{"id":440,"date":"2009-08-01T19:33:51","date_gmt":"2009-08-01T23:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/Correspondence\/?p=440"},"modified":"2009-08-01T19:33:51","modified_gmt":"2009-08-01T23:33:51","slug":"a-morning-with-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/440\/a-morning-with-god\/","title":{"rendered":"A Morning with God"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am usually out riding my bike for my morning warm-up by 7a.m., nearly everyday of the week. Sometimes, I hike in the hills or jog on the all-weather baseball field. When I’m climbing in the hills, that’s where the solitude is, and I oftentimes spend more time thinking about Jesus on those hiking days, lingering in a private spot atop the ridge to pray through.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Thursday morning, I felt that God wanted to “do something with me;” we needed some time together—and that meant a hike in the hills! So, off I ran, up through the little valley behind the park, past the cows and scurrying ground squirrels, and arrived at my new prayer spot. . . a fallen tree on the eastern crest of the hilltop, awash in early morning sun. The Spirit fell on me heavily, and I was speaking in tongues with a dramatic urgency. As Paul said, sometimes the Spirit speaks through us, making intercession with groanings. On this morning I was a real groaner! God was turning up the volume. Something in me wanted to cry, to sob, to moan and groan deeply. For a moment or so I even felt convulsive. (He can make you move!) I was on my knees but I fell over a couple times, jolted by the power of God. The words that began to come from inside of me, in English, were prayers of such lowliness of spirit, more humbling than I have ever felt; followed by pleas for God’s mercy and blessing.<\/span><\/p>\n

These are some of the things I felt and said:<\/span>
\n “Oh God, I am NOTHING! Nothing without you! I am not worthy of your love, and yet you love me still! I am so insignificant in this universe, yet so significant to you. Thank you for your Spirit! Thank you for your mercy, and your forgiveness. . . I do not deserve it. I am as worthless as this dirt! In my flesh I am more detestable than the cow manure on this ground!”<\/span><\/p>\n

I was physically lower than I have ever been, in prayer. I couldn’t scrunch my body down low enough. I felt like I wanted to crawl under that dead tree, as if I wanted to get so low as to burrow underground. God made me feel like I had to come so LOW, as to be flattened in the grass. My face was literally on the ground —and that wasn’t low enough! I had never felt like this before, but I recalled brother Gary’s experience crawling around on the carpet at a meeting and I felt fortunate to be feeling something similar to what he had felt. Oddly enough, there was a comfort in it. It wasn’t as if I felt demeaned or berated by God. It was just so painfully, yet comfortably humble!<\/span><\/p>\n

I continued. . . “God, I am more worthless than this dirt, but even this dirt brings forth grass! Things grow out of this dirt! This earth under me brings forth “fruit” . . . it produces trees and shrubs and flowers—-in abundance! Please subdue me so thoroughly in my flesh that I might be worthy to be used by you, to produce fruit—of the Spirit!” Ohhhh, I went on and on. . . and then there was a peace that washed over me when it was finished. I laid on my back, staring at the blue sky, and feeling thankful for this powerful, liberating experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think that only a child of God can appreciate something like this—in fact—we welcome it, don’t we?! It brings a refreshing to the soul, a realization that God has done something with us, and hopefully taught us a new thing, helped us to see our place, recognize our weakness, our fragility, . . . our need for Him. .. our dependence on Him, . . . and how helpless we are, apart from Him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, Praise God!!!!<\/span><\/p>\n

Brother Brad<\/span><\/p>\n

==============<\/span><\/p>\n

Brother Brad,<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you for this! Your testimony about this experience is precious! May God grant every person associated with me the grace to experience such conviction for righteousness.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Pastor John<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am usually out riding my bike for my morning warm-up by 7a.m., nearly everyday of the week. Sometimes, I hike in the hills or jog on the all-weather baseball field. When I’m climbing in the hills, that’s where the solitude is, and I oftentimes spend more time thinking about Jesus on those hiking days, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-netmail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}