About the Author
Maybe this would be a good time to stop and tell of a little of the history of myself. Although I may have been accused of being nuts, the few that know me, know different, for God began a work in me many years before I understood His presence.
Only by looking back to my youth can I now see and understand that the cradle of Gods’ awareness was with me from the beginning, but little was I aware of it then. I remember, as a young teenager, that an inner voice continued to tell me that I was to be set apart from the main stream of society, and be a voice as one crying from the wilderness; John the Baptist was frequently on my mind.
I spent several years in the world, being a part of it, engrossed and fascinated with all that it could offer. There was very little that I could have done, that I didn’t do; I tried most everything that was stupid, at least once. I remember saying that the only things I didn’t do, were those that I just didn’t think of; for back then, I had but few limits.
As a young child, and up through my teenage years, I was dropped off at Sunday school, and the service that followed. The only times that I enjoyed ‘vacation Bible school’ was when they fed us ice-cream afterwards. Out of all the kids in my age group, and with all the years of the leaders teaching us, I could see no difference in anybody’s behavior, no matter how many ‘stars of approval’ we were given; none of it ever took hold. My parents lived a life that seemed Godly, and strict were their rules, but little mention of God, good or bad, was ever heard; but they were good parents and raised us to have morals. Back in the fifties and sixties, life was a lot less complicated, for even the ‘big wheels’ and skate boards were unheard of; but we still managed to make life as complicated as possible.
At the age of twenty-five, after being married for about three years, and having our first child, I came to have a personal relationship with God thru His Christ, and this was the first realized beginning of how God could put so many matters together, without my knowing he was doing so, and the seed planted earlier by Him now began to come, just barely, together; but it came and my growth had begun.
I’m sure that most of us can look back and see things of our past that were thought of then as insignificant, but instead now view them as ‘I wouldn’t want to tackle this world without that experience’, a great blessing. I had many of these experiences, and most of them came from my foolishness, but are now viewed as platforms, or stages, from which much growth has been had, and hopefully much more to come, as I remember those yesteryears. Several years ago I wrote an autobiography with many of the knuckleheaded adventures, and mishaps of the strain of growing up called “The Man Within” that spoke about how they, the silly antics of a stupid child, provoked me into eventual adulthood, and how they had come together to position me to an observance of the transparency of these silly games people play, and call it ‘church’.
In the late seventies, fully involved in ‘church’, excited about the things God was doing in my life, I occasionally took to the pulpit to preach and testify of the sights and sounds that God was giving me; it was a wonderful experience. One of the messages, that on more than several occasions, were shared, but was felt and received by me of the Lord was; ‘the ‘church’ is the only institution or organization on earth that kills their wounded’. Now at the time that this was spoken, I had but little understanding of what it meant, but knew, even then, that this message was to be proclaimed, but it still took many years before it was transformed within me into a truth that was easily seen.
Even in my early years I had a zeal for the Lord, and wanted to know as much as I could about Him. Being young and independent, all that I knew to do was group myself with a body of ‘believers’, and like a sponge, absorb all I could about this potential Life with the Lord and His son Jesus; I was very much excited, but still a little confused. Preachers and teachers loved having a student like me around and took it as an opportunity to give me all the great wisdoms that they themselves possessed, and I was under the wing of many folks. I guess this was when I learned that there is no consensus among any, even in the same body of ‘believer’, which only added to my misperception; but God was speaking to me also, but as a man in his twenties, I was to learn from my elders.
Now I’m not saying that any of these folks didn’t believe, for I’m sure they did, but after several years of this tutoring, I came to the understanding that they were as misguided as the stuff that was going on in my head, for they each gave me what they had, but it was still the blind leading the blind. With the way that people understood the things of God, it wasn’t hard to see that the harmony among them was as elusive to them as it was for those that didn’t care about the things of God. When trying to explain something to me, no two could come together, and it was as if they felt like something had to be said for an answer, even if they didn’t really believe it, but was passing on what was taught to them; it come out as rhetoric and many times contrary to scriptures. Flags were beginning to go up in my head, signals of warning, so I spent the next years in prayer, still involved in the ‘church’, but focused on God’s Word for understanding instead of the learned men of ‘cemetery school’. (I know how to spell it, but it now makes better sense this way.) The Holy Spirit that knows all things teaches all things; these were the words that were given to me.
One day, while in communion with the Lord, sitting on my front porch, and as my mind began being silent, the Lord came to me in a gentle softness that overtook my thoughts.
He said in a quiet voice of a caring gentleman; Ross, I want you to forget everything that you’ve been taught.
My first thought was a reaction; “but Lord, all that has been taught to me cannot all be wrong. I was even taught that Jesus is Lord.”
“Ross, it isn’t; not all that was taught is necessarily wrong, it’s just that I want to teach you.”
And that was the end of this conversation, and really, it took several years of being quiet and listening before it was understood, and only then did I begin to realize what God had in store for me.
Many years did I spent in the ‘church’, some teaching, some preaching, but all of them was spent learning in the same ratio that I would allow myself to listen as the Lord continued to reach me thru all the rhetoric that I was willing to give up.
Scripture was beginning to be revealed, as each day was started with; Lord, you said that if any lacked wisdom, you would freely give to those that ask; I’m asking.
I had no idea where all this was going, and I had no agenda, for all I wanted, was to know His Way and Truth, His Life; and it started coming, sometimes in spurts, and sometimes in waves; and every time it was revealing a new and complete surprise. I began to see early that the formats and programs that the ‘mainstream church’ were using to bring in the masses with their appeal to the flesh. People, in those years, were joining in droves, and many of the ‘mega-churches’ were being born, but even the small and country ‘churches’ were seeing a great incline of folks added to their charted membership. Through trial and error, a platform was established, a program of success, a method that many seemed to have accepted, and thus fallen into; it had then been elevated to a ‘show’. It was then that the ‘full gospel’ took off as they seemed to have a deeper meaning to the fullness of Gods’ Word; so it seemed. It is probably true that the ‘full gospel’ leaders had found a deeper value about the Life that God was sharing with us, but still stopped short of the meaningful, uninhabited relationship, that God had provided for us thru His son Jesus.
It was about this time, in the seventies, that many broke away from the traditionalist and began flocking to what was then untraditional; thus many home groups were born. These home groups knew that the ‘church’ couldn’t provide them with this newly accepted offered life and relationship, but they too were seduced to the same formats under a different disguise; for they continued in the same ritualistic systems; and with a leader at the head, and the same formalities of praying, singing, praying again, taking up offerings, singing another song, then praying once more, began their service under the same fashion and bondage that really never did work with all those that preceded them, but what else could they do, according to the flesh, that’s all that they had ever been taught in these past centuries. And I too fell into these systems for a while, but soon learned that they too, at best, could only appeal to the flesh; for they too wore thin on releasing people to have an intimate individual relationship with the King of all kings.
I don’t fault anyone in this process, nor do I fault myself, for each of us seems to have to do it wrong, to find out what doesn’t work; and it wasn’t working. This same captivity was portrayed in the movie “Shawshank Redemption”, based on a book by Stephen King. Brooks, a man that had been in prison for fifty years, was finally freed on probation and sent into a world that he’d not conceived had existed; and he couldn’t make-it, and not having the mentality to survive, he took his own life. Some years later his friend Red was also released into this same world that he knew little about. Red also came close to taking his own life, or maybe committing a crime that would place him back into the only life that he had ever known, but thru a set of circumstances by his friend Andy, took a leap of faith and pulled thru. These were institutionalized people that lived inside a set of bars, and rules, that dictated their lives from the time they awoke in the morning until they awoke again the next day. When they first arrived at the prison, the bars and rules were hated, but after some years, they began to get use to them, and as the years lingered on, they each began to depend on that, which a few decades earlier, were so hated; they were institutionalized. The gates and bars that held them captive had little hold on them in comparison to the institutionalization of doing the same things day after day. The narrowed life that they were placed in, with its repeated behaviors, and limited views, held them hostage to a life- style that is extremely hard to break.
Andy had to crawl through hundreds of yards of human excrement for his freedom; Red, after accepting that he was cursed by the stupid act of his youth, was released. Though it took endurance and perseverance, the two men found their freedom by a hope that life was bigger than the walls of humanity that were built around them; WE CAN BE FREE. WE HAVE BEEN EMANCIPATED, not by president Lincoln, BUT BY GOD.
I think that most of us could inventory our own lives, and look honestly at the walls that were either built before us, or by us, and see that these same walls, these prisons of whatever sort, are just a façade, a thin harassing veneer of superficial containments that keep us from living in the freedom that God has provided thru His son Jesus. It’s not just that we can be free, we already are; but the institutionalization of our way of thinking has limited us to only that which we allow our eyes to see, we have limited ourselves to the five senses.
Can you see the parable in the above story?
The Kingdom of God is within each, and Jesus was specific to teach us just that, but if our vision is confined to that which was taught by the leaders of this so-called ‘church’, then those same bars that kept us so bound to their rules and regulations, can be destroyed by the simple touch of faith; we are already free. Jesus came once, and He came for all; the price has already been paid, and no other debt is owed, and if we can get through this rhetoric of working by our hands and mind, and understand that none can earn this great Gift, then all that’s left is Christ freed from the cross, and sits at the right hand of the Father, which is in your heart.
I too was trapped in the accepted system of religion, but only for a short while; it was then that God began to answer the prayers of this knuckle headed guy that just wanted the plain truth. Revelation after revelation began to flow as I had a long lists of questions; each one just didn’t seem to add up to the explanations that the leaders were giving, but God was faithful. In fact, several times, the enlightenments were coming faster than this immature being could handle.
I wanted to know what was meant by dying daily; what did it mean that we are healed by His stripes? What was that mill-stone that was thrown into the sea? Why did Jesus wash the feet of His disciples, or why Moses had to take his sandals off on that mountain? Who was the sower, and what were the seeds? How could God proclaim a great Love for every person, but according to doctrine, had great wrath upon them? Who is this church of the Laodiceans’, that we were all taught was such a bad group, but is quite evident that Christ cherished them with hope and promises? The list goes on and on, and the answers began to come at a rate that the mind had no opportunity to grasp; it was a wonderful experience.
It seemed that the more that I settled into the teaching of Gods’ Word, the more I was separated from those ‘in the know’. Some of this, by their choice, some by mine, but the two couldn’t be contained in the same jar, so-to-speak. Virtually no one was going to let some ‘pip-squeak’ mess up their ‘sand-box’, and the separation began; but at the time, I didn’t know it; I was too busy just loving the Love that flowed thru Him.
There was a time, after some persecution, that I was feeling unworthy and inadequate, but was then, shown by God, that He chose for His disciples, the low-life’s, the thugs, the dirty, all of those that were unacceptable by the ‘mainstream’, to give the inner secrets of His Kingdom to.
Sometime in the mid-nineties, still starving in the Sunday meetings, the call came to me from God to come out of this fleshly, man-made structure, and follow His Christ only. I was to completely change the way I thought (repent) and to open my life to the Spirit, and allow Him to show me Gods’ Way, Truth, and Life. The burden of the inadequate and traditional ways of our forefathers’ misunderstandings had been lifted. There were still times of wanting, like the Israelites, to run back to the addictions of the past, and twice I did just that, but each instance that I did go back, was reminded that these people shut God out of their services with their preplanned formulas of worshipping with the flesh. After that second time of wavering, I understood clearly that God wanted His people to be let go.
It was then that a light bulb, so to speak, was turned on, and again, the daily manna fell from heaven to feed me with its fresh revelations. I was still in the wilderness, but now I was being led by a Cloud by day, and a Glow by night, and my walk was purging me from the ‘old man’within.
I wrote a book called “The Man Within” that can be seen on the web that is the complete autobiography of this same author. It is a little funny, or could say strange, but it tells about how I found the man that lived within this odd being.