I want to tell you a very personal story. It is a wonderful story but it is difficult to tell because it is a heart story. It is about something that touched my heart so the story comes out of my heart. It is about something that changed my life forever. It changed how I view God, how I see me, how I see the world and how I view the ministry of the church.
The year was 1970 and I was struggling through my second year of seminary. I say struggling for a couple of reasons. First, I was struggling because I was not prepared for seminary. My college work had prepared me for law school, where I was going before God intervened. Struggling can describe any and all of my sojourns in the halls of education. Student is not a word anyone would use to describe me.
As I remember, it was around noon. I was in the school library. You could find me there one day in early spring of 1970. I was just trying to get some studying done. Life was hectic with a full time job, a full time graduate school study load and a baby on the way. I was just plodding through this part of my life hoping to come out on the other end sane and alive.
Some guy I hardly knew interrupted my study and really ticked me off. All he wanted to do was tell me I should go across the street to the college because a revival was going on. I waved him away like a bothersome fly. I didn’t have time to go to a revival. If I had any spare time at my disposal I would have chosen to go to sleep, not go to a revival. I had no interest in going to listen to some of those antique professors preach.
He told me that the chapel service that had begun on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. was still going on. Our conversation was taking place at noon on Thursday. “All night,” I asked? “All night,” he replied. They didn’t do anything in that small town all night long. I thought, “Talk about your longwinded preachers.” As if he had read my mind, he said, “Nobody is preaching. God showed up.”
I blew him off. I was busy. But I was also intrigued. After a while I gathered up my stuff and headed across the street. Little did I know what, or should I say, who was waiting for me.
The foyer was empty. There was no one in the place but little old me. I remember that seeming odd to me. And yet, the foyer was full. Something was there. Something I had never before experienced. The closest I can come to describing it is to say that it was like a mist. Being spiritually ignorant at the time, I had no idea that I was experiencing the glory of God that Isaiah had described as filling the temple. I walked into the auditorium and slipped into an empty seat to watch. And, like Isaiah, I saw the Lord.
As I watched and listened I saw many people, people of all ages, good Christian people, as they wept and repented. All sizes, shapes and ages of men and women stepped to the pulpit of that little chapel to ask individuals and groups to forgive them. As I watched in amazement, several of my fellow seminary students were healed of life-long afflictions. In the realm of the physical – a fellow seminary student whose leg had been deformed since birth was healed. I saw it. But I never saw him again after that week. He left to go tell others about the God who had healed him. A close friend and neighbor who had been physically abused as a child was healed of her emotional scars.
I saw the Lord. And like Isaiah, the experience changed my life forever. No, I did not suddenly become holy and sinless. It is a process. God has chosen, several times over the past 40 years, to smack me in the mouth with a hot coal to help me along the way.
Though I didn’t experience instance holiness, I can tell you that during that week in 1970 my life was changed. God moved from being theoretical to being real. I was released to do ministry with a God of power and life… a God who is present and real. The entire orientation of my life and ministry was changed. All because I saw the Lord.
I tell others of my experience and they say to me, “I wish I could see the Lord.” And I think, really? Would you really like to see the Lord? Really?
Okay, but you had better get ready to see things you have never seen before and to believe what you haven’t been able to bring yourself to believe in the past. Get ready to grasp the reality that you don’t really know everything, that you haven’t got it all figured out and that you can’t figure it out. Get ready for loud and lots of light. Get ready to get smacked in the mouth with a hot coal… for God will want to clean you up and make you usable. Get ready to have your life changed forever. Most importantly, get ready to answer God’s call on your life.
By the way, let me tell you how you will know for sure you have seen the Lord. He will ask for volunteers and when you look around to see which idiot volunteered you discover that you are the one with his hand raised.
Copyright © 2012, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved
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