate change narrative, why there's raging inflation with much more to come, then I'd venture to say the authority of darkness has firm foot-hold in your mind.
Some time ago a word of prophecy was given to me, and what it foretold is quickly unfolding. I was told, "This is the time of America's humiliation." Our humiliation, for the most part, lies in the fact that we're sponges that soak up nearly everything coming from the authority of darkness. Speak to me with a style of presentation that has an aura of authority and I'm putty in your hands. Listen, Western Civilization is dying, and America is at the head of the death-march. The land of the free and the home of the brave is in its death throes. Those very things we have been so arrogantly proud of will be where the humiliation will most show up. I'm daring to predict economic and military humiliation in the very near future.
A sovereignly-designed humbling is in the works for our country and for all of Western Civilization, and with it will come a shocking amazement among Christians at what they've accepted as truth. If you think I've been overcome by a spirit of gloom and doom, then consider how in the New Testament....yes, the New Testament... prophets gave voice to the kind of stuff we'd rather not hear or think about: Agabus prophesying of chains awaiting Paul, of a great famine coming, severe enough that aid needed to be sent to the church in Jerusalem, the prophet Simeon predicting a sword will pierce Mary's heart. Read chapters 24 of Matthew and 21 of Luke.
The Lord Jesus defined His disciples (applicable to us today) as the light of the world, a city set on a hill that cannot be hid. That's what we are, BUT we are not behaving as what we are, rather according to a mentality alien to our true being and personhood. Yes, such a dilemma can and does exist. To a great degree we are not living out who we ARE, but rather who we are NOT. "Be not deceived...." "I would not have you ignorant, brethren...," "give no place to the devil...," "be wise as serpents and gentle as doves," "love not the world, neither the things that are in the world..."
Now, having said all that, I will yet dare to remind us all: "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts."
Something Doesn't Add Up
Part 3
(Raising the Expectation Level)
John R. Gavazzoni
Jump to: Top, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
If we were to think of a high level of expectation as the norm preceding a move of God, I would say we've been in a subnormal period across the board within the believing community in recent decades. The gathering in an upper room in Jerusalem with the expectation...based upon Jesus' promise to His disciples that they were to shortly be endued with power from on high....would be the archetypical example of this norm or rule. History will show, I believe, that God gives a sense that the usual is about to end and He is about to show Himself as the God of miracles once again.
We can't pump up such an expectation; it must be sovereignly granted, as the Spirit preveniently begins to catch us up into the latest divine determination. We become stirred by God's determination with the accompaniment of appropriate prayer, not that our praying makes God act, but because at the very earliest stage of God's action, we are caused to participate in the passion of God. God's passion for the present need among His people and through them, the world, is the cause of prayer, not the opposite. We do not move God. God moves us. And the first sign is that elevated sense of expectancy among those God has particularly chosen to share in His heart, in and for that particular hour.
I experienced this very recently. Suddenly, a sense of expectancy came upon me and imposed itself within me. It was a momentary experience. Sudden, strong, and then gone with only a lingering recollection of the experience. God was stirring Himself, and stirred me with His stirring. It was different than being stirred by what I wanted to see happen. It was being stirred by what God had determined to bring to pass.
For quite some time now, the Lord has brought back to my recollection how He, on so many occasions, had (as the old Pentecostal preachers used to say) "shown up" in power and authority and very often when I had reached the extremity of my resources. I want to share some of those experiences with you, my readers, believing that what God is up to is to speak a word of expectancy in your heart. I did not even realize, at least in regard to one incident, how powerfully God "showed up" on my behalf, until He caused me to understand what had really occurred when I'd been threatened with great bodily harm.
Here's the story of that one-type incident: having been recently dismissed as co-pastor of an interdenominational charismatic church because of privately sharing my conviction of universal salvation in Jesus Christ, I was at a service station filling my car's gas tank, about to start my day of part-time employment as a road salesman for a wholesale company. Having lost the income from pastoring, I had sought employment in the field I'd been trained in by my father starting at age 8. I knew it well, and a company in that field was glad to have me on board on the road but only for three days a week as a start. There, filling my car's gas tank, concern for our financial situation crept into my mind, and then, strangely, recollection of an incident from eighteen years past suddenly arrested my thinking. As I remembered the incident in great detail, the Lord broke into my thoughts saying, "Don't you know that was an angel?"
My memory had returned to 1963, I think....pretty sure of that date.... and I was in Washington, DC attending a special Youth for Christ convention as a staff evangelist for YFC's (then) eleven-state eastern area. I was told that ten thousand adults and teens who were in some way directly or indirectly associated with YFC were in attendance. None other than Billy Graham was the keynote speaker, and I, somewhat awed, was called upon to sing at one of the afternoon sessions. It was a 3-day affair filled with sessions from morning to evening with little time between sessions.
During one of those breaks, our little company of folks representing the eastern area office, rushed out to a diner around the corner of the convention facility to get some lunch to bring back to our rooms. It was a tiny diner with the usual revolving stools at the counter, then a narrow aisle separating some tables that were against the wall across the room from the counter with its stools. These details are important to the story. There were about three rows of people standing behind those at the counter waiting to place our orders, and, I think, in the case of most, for takeout.
Our little group was bunched together standing behind those seated on the stools. I was standing two rows back from the counter. The five areas of YFC in the U.S back then were each headed by a vice president under the international president. That was the structure in the U.S. I had several years previously been invited to join the Eastern Area Crusade Staff as an evangelist serving the eleven-state area speaking at rallies all across the eastern area. The "veep's" sister, one of the members of our group, was a dear, very shy, reserved lady, someone who could easily be traumatically disturbed by someone acting rude and offensive toward her. She was standing in the first row just ahead of me and slightly to my right, when a man on the stool directly in front of her spun his stool around, and began to leer at her with a wicked smile on his face.
I could see right away, that she was frightened and not able to move back away from him due to the crush of folks behind her. After a few moments of his continuing to cause her great discomfort, I signaled to him in a very apparent, yet unthreatening manner, to stop what he was doing. He immediately unleashed a torrent of obscenity toward me, and I responded by saying, "Please don't bother the lady." At that point, suddenly, he grabbed a table knife from off the counter and lunged at me holding the knife in my face and pushing me back over the table behind the row behind me.
I managed to push him off, saying, "Listen, I don't want any trouble. Just quit bothering the lady." More top-of-his voice obscenity toward me, at which point he invited me to "step outside." I agreed, though planning to cool things off by following him but closing the door behind him but without stepping out myself. It didn't work. He came back in enraged, and by that time, I had had enough, and we both stepped outside. Amazingly, though you might expect that I'd be experiencing a rush of adrenaline facing the prospect of someone who obviously meant to do me great bodily harm, I was instead enveloped in a great calm, though I seemed to be acting according to my natural disposition.
It was a December day in DC with the convention being held around Christmas time. I was wearing a long, woolen overcoat, and with my antagonist standing to my right, I began to take off my overcoat turning from facing him to hang the overcoat over a parking meter. As I turned back, everything became like a slow-motion scene in a movie. I had barely turned to face him when he unleashed a vicious right-hand "hay maker" aimed directly at my head. I'd done some boxing in my youth, and instinctively I raised my left arm to block his blow, and then threw a jab at his chin with the same arm. In an instant, he was laying on the sidewalk staring up at me with eyes filled with terror as if he'd seen an intervening presence behind me that I wasn't aware of.
I stooped down grabbing him by his hair as he cried, "OK; ok; I'm sorry," and something else I can't remember. I let him up and he ran away. I had felt nothing, nothing at all, when his blow (seemingly) hit my forearm, and I felt nothing, nothing at all, when (seemingly) my jab had connected with his chin sending him on his back. Note: he didn't collapse downward, his knees buckling under him. He seemed to be knocked back and almost go horizontal in the air for an instant before crashing onto the concrete.
Back to the scene of pumping gas strangely remembering the whole incident in great detail. In spite of feeling nothing in my defensive and offensive response to his punch, I assumed that it was my boxing skill that won the day. But the voice of the Lord brought me back to reality, with, "Don't you know, that was an angel." Instantly a picture formed in my mind of an "angel" (really, in the Greek, an agent/messenger) behind me, reached over my shoulder and with a flick of a finger did the work I thought I had. My acting, you might say, naturally, did not keep God from acting supernaturally.
I got the message: The God who had sent His guardian agent to protect me that day, and had done so with such dramatic effectiveness, would be with our family in the days to come. The loss of my income from pastoring was a small matter for Him. We were in good hands going forward.
More stories to follow in part four of this series....maybe more than four parts as the Lord leads.
Something Doesn't Add Up
Part 4
(Needing and Needed)
John R. Gavazzoni
Jump to: Top, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
I have written elsewhere that the perfect complement of God's superabundant provision is our neediness. In the mode of our creatureliness, we are a needy, dependent, self-powerless people. One mark of our fallen condition is that, at worst, we are loathe to admit our utter dependency, and at best, acknowledging need while insisting that God leaves it up to us to discover how to unleash His provision. Even just "a touch from the Lord" can remind us that He is the Giver and we are the receivers, and that He does not depend upon us depending upon Him when He chooses to grant us a gracious touch. Many years ago, I received such a touch. One moment I was in severe pain, and the next moment, completely relieved. It was such a nice "touch from the Lord." It felt very personal to me.
Though it hardly involved a life-threatening condition. Though compared with Him raising someone from the dead or restoring wasted, withered limbs, it was hardly overtly sensational. Just, between Him and me, a nice, very personal touch. Pastor Sam Eubanks opened the Wednesday evening Bible study and prayer meeting asking before he started to teach, if there was anyone who was in special need of prayer. I was quick to respond from the back row of seats: "I do, Sam; I have this terrible sore throat." It was terrible. My throat was "on fire," so much that even swallowing a little saliva was excruciating. I'd never had such a sore throat before and never since. Sam called me up to, as was his custom, anoint me with oil from a little bottle he always carried with him.
It was a simple prayer for healing. Probably less than a minute or two had transpired and I was back in my seat. It was kind of expected back in those days of the charismatic renewal that...especially in my case as an elder of the church....that I confess to being healed without there being any immediate manifest evidence. I made such a confession, but it felt to me like I'd done so in a rather perfunctory way, so as I sat down the thought came to me, "you just confessed your healing because it's expected of you, especially as an elder." I got past that troubling thought, and got caught up in what Sam was sharing that evening.
Not more than five or ten minutes had passed as Sam was teaching, when I suddenly realized I was completely pain free. One moment afraid to even swallow, and the next moment, completely healed. That was, I think, 48 years ago, and I still remember it as if it was yesterday. At the heart of the experience was a childlike delight. "Wow," I thought. "God just healed my throat, really!" We can't express to others how something as simple as that can be a moment of dear, sweet, intimacy with the Lord. I was in pain, and Jesus...yes Jesus Himself....came and touched me and healed. If you've had such touches from the Lord, go ahead, revisit them in your memory. It doesn't qualify as "forgetting those things that are behind." I remember the experience so vividly, because the Lord wants me to remember. It's a special thing between Him and me.
Change of scene from neediness to being needed, but needed as in, "no I but Christ....:"
I was sitting in a waiting room outside the emergency room of our local hospital. A young internist came out to report to me that things looked bad, that our middle daughter, Janice, might die, and if she lived, she might end up "as a vegetable" (the doctor's words). Janice had reached the bottom of a terrible season of depression. Her mental pain had gotten so bad that death seemed the only way out of the agony. She had been an extremely sensitive child observably from as early as age 3 or 4. Anything of even the remotest suggestion of threat was experienced by her as, so to speak, the volume turned up to a blaring level. She was as cute a child as you can imagine. We often called her "Ness," for short since the time she so adorably replied to a stranger struck by her cuteness asking, "What's your name, little girl." She answered, "Ness," and to this day we'll reach back to that day, and she'll be "Ness" even at (of this date) 61 years old.
I remember she had called me on the phone from her upstairs bedroom to tell me she'd taken a bottle of pills. It was a mix of declaring her purpose to end it all, but also a cry for help. I rushed upstairs to find the door of her bedroom locked from the inside. I yelled, "Janice, let me in." She didn't respond. Desperately I said, "If you don't open the door, I'm going to break it down." Finally, she did, and I rushed her to the hospital. I wasn't in hysterics. I don't know how to describe my state in the waiting room. Numb, maybe. Just thinking, "Can this really be happening?"
As I sat there with my head in my hands, the Holy Spirit put me in a trance. In the trance I saw myself sitting in a clearing with woods all around me....a wilderness scene. I had a campfire going. The light from the fire reached a few yards into the woods, and looking about, I saw wolves crouching in the dark beyond the tree line, creeping steadily toward me. Though I was the person in the scene, I knew it was about Janice. I knew the wolves represented encroaching death. The enemy death wanted to devour our "Ness."
When I was pastoring, some folks came to me asking about "the authority of the believer," and wondering why I hadn't preached on the subject. We do have authority, fellow saints, and that authority can be directed toward death with all the power unleashed by our Lord's resurrection. In the Book of Acts, it's written that He could not be held by death. Death had no such holding power over the Prince of Life. When a believer finds himself, or herself, sent to confront death in His name, the same power of the same authority prevails.
The wolves kept creeping toward me as the flames from the campfire grew smaller. From deep within the well of my being, with the peace of God enveloping my mind, I said, "You can't have her." The wolves turned and slunk back into the forest. The time is opening to us, I believe, for the saints of God to humiliate death normativity by the power of His resurrection in situation after situation when "the last enemy" bears its teeth. Janice didn't die. She didn't end up a vegetable. In fact, she suffered no lasting effects at all from her ordeal. Further, in fact, when her mother and I were able to visit her in her hospital bed the next day, she greeted us with the brightest smile you could imagine. "O death, where is thy sting, O grave where is the victory...."
Something Doesn't Add Up
Part 5
(Our Can't-Be-Boxed-In God)
John R. Gavazzoni
Jump to: Top, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
My series has undergone a kind of evolution so that I wouldn't be surprised if my readers are wondering how the later installments can be understood as fitting under the title of the whole series. In that regard, my intent has been that the thread of a raised spiritual expectancy level should be found throughout. The series may be working in union with the Holy Spirit as there has been among several, if not many, of the brethren I've been associated with, and have shared the ministry of the Word with, in many conferences a sense that we are in a time of transition which will unfold within the paradigm of God always continuing to "do a new thing."
In one such conference, the message the Lord had laid on my heart focused on moving forward with a consciousness of....as I redundantly put it....Jesus Christ, our Lord presently, personally, present, and certainly not distantly removed from us "in heaven" waiting to return some day, but being in every sense, Himself, THE active dynamic of the kingdom of God in action. This has involved, in this series, sharing times when in my own experience, God "confirmed His word (to my heart) with signs following."
At this mid-point in my octogenarian decade of life, one thing has stood out keenly in my awareness: the Lord has been so wonderfully and faithfully with Jan and me and our family all our years together. (64 and counting.) I'll dare to affirm that there are two true perspectives in respect to Christ's life and our life, i.e. we share in His life while He shares in ours. Recalling special interventions by the Lord has been an integral part of edifyingly reflecting on His always faithful, presently present presence. That always faithful presence would be highlighted by times of divine intervention. By divine intervention, I mean He "showed up" in ways that changed the natural course of things.
So, it was when He sneaked into my experience shattering all the notions, all the teachings, about some required process leading to being baptized in the Holy Spirt. Well, indeed, I did go through a process which, at the end of a terrible 3 1/2 year period of depression, mental anguish, and loss of all consciousness of God's presence in my life, found me having given up on God. I could no longer bear thinking about God, and especially trying to get Him back into my life. Just too painful. The frustration level had become maddening, and with that surrender, I found relief from my depression. The sense of spiritual obligation had become too hard to bear.
I had left evangelistic work (a long story I won't go into here) and was working with my dad and mom in the family wholesale business with most of my time spent sharing the road sales part of the business with dad. I was on a sales trip in one of the areas that had become part of my territory. I had finished calling on our two customers in the little town of Portage, PA and was on my way to Holidaysburg, PA via the Blue Knob mountain road. It was one of those narrow, very curvy mountain roads typical of that part of the state and I was typically seeing how fast I could take the curves without killing myself.
Then, suddenly...without, as I recall slowing down at all....I was put into a trancelike state. I saw myself standing at the tree line-edge of an oval-shaped meadow looking across to the tree line directly across to the other side from where I was standing. Now, keep in mind, I had given up on ever "knowing the Lord" again. There, in the vision of that Spirit-induced trance, I saw a white-robed figure standing across at the other tree line-edge. In spite of my determination to rid my mind of any and everything pertaining to God, the thought came to me, "could that be Jesus?" Immediately in opposition to such a consideration, I 'heard," "Don't you dare think that might be Jesus, because, harboring such a hope even briefly when it will certainly turn out to be false, you'll descend back into darkness."
But the Presence persisted, and suddenly I KNEW, I KNEW ABSOLUTELY it was my Lord. I have to coin a word; He presenced again. Of course, He'd never gone away, but He does hide Himself from us at times, and when He "comes," He comes AS present, presencing again. I'm almost certain I was driving at least 60 miles an hour all during the experience at the extreme limit of what that mountain road allowed, when the Holy Spirit descended upon me with such power that a torrent of praise issued from the depths of my being: "Hallelujah, praise the Lord, O Jesus." Tears gushed from my eyes so that I could hardly see the road. I was raising my hands in praise one moment, and then grabbing the steering wheel again....repeat, repeat, repeat.
Out from within great darkness, the Lord baptized me in the Holy Spirit. From the Greek: "for God, who caused light to shine out from within the darkness, hath shined into our hearts..." "Out from within the darkness." That's where the Lord is in our times of darkness, right there within the darkness. He shines into our hearts from within the darkness of our hearts. God hides Himself in darkness, and when He shines forth, it's glorious beyond words. Well, that's my story for this installment. Maybe more to come, if it seems good to the Holy Spirit and me.
Something Doesn't Add Up
Part 6
(When the Anointing Says, "Go for it.")
John R. Gavazzoni
Jump to: Top, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
I had been invited to sing for one of the evangelistic meetings at a church near my home. The evangelist was Dingeman Teuling. Back in those days....way back in those days....there were quite a number of chalk-artist evangelists who would illustrate their sermon for the night by drawing a picture on a huge, specially-lighted canvas that set on a heavy metal easel that could be set up and broken down as the evangelist went from crusade to crusade. "Ding," as he was known, was one of the best known, most in-demand chalk-artist evangelists of that day, who became in time known as the grandfather of gospel chalk art. His talent was phenomenal.
A special feature of his approach was that before each evening's meeting, he would draw on that canvas an "invisible picture" in the center, drawn with chalk that could only be seen under "black light." That picture highlighted the central point of the evening's message. During the service, after delivering his sermon, Ding would go to the giant easel and draw a picture around that soon-to-appear smaller picture under the black light. The pulpit he carried with him included a rheostat from which he could control the regular lighting above the easel, and the special "black light."
Plus, he could control the lights of the sanctuary, dimming them during the drawing of the general picture, and turning them off when it came time for the invisible picture to appear. That moment always had a dramatic effect on the congregation, with the background music (hopefully, as the local talent allowed) adding to the drama. Ding could make the black-light picture appear slowly by dimming the regular lighting slowly while slowly turning up the black light. Or, he could manipulate both so that the invisible picture could suddenly burst forth.
When I met him, on the evening that I sang, he was depending on talent from the local church to provide music for and during the picture event....not always a satisfying situation. In those days I had (and since lost) a big, booming, bass-baritone voice of the Italian kind, but also possessing when the song called for it, a warm mellowness. Ding liked what he heard that evening, and afterward we got to talking, and he asked me if I'd consider joining him in an upcoming campaign in a large church as the song-evangelist, leading singing, singing solos, and singing songs during his drawing of the pictures that were appropriate to the theme. It was planned that I would sing accompanying myself at the church's piano. He carried a song book with him from which I could choose songs for each evening. It was a two-week campaign coming up.
I had recently left the Bible institute I'd been attending, and was studying at home by the generosity of my parents, but looking forward to an evangelistic ministry myself, both singing and preaching. I jumped at the opportunity to join Ding for that campaign hoping for an extended association, and things couldn't have gone better for those 14 days of meetings. Things couldn't have gone better as conventionally understood and appreciated by pastors and congregations.
Things went so well (I was even given the opportunity speak at a related service or two) that Ding began the arrangements necessary to have me join him permanently. Letters had to be sent ahead informing the inviting churches that there would be the two of us instead of Ding alone. That association continued for a couple years ending with a tent-crusade out in the middle of thousands of acres of wheat in Kansas. The association would have lasted longer, but I was impatient to "go off on my own" as soon as I could. Ding was sympathetic to that in a very fatherly way. Our ministry association was a delightful, and sometimes comical one, given that he was of a Dutch temperament, always balanced, orderly, and logical. In contrast, I, not only 19 years his junior, but of an Italian (including Sicilian) temperament...let's say definitely more spontaneous and impetuous compared to his.
In later years, when I'd have time available in my schedule, and he was called to a large church, he would call me to join him again for a week or two. During those times, it was as if we'd never parted ways. Well, let me take you to a scene in that last tent-meeting before I went off on my own. We'd had many discussions....sometimes bordering on arguments....about the relevancy of the miraculous element for today. I'd been influenced, and involved in, "the full gospel" movement. I believed that miracles and the gifts of the Spirit were for today as they were in apostolic days. His training was different. He was of the view that miracles ceased after the death of the apostles. We had gone back and forth quite a few times on that subject especially the last several months we were regularly together.
The difference of opinion came to a head during that tent-meeting. Churches from miles around had joined together to invite us for a joint evangelistic campaign. I was still insisting on miracles for today, and he equally was insistent that they were not, until he became irritated at my admittedly youthful impertinence, and suddenly challenged me: "OK, John, let's put this to the test. You pray for David, and if he's healed, I'll give serious consideration to your point of view." David was Ding's son. Ding, his wife, Gloria (Zue to her friends) along with Daviid and his two sisters, had come along with Ding for those two weeks. David suffered from Celiac disease. His system was unable to absorb nutrients from food. Medication helped a little, but not much. He looked like a little skeleton with skin stretched over it. Face gaunt with deep-set eyes.
I remember that moment so well. As soon as he issued that challenge standing at the flap of the tent where we would enter for each service, it was as if a bell went off in my spirit. It was as if...as the line below the title to this article reads.... I heard the anointing say, "Go for it." That has to be there. You can't decide, "It would be wonderful for David to be healed, so I'll pray to make it happen." The anointing has to inform you that....as the Greek has it..."whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be that which IS bound in heaven, and that whatsoever you shall loose on earth, is that which IS loosed in heaven." I'd had no experience praying for the sick. I'd not been privileged to have any involvement in any case of supernatural healing. This was new territory for me. But the anointing within said, "Go for it." I took Ding's challenge.
That was a Friday, and there was no meeting planned for the following day, so I set aside the entire Saturday morning to pray for David. I've referred a couple or so times in this series how the peace of God...a great supernatural calm...would come over me at times when I was about to experience something from the Lord. So it was that morning. At prayer, there came that moment of a descending, enveloping peace that, if I were to put what I was feeling into words, it was as if the Lord had said, "It's done."
Sunday morning, we were standing alongside that same tent flap where Ding had issued his challenge and I had accepted, and I said, "Ding, I believe the Lord has healed David." Man of integrity that he was, Ding said, "Ok, at your word, I will take him off his medication." From that time on, without medication, David began to gain weight. He began to fill out normally and continued so, completely healed of that frustratingly debilitating condition. That was 64 years ago at the time of this writing. The family has never forgotten what the Lord did for David. It's part of their family history.
Something Doesn't Add Up
Part 7
John R. Gavazzoni
Jump to: Top, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Winding up our series with a 7th. (7, as a number of completeness in scripture), I'll be sharing a story of how the miraculous can sometimes break into our lives in what would seem to be a most casual manner. That version appears in scripture quite often as a servant of the Lord might simply be going about their usual business for the day, when suddenly God shows up right smack there in the middle of ordinariness.
Think Peter and John on their way to the temple for prayer (quite an ordinary thing for them), when suddenly on their way includes a man crippled from birth getting totally healed. Think Peter and Andrew casting out their nets fishing....very ordinary daily thing for them... and suddenly, Jesus shows up with the command to follow Him (yes it was a command, not an invitation with an option). Think likewise, James and John, mending their nets. Think Stephen going about his new duties as a deacon, simply seeing to it that a fair distribution of food was carried out for both the Hebrew and Greek widows, but on the way, God decides to do mighty miracles through his hands.
Yes, of course, there are accounts in scripture of the Lord in a very unordinary way preparing folks to witness His power at work. Think Ananias being sent to lay hands on Saul, and it being revealed to Saul in great detail what to expect. But, in this final installment, I'd like us to take notice of the miraculous happening in an outwardly appearing very casual manner. The miraculous, I'll dare to say, is more normally intertwined with ordinariness than we think. By comparison, how we expect God to act, and how we prepare for His action, is very artificial.
We were in the middle of a Bible study in the living room of our home when Jackie, our oldest daughter, unavoidably came through the living room with a couple of her friends on their way out to something or other. On their way out, they paused and greeted everyone, stopping for only a moment to do so, and as they started on their way toward the door, without any aforethought at all, after saying, I think, "have a good time," in a most casual manner, I said, "I believe the Lord wants to heal your eyes, honey." The thought had suddenly intruded on my mind, and out came the expression of the thought. (By the way, you could say that's an example, by definition, of how the Logos works.)
You see, Jackie, just a little while before, noticed that she was having trouble reading things, especially in school, and sure enough, after having her vision tested, she needed glasses. We, of course, got them for her, but she hated how she looked wearing them. She was in that time in her teens when such things were big things. This was way back when contact lenses were being introduced, and she decided she wanted those rather than the glasses. We complied. They hadn't yet, to my knowledge, come with the softer kind, so the ones she was fitted with irritated her eyes terribly. Much of the time the irritation made her eyes awfully red and teary. That was the situation when she walked by us in the Bible study that evening.
She had continued wearing the contact lenses, willing to put up with the irritation rather than resort to the glasses again, but then, after that evening, her vision was blurred wearing the lenses, because the Lord had healed her eyes with just that casual, "I believe the Lord wants to heal your eyes, honey." She did away with the lenses and went her happy way seeing perfectly. Even now, just short of 64, at the time of this writing, she only very occasionally resorts to put on glasses for very close work.
May the Lord raise your level of expectancy as you go about your ordinary day. I think such may be ahead for many of God's saints. Back to what you might call a pet peeve of mine. DON'T "ask your doctor/check with your doctor" every time some ailment comes your way. Ask the anointing/check with the anointing, before you submit to a lot of expensive tests that might do you more harm than good. We're being brainwashed to heed the pseudo voices of authority which are often the voices of the authority of darkness. They APPEAR as angels of light. Slow down. Respect the intelligence God has given you. Do some research on your own. Oh, yes, you're capable of that, but it takes THINKING, and after all, being renewed in the spirit of your mind does involve thinking.
Example: a few years ago, blood, bright red blood, appeared in my urine. I thought, "Hmm; wonder what that's about?" "Be not anxious...." ruled in that moment. I mentioned it to Jan, and she said, "Do you want me to take you to the hospital?" I really think, too many of the Lord's people, would at that point, think, "Well, I think maybe I should see a doctor right away. Who knows what this might indicate?" STOP; slow down. THINK. I said, "No, honey, I'll do some research myself and see what I dig up on blood in the urine." You can pretty much bet that if I'd gone to the hospital, they would have found reason to put me on some drug or drugs that, in time, would have seriously harmed my liver, and contributed toward me suffering dementia. Yeah; many medications do that.
It turned out to be nothing; probably, I'd passed some very small kidney stones, not big enough to cause me great pain....though I had had some pain that would have suggested that earlier. Also, more than a few years ago, I developed age-related macular degeneration. I'm not obsessive about avoiding doctors. I did submit to a couple of injections in the affected eye. It did help enough to allow me time to do some research on the subject, to find out that there are combinations of nutrients that can help to restore normal sight to an eye suffering from that affliction.
Mainstream medicine did not encourage me at all to look into that source of help. Oh, just a little. The optometrist did casually hand me a sample packet of a couple of vitamins, but that would have been, as I learned, insufficient to do much good. I ended up, after submitting to those couple eye injections, quickly gathering information that led to putting together a regimen of eye health supplementation, massively more than a mainstream doctor would ever think of or prescribe. The regimen has not only completely halted the onward degeneration, but has reversed the damage to the point that, if necessary, I can now read or drive using only the "bad" eye. I do wear glasses at age 85.
Mainstream medicine will mostly prolong your dying, treating your symptoms while you're living less and less. As I recall, it's the NAS translation that reads from Paul, "the death, He died, He died to sin once, but the life He lives, He lives to God." Hmm: "the death He died...." Clearly, we die death. Well, of course. Don't we live life? We live life, but we don't live death. Death is died (forget the grammar); life is lived. By virtue of the resurrection of our Lord, we ought to major in living life, not dying death. Conventional medicine will help you die death, and do little to increase life's living.
Normatively, we ought to be living life right up to that due time when we absent this present body. I see happening in the present, and increasingly just ahead, a new experiential level of victory over the last enemy, death.....daily, hourly, not just as some event in the future. I see a present, continuing, growing manifestation/uncovering/unveiling of our sonship that overcomes the disabilities of our creaturehood. As creatures, we groan with all creation. As sons we rejoice that in all things, we are more than conquers in Christ Jesus.
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