It was a dark and stormy night—my maternal grandfather had just died unexpectedly and my mother was stricken with such deep grief that she ran out into the cold New England forest to find solace and pray.
Not known to be a woman of prayer or a Bible reader but a faithful Christian nevertheless, she was active in the choir and altar guild, and now heavily pregnant with me! the sudden news of her father’s unexpected death shattered her world. New England in the Autumn can be as beautiful as it is severe, rugged, unforgiving. There are colorful leaves on the trees—but a cold, harsh winter fast approaching.
But what she prayed that evening is the real mystery, “God,” she cried out, “Use him! Use him!”
Why pray this, why now, why over me? There is just no answer apart from a divine inspiration from the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “the wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it’s going. That’s how it is with everyone who has been born from the Spirit.”
Did you get that? That’s not talking about the Holy Spirit but how it is with the PEOPLE born of the Spirit! So it was that day with my mom.
Also, she never even told me any of this until I was over 20 years old and only much later still when I was able to hear God speak to me more openly could I ask Him about it. Jesus explained to me that while I already had a calling from the womb, as most people do I think—but when my mother prayed that day he said he DOUBLED it.
And note, we were not Spirit-filled or ‘Born-again’ or Charismatic or anything like that but very generic and quite stoic New England evangelicals. I also need to point out that I was not worthy or deserving of any such blessing; I never did anything good or bad to deserve it! I wasn’t even born yet! All I can say is merely that my mom prayed—and God answered—there is simply power in a praying mother! Mostly I think just because God answers heartfelt prayers!
Anyway I’ll skip ahead a few years and pick up the story when I was old enough to understand what God was beginning to do in my life.
Anglicans in America are called Episcopals, which we were. My father’s family were very close to us and lived nearby and we visited them weekly, but my mother’s side was from the same town, but we were not as close with them and only saw them once or twice a year, if that.
My father’s father, Carle, who we called Pops, was a well-known motorcycle mechanic and racing team owner. But he died when I was very young while my grandmother, Nana, his wife, was our church Sunday School teacher at St. James Episcopal Church in Laconia, New Hampshire, even into my early teens. And yes the church is still there after all these yeas.
So Carle, I mean Pops, had immigrated many years ago from Sweden and my grandmother, Nana, was from Quebec, in French Canada. Marrying a Protestant Swede to a French Catholic was taboo in their day and age, so joining the Episcopal church was a happy compromise: the form and pageantry of the Catholic style with the substance and doctrines of the protestant reformation, but mostly they joined just because they were the only ones willing to let them get married.
So nothing was very much out of the ordinary. We attended church weekly and it was a typical evangelical church community but with one exception: our church pastor, which they called a Priest and referred to as ‘Father,’ was a Spirit-filled Christian! You may know that a revival had swept through the Episcopal church in the 70’s and he was one of the tens of thousands who were touched in that move of God and filled with the Holy Spirit baptism—but he kept this fact strictly secret!
And my mother, which I only found out very much later, was descended from many generations of New England Baptists—I even discovered we were related to several people who came over to America on the Mayflower through her ancestors! She was originally from Vermont, grew up in New Hampshire, and moved away for a few years when my parents got married but moved back again when I was very young. But all I really want to say that is important is I was insulated from the supernatural in most every way, especially from a belief in the current reality of biblical miracles and prophecy.
There were vestiges of folk witchcraft and several stories of my mother’s father divining water (‘water witching’ as they called it), of ‘faith healing’ his mule that fell into the barbed wire one time and tore its skin off, of killing a hornet’s nest with a secret symbol and whispered magic words, rumors of séances and there was a ouija board kicking around the house when I was a kid as well. All these are clearly demonic in nature but like I said, my mother’s father died when I was in the womb and I never knew him and people may see the hand of God in this, as it kept me well insulated from learning any folk witchcraft from him as well. But we were also insulated from any personal Bible reading or stories of personal faith, or of God answering prayers today or the miraculous in any positive way either.
Wait, you say, didn’t I just say my mother prayed for me when I was in the womb and God answered her prayer. Yes, but like I said, it was unusual for her to do such a thing, and she also never even told me this until I was over 20 years old—and also how would she even know God had answered her prayer? God only told me his side of the story when I was over 30 and already living overseas. So there was no evidence of God’s calling in my life, or any knowledge of what it was, or any way to know God would increase it until then. So I grew up totally ignorant to all of these things.
And there was certainly no indication that I would one day either serve the Lord or especially be called as his prophet! We never knew such a thing existed! I didn’t feel religious, or gifted or even have an especially happy childhood. I know as a teenager I was ‘confirmed’ as a Christian after attending a catechism class which I don’t recall at all, and then both water baptized afterwards (by having water dripped on my head from a shell) and I even had ‘hands laid on me’ by the bishop to ‘receive the Holy Spirit and all its gifts’—I know it’s true because I later found the paper certificate saying so!
In reality I had no conscious understanding of the gospel or the Bible or any personal convictions of anything in this regard. Until one week …
The Nicene Creed Came to Life
I was about 13 years old and often served as an altar boy at my mother’s request. I had to wear a robe and led the procession to start the service, and help prepare the Eucharist elements, and I even got to ring a loud gong at certain precise moments in the liturgy.
But this one week I was simply standing in the congregation and we were reading the Nicene Creed of faith corporately out-loud as we did every week—but this time when we got to the part that talked about having faith in Jesus as the son of God something happened that I could not explain! That part reads something like:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
What happened was first I felt an uncontrollable excitement and then the air all around me was filled with an electrified energy! I was suddenly covered in goose bumps as a powerful conviction filled my heart and yes, seemed to fill the air all around me as I came to an inexplicable confidence of knowledge and rush of excitement and so I spoke out-loud with complete 100% sincere belief that I suddenly KNEW it was TRUE BEYOND ANY DOUBT that YES! Jesus IS the Son of God! This is true! This is true!
We read the Creed every week, as have billions of Christians throughout the ages in some form or another. Why this one time was I suddenly filled with such a precise and intimate personal knowledge of its truthfulness? And what was that ‘energy’ that filled the air? What did it all mean, if anything?—well, I didn’t even have the slightest idea at that time! All I knew and I knew it with such a wonderful joy and excitement in my heart was that Jesus was indeed the Son of God—it was a transcendent revelation, an authentic epiphany and I was completely overcome by it!
What’s more I also now realize it caused me to make a public declaration of this as I proclaimed my heartfelt belief out-loud, and in public—yes, we were all reading it out-loud, making a public declaration of our corporate faith, but this time I was doing it with a true conviction and belief in my heart—I meant it! And I confessed with my mouth that Jesus is Lord!
But the energy of that encounter soon faded as we continued to read the rest of the Creed and by the end of it everything was back to being completely normal again as it had been before, and as it was every week afterwards.
And only many years later did I understand more clearly what had just happened to me. No one had explained John 3:16 to me, or in this case more appropriately Romans 10:9-10: (ESV)
9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
I also now understand that the electrified ‘energy’ was the presence of God, the Holy Spirit, as he overshadowed me and gave me the understanding—a direct personal knowledge by divine revelation of this eternal truth, yes what people rightly call an epiphany! So it’s funny but without me knowing it, the presence of God caused me to make a public profession of faith in Jesus as the Son of God, based on my sincere heart belief—and yet no one ever told me to do that or why it mattered. I had never heard the gospel preached in that way, I didn’t contemplate heaven, hell, sin or the Bible. Instead I just had an amazing personal encounter with the presence of God’s Holy Spirit that filled me, enlightened me and moved me with such an excitement to testify to the truth that I NOW KNEW with certainly in my heart and CONFESSED with my mouth that Jesus IS the Son of God. Wow!
I now tell people I got saved by a sovereign act of God because no one preached to me, it was the Holy Spirit who gifted me with this astounding faith and deeply personal belief in Jesus as Lord. And as we all know whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
Most people would agree that this meant I was ‘saved’—unfortunately I didn’t even know it myself. I had no idea that what just happened meant anything and I so certainly never told anyone about it. So without any Bible reading or follow-up personal teaching that I could understand and no community of Born Again believers to nurture me, I was quickly instead lured into a very worldly and demonic lifestyle common to modern teenagers.
I began listening to demonic music, mostly what we called at that time Punk and Industrial music; I dyed my hair blue, then purple, wore earrings and had many girlfriends. Most of my friends ended up being active in the occult and some were authentic witches. We tried out different things like crystals and fortune telling and this was obviously a very turbulent and confusing time for me.
Powerful in the White Light
On my own I had a few strange spiritual experiences. One was a very weird and profound event at the restaurant where I worked. I was in the dining room cleaning up and a man came in, he sat down with some friends but didn’t eat and was hunched over acting odd, but that’s not what drew my attention. Somehow I just KNEW he was EVIL. I was suddenly and keenly aware of the danger he was to many people and didn’t know what to do but to draw down from above a White Light to cover him and neutralize him and in doing so to protect the rest of us! This intense and overpowering awareness of the danger this evil man posed and the solution of cascading a White Light from Above to stop him and protect everyone lasted for many minutes, maybe 20, until he left.
I was shaken. But I had no one to talk to about it. So later who would I ask? The head witches who were visiting my New Age friends. When one of them heard my story she suddenly grabbed my hand and began to ‘read’ my palm. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you will become very powerful in the White Light!’ And she offered to train me in her coven how to use it.
These people were hippies, into drug culture, did TM and often communicated by ‘spiritual beings’ on the oujia board instead of using telephones! But for really some unknown reason I just wasn’t interested. I should have been! I think God protected me!
Cursed to Die
But when I didn’t join their group they instead cursed me to die. What happened was my friends were using their oujia board and yes, for them it was just like using a telephone to text each other. But this time their spirit guides said I was about to die; it gave details of how it would happen, when, assured us they were not lying (which they always had to check) and it put me into a dreadful depression.
I began telling people I was going to die on such and such a day in such and such a way and felt like this dreadful fate was sucking me down into a pit I could not find any way to free myself from!
I now know I was in real danger. I believed what they said and my belief would empower the enemy to bring to pass whatever he wanted. In a way we can say Satan only has the authority people give him. Demons work through permission from people, even witchcraft works this way; it could be your aunt, or your neighbor spreading curses in your family, in this case they tried to convince me to agree to this gruesome fate myself and sadly I had no will power to resist it so I also fell for it.
A few weeks later at the same fast food restaurant where I worked some friends of friends visited and there was one lady who I never met, but she was like a beacon of light to me—that’s the only way I can describe it! She was a little chubby I guess, not really attractive as you think of it, but I could not stop looking at her and felt such a strong familiarity in my heart for her that I had to ask her, “Where do I know you from?”
By then I had bright purple hair and in our rural area was maybe well known for it. So a lot of people knew me or talked about me who I had never met, and she was actually someone, if I recall right, who said she lived quite far away and came with her friends to see ‘that kid with the purple hair!’ But no, we had never met she said.
Are you SURE?” I pressed her, “Because it feels like I KNOW you from, like, a long time ago; like we were really close friends before but …”
No,” she said, “We never met. I would remember!” she laughed. But then she said something I only later understood, “Oh, I know what that is!” she said, “That’s the Holy Spirit inside of me that you’re feeling. I’m a Born Again Christian.”
I actually had never met a Born Again Christian. There was one in our town, a family, and we were told never to play with their kids. They were certainly not allowed to play with us! Many of the kids at the restaurant where I worked actually went to a private Christian school but they never shared the Gospel, and they did the same things were doing, and never called themselves ‘Born Again’—so that term meant nothing to me. But what did mean something to me was the intense feeling of familiarity I had with this girl. It was not attraction, it was like belonging, like family.
I took a five minute work break to chat with her and her friends and she said how she had been raped by an uncle, got pregnant and was taken in by a Christian family, had recently got saved and I think she just recently had her baby as well. She seems to have been in a kind of Christian foster care or something like that for sexual abuse victims.
I was trying to understand all these things when she asked me why I looked so depressed and I told her that I was going to die.
“How do you know that?!”
“Because the spirit guides of my friends said so,” and I told her the story with the oujia board and everything.
But to this she just firmly said, “NO! You are NOT going to die.” But not like it was her opinion but like she was telling me the facts!
“Well, how can you know that?”
“Because I SAID SO! I break that curse now in Jesus’ name and NOTHING like that is going to happen to you!”
And you’d think someone as extroverted and ‘out there’ as me would be more curious but again instead of following up or asking her more about her faith, and this salvation from my impending death she assured me of, I just let it go. I never saw her again but still remember her so vividly. But as far as I know, no, I didn’t die.
Well, I soon went to Germany on a summer school exchange trip and I was exposed to so many moral dangers I can’t talk about it now. I came back home and dropped by work briefly but everyone was acting … odd. “It’s like a graveyard around here! Why are you acting like someone died!?” I joked, but no one was laughing.
I went to sleep to get over my jet lag and a few days later came back to see my friends properly when I finally found out what happened … the night before I arrived home from Germany some of our workmates were driving to the Weirs Beach night spot after work. A few were taking the main lake-front road, but Matt, driving a used but still very fast Camero muscle car, took White Oaks Road, a road high up the hills but one that was like a twisty roller-coaster. In the passenger seat was Trevor, a quiet boy who went to a small private Christian school, a part of a small private Christian community in the rural areas I never even had visited. Matt who was driving was a typical, probably 17-year-old kid, just trying to figure life out. He kept a bowl of yellow butterscotch candy in the console to eat while he was driving. Trevor, I was later told, had just given his life to Christ a mere two weeks prior.
A 17-year-old boy driving an over-powered sports car, racing his friends after midnight on a dark, winding road …
The accident scene was catastrophic. One of them was decapitated. They never told me which one. The road was marked with skid marks, broken glass and scattered yellow candy all across the asphalt. Matt was unsaved, ignorant, careless. Trevor was clearly saved, and had just consciously given his life to Christ only literally days before the accident.
Telling Me Things I Knew Not Of
Before I close off this period I should add three more things that were relevant during this time. First, I was always tormented in my sleep. I often had nightmares but worse they would continue after I woke up. I would see apparitions and feel like ‘ghosts’ where haunting me. One time I could feel them touching me. This occasional torment lasted until the very day I got properly saved and consciously decided to follow Jesus. It was a harsh part of my childhood.
But during that time I also had a second divine revelation and this was a doozy. I don’t remember when I received it but it was as clear in my mind as it was difficult to explain. I suddenly KNEW the world was eternal. I mean I suddenly KNEW that if at any point in vast eternities past there was ever even a single moment when NOTHING existed … then nothing could ever come from it again. The idea was crystal clear that since we EXIST NOW this is proof that some THING has ALWAYS EXISTED in vast eternities past. I knew this with a clarity of understanding that was undeniable but nearly impossible to explain. I mean I saw with hyper-clarity that our existence itself is self-evident proof of Eternity. And basically without saying the obvious, it’s therefore proof that God exists—but I didn’t really come to that next step so fast but the ‘Existence being Eternal’ part was solid in my grasp.
You see, if you say there was ever NOTHING it means that there could not even be an observer to witness it. The fact that we can observe things means there is something now and so at no time was there ever NOTHING because it was clearly obvious to me that Nothing could come from NOTHING. If we can observe life here now then there has ALWAYS been a THING that exists—and yes, like I said, that THING being God was still something I had to reason out myself a little more, but the knowledge of Reality was crystal clear.
Poetry
The other thing I want to share is that I had become an avid writer of poetry. This becomes important later on for a few reasons. I was in writing class in high school but this was more than classwork. My uncle was a celebrated poet in Boston and taught literature in a private boy’s college. He also had a poetry TV show for a season on PBS! Poets in Profile. I was not very close to him but there was a literary legacy in the family. He took it very seriously. So did I!
For me I was also having extreme teenage problems. My hair, earrings, girlfriends, witch-friends, really insane music and bad relationship with my own dad just put me in constant friction. By now I had my hair colored for over two years, shaved on sides and back, black clothes, girlfriends, punk attitude and trying to head to college—while my dad decided he would simply never help me in any way. My elder brother was groomed by him to follow in his footsteps as an engineer. He was taken to several engineering schools, coached weekly on his career vision—that was the son he wanted! I was simply … not. Even to this day, he called me once on Fathers Day a few years ago, just to yell at me. Oh well, I’m over it now, but at the time I could not come to terms with it. So I was upset. Always. And for many reasons.
Then we got into a big fight one time that became physical and I just had to leave until things cooled off, if they ever would—and so I moved in with my grandmother, Nana, his mother, the Sunday School teacher. Nana immediately knew I had a problem and she began to tell people I was listening to satanic music and it was very disturbing to her.
So one night, yes, playing a very demonic album, I was hit with another revelation. And I needed to write! I got paper and wrote my first poem, and I called it the Amalgamated Colors of Death—my first real poem! I later changed the name to the Amalgamated Colors of Life, but it began as a way to describe the music I was listening to but right in the middle of it I actually prophesied.
Yes, I actually prophesied! It was ‘blah, blah, blah’ and then suddenly, “And you are MAN and NOT GOD!” and then more ‘blah, blah, blah.’ I later took a poetry class in High School and showed it in class and people must have thought, his looks are crazy, his thoughts are crazy too! Why did you write that line, ‘You are Man and not God?’ I said I don’t know, it just came out!
Later when I got saved properly and began reading the Bible I found this exact line in Ezekiel 28:2! Wow. I just about fell over! I certainly never had read Ezekiel before and this idea sprang right up out of my heart without ever having thought of it before! It was bold, clear and powerful, like a Fire and in plain contrast to the rest of the ‘chaff’ I was writing … That’s really what prophecy is like! So I got my start prophesying by writing poetry honestly.
Another poem I wrote spoke about having a CHAIN across my HEAD and CHEST! which will be important later on. But poetry was my own special hobby! But I also could never write a poem on a topic you asked me to. I had to wait … if the inspiration hit me, I could write. If it did not, it was rubbish! But I had so many inspirations I would get prompted to write three or four times a week. And well before I got to college I already had maybe 60 or 70 poems in my collection. It’s quite a lot for one year of high school!
So I didn’t know it until later but something—some ‘thing’ was ‘bubbling up’ inside of me, giving me inspiration, ideas, thoughts, feelings—but I was truly so mixed up, confused and polluted that it was all just a mess.
Ignorance sans the Bliss
Finally what I want to say about this period of my life and how I understood prophecy and things like that is that I didn’t. I mean I had NO DOCTRINE on prophecy. Not even a superstition. The idea that God was REAL was never openly discussed and so even that remained an abstract idea to me at best, even despite the earlier revelation of Jesus I had. To go one step further to face the idea that people could be Born Again, Born Anew, given Newness of Life or somehow in-filled with the actual Holy Spirit were ideas no more real than a Christmas Card greeting on a holiday or a birthday wish. To go one step further again and embrace the idea that the Real God actually SPOKE to people and so sometimes spoke THROUGH people to other people was not yet even a fantasy. It was beyond anything I ever imagined. I mean I had no doctrine about it not happening because the idea that it could happen was beyond anything I had ever imagined. How can you deny something you never even thought of? You have to think of it first to be able to deny it. So I was basically 100% ignorant on the topic. Not a great place to start, but we all have to start somewhere I guess.
And well I soon left for college. And without any parental guidance I completely messed up my application process. I didn’t take the SAT properly and applied to high-end schools I could never afford, and was even accepted into Boston University! Yay! But no one explained how I could come up with the money on my own to go there. Boo! So without options or knowing how to navigate the system I never accepted the placement; I didn’t know what to do and no one would help me even know there were dadlines I mean deadlines or who to call to get information or anything.
So I ended up trying to go to our state university but Ooops, those after-school classes I took to work on the school newspaper? Well, it wasn’t a club it was a class and I enrolled a few years in a row, but didn’t usually even go and so I got official F’s and it was now red flagged on my transcript, and well, yes, Boston University would take me, but my own state school would not.
Again I only later saw this as God’s hand in my life. The state university’s condition on enrolling me was first a year of classes on probation. Not at the main campus either where all the fun was, but at the satellite campus, the new one that was being held in an old disused mill building by the river in Manchester, NH. If I did good in these part-time classes, got good steady grades, I would be allowed to enroll in the main campus next year.
So I moved in with my mother’s sister who lived in Manchester, NH, and began part-time university classes, many at night, and mostly with an older crowd of adults working by day and taking classes in the evening. All I can say is that God is invisibly but undeniably and quite masterfully in control. This is how I now know that …
Ron the Dreamer
One of the first people I met at school and one of the only people I could hang around with was Ron.
We were both poor students, single men, both a little weird.
My weirdness was self-evident. My purple hair, often a hue of fuchsia, stood straight up, or was rather teased into a thicket on top of my head like a bright purple frayed knot; I had many earrings, wore black leather—people often stopped me in the street to ask if I was in a band! I wore my weirdness on the outside. Why did I do this? Well, honestly I wanted people to know I was different. I mean deep down inside in a secret place I knew I was somehow not like other people. I had no way of knowing how to explain why or how I was different—I was just not like anyone else I knew. I dressed this way to express my awareness of how unlike other people I was. And I was arrogant and rude and it attracted a lot of girls.
But Ron looked on the outside like everything was good, normal, boring … but in reality Ron was some kind of alien.
Literally!
He was part Indian, I mean like from India! He didn’t look Indian or speak any Indian languages and seemed 100% normal American. But it turns out his dad was French, his family name was Rioux, but he was from the French part of India, Pondicherry or somewhere like that. In the city of Manchester where we now lived there was a large French section where many people were from Quebec and actually still walked around speaking French. They had come to Manchester to work in the mills many decades ago and their families set up a little French Quarter in town.
Ron was also learning Esperanza, he said so he could ‘witness’ to people from all over the world. He also had a shortwave radio and again it was so he could meet people from the other side of the world and ‘witness.’ This was years before the Internet and Facebook of course. But what this ‘witnessing’ meant was unclear to me. He even bought a new style of bag; it was like a soft fabric briefcase but on a hanging shoulder strap. Nowadays it’s completely normal but this was a new kind of fashion accessory back then. He said he wanted—rather NEEDED a bag that had an easily accessible pouch that he could put things in it he called Tracts and easily hand them out to people. This was a ‘witnessing bag’ or something like that he said. What a tract or track was seems to be a little story in a small booklet about the Anti-Christ or sin or something. He used a term I never heard and often called them “Chick Tracks”—was it tract or tracks? I never knew but try saying that fast ten times: Chick Tracks Chick Tracks Chick Tracks Chick Tracks ….
And we would also make rice—every day. I never had rice more than as a side dish in a Chinese restaurant before or maybe rice pilaf just a few times in my entire life but Ron had a large pot ready every single day. As starving students we pitched in together to keep the rice pot full! One day we finally got enough extra money to buy flavoring for the top of the rice, dried herbs and celery salt! Wow, that was living!
Now I won’t spoil the story but later on I married a woman from India from quite near Pondicherry; and now living in Asia people here eat a lot of rice! Every day, no, every MEAL! Rice for breakfast, rice for lunch and what’s for dinner? Rice! Rice for snacks, rice dried and puffed, rice soaked and made into porridge. This time with Ron was a kind of introduction to things that would later feature very prominently in my daily life. But I’ll get to all that much later.
So when I came over to visit Ron he would often leave a Bible opened in a noticeable place to try to start a conversation with me about the Lord and would try quoting some amazing biblical fact or other trivia to start up a conversation he would deftly steer towards telling me the gospel—none of which caught my attention. I went with him to some Christian meetings and met some of his Christian and also non-Christian friends. We were all young 18- or 19-year-olds, goofing around … that’s all pretty normal, but oh yeah, one more thing about Ron that made him ultra weird—Ron had dreams!
As the Dreamer Dreams his Dreams!
Oh, the dreams Ron had!
He shared more of them as time when on, but he would have dreams so fantastic, so rich with symbolism, and so layered with conversations and amazing ideas that it was just beyond anything that I had ever imagined. I didn’t know God was actually ‘real’ yet so I didn’t consider whether he could speak to people and certainly didn’t understand there was any such thing as God speaking to people in their dreams. All I knew was that Ron had something special going on—mostly when he was asleep.
One of his dreams he said he saw busts of famous ancient kings and emperors all lined up and he saw Nero and heard statements about the Anti-Christ and world war and patterns from ancient history repeating themselves, and the future being revealed … I had no idea what any of that meant either but it was altogether cool!
He even shared a dream that was so funny he actually woke himself up laughing! He dreamed he was in bed, and he saw a spider that he tried to kill by throwing a shoe at it but he missed! So the spider ran under the bed to hide and so he leaned over the side of the bed and slowly pulled up the blankets to catch the critter by surprise, but when he did, right there under the bed, in plain sight, was the spider! Nowhere to hide!! But so to disguise itself it had tied a tiny pair of spider-sized fake moose antlers onto its head and was looking around casually like he was just a miniature moose minding his own business, waiting for the bus there under the bed … the idea that a spider could think he could fool you by pretending to be a one-half-inch-tall MOOSE made him laugh so hard he literally woke himself up laughing.
I later learned more about Ron’s past and the hardships he had with his parents’ divorce and his unkind step-mom and I now think that this dream was actually one of the ways God was ministering inner healing to him. But at the time I was just so impressed with his unique life!
Per Severe Ants
So Ron and I were daily companions for several months and it turns out that when we first met he made it his personal goal to lead me to the Lord. It was a conscious and purposeful decision he made “to do whatever it takes” to get me saved. Not knowing that it would take exactly that—whatever he had to give, all his effort, stamina and patience to get me saved! Yes, I was THAT annoying!
It was many months that he had to endure my obnoxious attitude, outrageous wardrobe and immoral lifestyle. I annoyed him more than he was prepared for I think. But finally he—and the Lord, prevailed!
I don’t know how he did it quite honestly and by the end of the semester he was barely talking to me out of frustration. I made his life miserable I know, but by Spring he changed his course load, maybe he took a semester off from school, I forget—but he moved an hour away just as I was finally ready to take the next step in this thing he was always on about—getting saved.
One day I recall visiting him in his new apartment in Rochester, NH, and asking him casually, “So how does someone get saved, anyway?”
“You have to ask Jesus to be your Lord and Savior. Ask Him to forgive you of your sins and come into your heart.” I think he quoted John 3:16 but also Romans 10:9-10.
Oh, OK,” I said, “That’s nice. Anyway, I gotta go.” I drove the hour back home to where I still lived and halfway home, along Route 101, alone in my car … I prayed that prayer …. I asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior, to forgive me of my sins … and nothing happened.
There were no angels blowing trumpets, no clouds parting revealing heavenly glory—I was actually a little disappointed. I wanted to hear angels, and I expected at least something extraordinary to happen to mark the moment, but nothing did.
I had forgotten totally about what had happened to me when I was 13 or so in church reading the Nicene Creed. I didn’t mention it to anyone and I didn’t even understand it had anything to do with what Ron was talking about now. But in fact I had already confessed my faith in Jesus, I was already Born Again—that’s what was inside me making me feel like I was just so totally different from everyone else—but I didn’t know that and also had effectively backslid into the world and became so polluted by sin and unclean spirits that I was living like a carnal unsaved punk and needed to get my lifestyle sorted out, stop all the sins and bad habits and things like that, and read my Bible. I didn’t know any of that mattered, I didn’t know it had anything to do with anything. No one ever taught me one thing about it.
All I knew by this time was that I did what Ron said I had to, I prayed the sinners’ prayer to Jesus. I was now a real believer, consciously, by my choice, by my will. And maybe not dramatically at first, but undeniably, I soon began to change.
The Dawn of Hope
First, I slept through the whole night without nightmares. I had no more dread when I slept, which was a constant feeling I had since childhood. I went back to my childhood home and threw away bags and bags of old toys and things that I just could not part with before! Now I just knew I was going to be OK without them. Whatever I was keeping them for, whatever hope I was looking for or trying to hold onto in keeping these things from childhood I now knew I had found something so much greater I just didn’t need them anymore. Strange how we think about such things!
I remember now having a strong and conscious feeling of hope—I can call it hope but it was like a feeling that there was a reality of Goodness and Peace that I HAD ALWAYS WISHED WAS TRUE but only in a sense like you hope in a fantasy, but now I was fully aware that it was actually real! This reality of Goodness I privately wished were true was in fact REAL! The shock that a fantasy I dared not hope for was now my reality was blowing my mind. That’s how I felt but not just from a subconscious or vaguely indefinite feeling! No, it was a strong conscious perception I now had and yes, it was really like I was awoken from a bad dream, but also like I woke INTO heavenly bliss. The Joy of the Lord is a real thing!
When people talk about the Joy of the Lord, that’s what it was. It was not because of anything I did or had naturally but it was pure Joy, unspeakable, illogical Joy! Joy just for the sake of itself! Joy! The Joy of the Lord!
So I still had my purple hair and earrings and clothing style and just didn’t see the need for that to change—not just yet.
And within a few weeks I told Ron I prayed the sinner’s prayer and he was shocked and probably relieved, but then within a few more days, maybe another week or so, I also had a dream.
That in itself is not very unusual I know, but this was different. It was vivid and memorable and in such detail, it featured so many very strange symbols and used words that I didn’t really know the meaning of. I told Ron about it and he was so excited!
Dream: Here We MAKE Recompense
What I saw was a like a hallway of black and white floor tiles that led into a back garden area like a private yard and there were so many things going on back there that I just never imagined before. It was basically an army training camp! But the one thing that I did remember very vividly was seeing a tall pole, like a flag pole, but there was something like a toy army jeep perched on top of it and it was shaking around violently like a bucking bronco. Inside the jeep there were those toy army men that everyone now knows from the movie Toy Story—we grew up with those as well, only in my dream they were not army-green as they should be, but they were bright purple, the same color as my purple hair! The fact that the army men and jeep were purple just made me really pay attention—that was MY color. And there was a drill sergeant speaking in the dream and he said something I can still remember, “Here we don’t GIVE recompense, we MAKE recompense.” And the soldier was being shaken around and back and forth and I told Ron and he said it was amazing.
What was amazing? I didn’t even know what the word recompense meant!
“It’s a message from the Lord; it’s a prophetic dream,” he insisted. And explained that recompense is like a word from the Bible; it means to pay back for what you did wrong. It now reminds me of the prophetic word from Ananias to Saul after his conversion on the road to Damascus.
But I didn’t think of that back then. All I thought was, Cool! I had a dream from God! Ron said so!
But what ever did it mean?
