In the spring of 2000, I was laying in my bed early one Saturday morning, when the phone rang and it was Dale. After a short chit-chat conversation, he’d asked if I wanted him to play to me a song that he wanted me to hear.
“Dale, I’ve heard all the songs I want to hear from people trying to make money off the Gospel.” His reply was; “Let me play you fifteen seconds of this song, and I will not bother you again.”
We knew each other well enough to argue back and forth a couple of times, and I finally told him to play the darn song, I think just to get it over with.
After listening to that song, I asked if he would play a little more of it to me, and of course Dale said “yes.” When the song ended, I told him, instead of asking, that I was on my way to his house to listen to the whole tape.
Didn’t take long to get there, so we listened, and I got to bring this tape and several more home with me. The tape was sung by some man named Kirby Dies, whom I had never heard of.
I got the tapes home, and spending a couple of hours listening to them. I was impressed that someone would be bold enough to say something like this for the public to hear. Kirby was singing about several of the things that God was dealing with me about, and I wanted to know more. On the tape was the address and phone number of the recording studio in Nashville, so I called them. I don’t really know how but I talked them into giving me Kirby’s phone number, so I called him.
When someone answered the phone, I’d asked if this was Kirby Dies, and it was. My response was a little strange, but it worked. “Kirby, my name is Ross Dies, and I have listened to your music and would like to have your address and directions to your house, because I want to come over.” Guess I caught this man so far off guard, but he gave it to me without hesitation. Within three hours, I was knocking on his door.
We sat together for the rest of the day, just talking about our walk in Christ, and found out that we were both at about the same place in our walk, and many of the same things that God was speaking to me, He was saying to Kirby as well.
This was a wonderful experience for me because at this time I thought maybe that I was crazy, and didn’t have any idea that God was speaking the same things to several people all over the world. I just knew that He was saying stuff to me that was not main-stream, and certainly different than what I’d been taught in the church. So it was a pleasant experience to see that God had kept remnants scattered all over the world that could see through much of the hoop-la that many continue to teach, but is not biblically sound.
Through the years, I have had the pleasure to meet several of God’s remnant, and noticed that no two of the people that I met lived within thirty miles (and many much farther) of each other. And all had a special love for the Lord, and were seeking a deeper, more intimate relationship with Him than I had experienced in the institutional meeting places that met on Sunday, or for that matter even the home groups that I had participated in.
For the next four years, I was learning and growing on a daily basis. In fact, for a two year period, I was receiving two, sometimes three revelations a week. Many mornings, as I would wake up, sitting silently in bed, I would hear the voice of my Father. I was given more than a few short sayings and many definitions, or maybe I should say insights, that have continued to help me when piecing together the Word of God…….
To mention a few:
*lf you like what you got, keep doing what you’ve done. or If you don’t like what you’ve got, don’t do what you’ve done.
*The definition or Hope; The expectation of positive change.
*The definition of mad; To bring attention to oneself.
*The definition of happiness; A level above what you expect.
*The definition of frustration; Trying to control an uncontrollable situation
And many intimate revelations that I will not mention
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I’d like to very quickly piece together my life and how it evolved into the man that I have become, that still today, I’m sure many would want to say, is not much.
I guess coming from a knot-head of a kid to the man I am, or could say, the man that God sees me as, has been a strange road. Having no regrets, even in the stupid and foolish things that I did in my life, because all have been a lessen to learn and a means to grow by. As a young child, I started life with a handicap, that taught me to become independent, not needing so many other people’s approval. I am what I am, and if someone compliments me or chastens me, I am no better or worst of a person than I was before they commented.
Yes, even had a time in my life that I’d stolen, and told more than a few lies, and thank God that I’d gotten caught, and the times that I wasn’t caught weighed heavy on me for many years, until it worked it’s work to enable me to see Truth. This too has helped me to understand the pain it causes to others, not counting on myself, but I did learn to be straight and honest with people. To say what I mean, and mean what I say. In other words, to be careful what I say because I have to live with it and carry it with me throughout my entire life.
A lot of sad stuff happened in my growing up years, but much of it was fun and entertaining, especially to a young and then teenage boy that thought he was a man.
It’s comical to look back at my life, and for me to see that I, as a child thought through a child’s brain, acted as a child, and had many toys and feelings of a child, but was really doing nothing wrong, just thought I did.
Hey!….. There ain’t any twelve year olds thinking as an adult; our brains aren’t developed well enough for that yet. Maybe I was a slow bloomer, and I think this was because I had shut down my feelings to keep from getting hurt, so really didn’t put enough thought into things to even see if they were to be hurtful to me or anyone else around me.
I wanted to be a man, but all my thinking, all my evaluations, all my prospective, was coming from an independent little boy that still had his feelings suppressed, and no one, and I do mean no one can come out of childhood until they know themselves, willing to feel and own their inner child as what he is; an inner child. Our child is not and was not supposed to be an adult.
Even as adults we hurt, there is nothing wrong with this, but as adults, our hurts don’t change our behaviors. In other words we will respond to a situation and not react to them. Children play games, blame others, have to be first, strut instead of walk, and have to be right all the time, but MEN don’t. This is true, except that children cry, big boys don’t, but MEN do. Men are not afraid to show their feelings, are not afraid to express themselves, men are men, and don’t have to prove themselves right. Men aren’t afraid of being wrong, and will readily admit it.
It was a rough life growing up for me to become a man, and I don’t think that I would change a jot or a tittle of any of it. I’m thinking it took every little or big foolish thing that I did, to mount up, and accumulate before I was ready to step over that threshold to manhood.
Whether it was playing king-on-the-mountain, or speaking like an idiot to my wife, or thinking I always had to win, or cheating someone out of the money I owed them, each thing, each happening, every little story that was in my life, had to run its course before my eyes were to be opened.
Looking back, I wouldn’t take away a single struggle, a single lie, a single tear that I had, because of believing that they had to be gone through to cross that threshold.
I do hate it that so many others got hurt in the process, and part of the reason that I’m writing this is to say to them: “I’m sorry” and that I’m thankful for them for putting up with me...THANK YOU. I didn’t mean for it to be at their expense, but I was a Boy, what else could I do.