Beach Blanket Bingo

As I stated in my last post, I am going to share a part of my testimony that is very private. I only do this because I feel like this story is “His-story.” I don’t own it; it’s His authoring of His Life in my life.

Beach Blanket Bingo

Upon getting to St. Simons Island, I began to plan a date night with God. I figured if He was asking me to be single for Him, then it was His to fill in the gap. So I set up a night that was just for us.  I went to a remote beach and sat in plain view of a wonderful lighthouse.  My heart was palpitating and I was a bit nervous, like beach blanket bingo.  I’d sought God’s tangible touch all my life and now I was going to feel it.

Now let me say here that I had experienced the manifest presence of God before that night.  I’d audibly heard Him several times, even as an unsaved youth. I had experienced Him with my senses in episodes like the Light appearing in the van. But I hadn’t had Him touch me. I’m a very sentient being.  I hear things keenly, I smell things acutely, I taste things intensely—my senses are WIDE awake. In Florida, where I was raised, as a child I spent hours in the pool because I loved the way water felt. I’ve always been this way; it’s just how He made me.

I’ve always wanted to be touched, yet God Himself set things up in my life so that physical contact would be minimal. I didn’t have brothers to wrestle with, or even many friends with whom to pal around. But just because my reality was set a certain way, it didn’t lessen any of my desires.  I wanted what I wasn’t given.  So when God asked me to lay down a further stake of my hopes being satisfied, it was a death, but what came with it was a grand hope of fulfillment.

Beach Blanket Bingo: Waiting for God

Well, back on the beach, there I sat waiting for the Spirit of the Living God.  Yet after hours of waiting without so much as a breeze, I picked up my stuff and wept my way to the car.  I was crushed.  He didn’t come as I’d desired.  Eyes filled with tears, I sat in the car for quite a while just asking Him what it was He wanted from me.  Why would He not bow to ME?!?! Okay, that isn’t what I said, but it certainly was what I was saying.

The next day I wondered what that was all about as I made the journey back home.  One thing I did know, I was the Lord’s. But was He mine?  I know many people who seek the Lord to be their romance. I think it’s naked humanity to desire Him as our ultimate fulfillment.  But I believe we can take this to the stratosphere of self-worship—where I want God to worship me and bow to me as center. Since the Garden, we have wanted to control Him to do our will, so we will be pleased. He just isn’t interested in playing in that arena.

In my next post, I will share a turning point in my thoughts, which is changing everything.