Lately I’ve been reading over some of my journals.

I was actually looking for a certain writing, one from back in December of 2008.

It was then that I had a “Significant Encounter” with God.

This was not my first “Significant Encounter” with Him; however it may have been the most life changing one that I can remember.

I was just beginning to come out from what I called the “Cave Days”, more on that in a different post.  Suffice to say, I still was not standing too steadily, but I had spent an enormous amount of time asking God some questions.  These questions seemed insurmountable to me, but to Him? Not so much.

The questions I was asking were actually the right kind.  They weren’t the “Why?” questions, which Graham Cooke calls “victim questions”.  These questions were more like “What am I supposed to do with all this?” and “What should I be learning from all of this?” and “How will this ever turn into something that will glorify You?”

The voice of a friend who just returned from living in Africa as a missionary rang in my ears .  “We are human beings, not human doings.”  Yet I asked also if that wasn’t what just I had been doing for the past six or seven years, “Being?”

Now, about that certain writing, the one from back in December of 2008, here’s how that went.

I was happy to drive the forty or so miles north of where I live to hear a speaker from an adjoining state.  Her style and excitement had always captivated me in the past, and I felt that perhaps she could help to lift my mood.  My mood wasn’t bad, per se, but I certainly wasn’t too exuberant about things these days.  I was just drifting along. 

When I arrived, my mood seemed to lift somewhat, and I was enjoying what I was hearing.  Then in my head, I heard myself asking God one more time, “Just what is it I’m supposed to be doing?” 

The answer was immediate.  “Go back to the darkest of your days and bring those trapped there, here, to where you are with Me.”

My heart sank, and my head replied “I can’t do that!  I don’t know how!”  My knees hit the floor when I sensed Gods displeasure with my response.  I could almost hear Him say “You’ll asked me literally for years what I want you to do, I tell you, and you say you can’t?”

True repentance could be my only response.

A bit later, one of the speakers’ team prayed with me.  She told me that I was living with “Death Structures.”

I did not know what “Death Structures” were, but my journey to find our was only just beginning.

(Next post – Death Structures)