Pastor John,
I want to testify to something that God did for me two years ago, and what He then showed me about it.
I had been restoring an old WWII rifle for some time, bringing it back to a working condition with replacement parts that I could find. I finally got it to a point where it was ready to test.
It was a Monday I recall and I had taken the rifle to an appropriate location to test it with the expectation of firing the rifle one time (one time only) just to see if it now fired. As I set up and was about to pull the trigger, the urgency came over me to go get my safety glasses out of the car, about a minute’s walk away. I thought to myself “I am only going to fire it one time. Done and gone – no need to get my glasses.” By the time I had fully formed that thought to rebel against the feeling to get my glasses, by the time I had processed it, I found that my feet were already making the journey toward the car. So I relented and just went. I can still recall the moment that I realized my feet were moving at the same time my mind was telling me “no.”
I got the glasses and fired that rifle, one time. The headspace inside the receiver of the rifle was incorrect by a few hundredths of an inch due to using parts from donor rifles, and the shell casing blew up in my face. But I had my glasses on. Small fragments embedded in my face and burned my skin, but my eyes were saved because of the glasses on my face. Fragments from the shell had melted into the plastic lenses of the glasses. I left there so thankful for that “unction” to go get those glasses. It was the Lord.
During the days that followed, the Lord kept speaking to my heart, revealing to me what had happened. It was much more than God just saving my eyes by pressing on my heart to go get those safety glasses. The Lord reminded me of how I had resisted, yet my feet still carried me up the hill to my car. He reminded me how my mind had said “no,” yet my body obeyed His instruction.
The Lord showed me what really happened.
The weekend prior to the incident on Monday, we had all gotten together for two prayer meetings, and we had experiences with God. God drew near to us those two days. We had shouted and sang and prayed in the Spirit and yielded our bodies to the Lord. And that changed me. That is what the Lord showed me. Those experiences with God that weekend recreated me into a human being that obeyed when God spoke on Monday, even when my mind was unfruitful. My mind rejected God’s instruction to my heart to go get those glasses, but my body yielded to the Master. That recreating of me that God did for me over the weekend saved my eyesight that Monday afternoon. He turned me into a person that obeyed instead of one that resisted. That was His work!
That recreating is an ongoing process that keeps happening if we keep yielding. I yielded to the Lord enough that weekend that I was a subdued person come Monday, enough that I moved when He said “move,” even when my mind was arguing to the contrary. The subduing of my flesh so that I would move, even when I didn’t understand was contained in those experiences with Jesus the weekend before. If I hadn’t yielded then, my life would have been changed in a terrible way that Monday, I believe.
I remember that day still. I remember actually looking down at my feet climbing the hill and realizing that I was already moving and had not been aware of it. That is the creation of God.
Pastor John, you have often told us that we, the body of Christ, can be ignorant of which way to go in life and unaware of what to do in some situations, but we will still make the right choice and end up in the right place. That is because what God creates yields to God even when our mind is doing something else.
I think the lesson for me is to yield to being recreated. That is what God is doing every time He shows up!
Jerry