Elijah walked a whole day into the wilderness. He stopped and sat down in the shade of a tree and wished he would die. “It’s too much, LORD,” he prayed. “Take away my life; I might as well be dead!” He lay down under the tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said, “Wake up and eat.” (1 Kings 19:4-5 GNB)
Have you ever heard of the death of a vision? God gives us a taste of what He has for us to walk in, even does the work of that vision through us for a brief season, and then takes it away. You see this pattern in Moses setting out to deliver the Hebrew people from the hands of the Egyptian slavery one task master at a time, only to learn that God had something far greater in mind. With the Hebrews he was trying to help turning on him, he high-tailed it for the back side of the wilderness in fear of Pharaoh. There he tended his father-in-law’s sheep for 40 years. So much for that vision—at least that was what Moses thought until he had an encounter with God 40 years later!
Then there was Joseph and his dreams of greatness as a young man. His dreams did not please his folks or his brothers when he told them that they would all bow down before him one day. The brothers did their best to make sure that this dreamer never ruled over them, and plotted to kill him! You know the rest. He was sold into slavery in Egypt, and thrown into prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Insult and injury seem to be his lot for being faithful to God. Twenty-three years after the brothers sold him into slavery, the dream was fulfilled.
How about the great apostle Paul? Everyone seems to think that Jesus appeared to him on the Damascus road and “insto-chango,” Paul was a super evangelist on the mission trail! That was not the case. Jesus first put him in the Arabian Desert for three years where He taught him and stripped him of his Jewish traditions. It was a total of 14 years before he went out on his first missionary journey, only after the Holy Spirit spoke to the brethren at Antioch, where Paul was living as one of the brothers and said, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
A lot of dying has to take place for God to get a purified vessel He can use effectively after He calls him or her. My case was similar. About 1978 He started to move by His Spirit in me through words of knowledge, prophecy, dreams and such. We had a group of people meeting with us in our home as well. It was a heady time for me. I finally had something from God that my own father never provided for me – a sense of identity. Like Moses, I did not know the difference between my soul and what was of the Spirit, and pride started rising up in me. Because of the accuracy of things He gave me and the resulting pride, I was dangerous. He showed me the mixture, and I started praying that He would purify me. One day I heard Him say, “Michael, if I quit moving in your meetings with my Spirit, will you try to fake it?” I replied, “No, Lord, if you quit, I quit.” After that that He pulled the plug on everything I identified as spiritual in my life.
About this time, I had what I felt was prophetic dream of a dear 35 year old friend of ours who had abdominal cancer. Sandy was prophetic and we shared a lot of things back and forth. In this dream I could see my hand reaching down to her where she was lying on her sick bed and I was praying that she would be healed. I was so startled I woke up abruptly, woke my wife and told her about the dream. I then went back to sleep and dreamed the second half. You know how we have those wonderful, feel good dreams and want to go back to sleep and have it some more and it never happens? Well, not in this case! In the second half of the dream her family and mine were all sitting around a large dining room table with the sunlight streaming through the windows. Sandy was now looking like a 24 year old woman in her prime, and she was talking about her healing from the Lord. This startled me awake again and this time I stayed up.
The next day I made an appointment to see the pastor about my dream. He told me to just sit on it and wait and see if God would confirm it. I waited and waited, and Sandy got sicker and sicker. Finally, for a brief time her cancer went into remission enough that she could come to church one Sunday. It was the first time in six months and when I saw here sitting there it was like an electric shock went through me! I got a chance to ask the pastor during the service if it was time to pray for her. At the end of the service, he had me come up and tell my dream, then invited Sandy and the church elders to pray for her healing.
We had given Sandy and her husband a large Chrysler station wagon. A few months earlier, the Lord had told me that the car was going to die when it turned over 103,000 miles. It had a six-way driver’s seat, so Sandy could adjust it to be more comfortable while hauling her kids from place to place. One day about a month after we all prayed for her, Sandy passed out, drove into a tree, and slid forward into the steering wheel. From that time on, her cancer went full speed and it wasn’t long before she died. I was heart sick, and felt like the worst false prophet that ever walked.
That was the beginning of the death of my vision. God shut down my home meetings as He had warned me. Soon the church was split by two cult leaders who came in with the pastor’s permission. Everything started falling apart all around me. I took a job on the other side of the state, sold our house and gladly moved away from all that insanity. That job died and other jobs dried up as well. I finally had to take a job on a remote Aleutian island of Alaska without my family. There I was surrounded by drug abusers and alcoholics and was about as spiritual as one of the volcanic rocks on that island. Little did I know that God was answering my prayer to cleanse me from the mixture of soul and His Spirit. In Hebrews we read:
“For the word of God is living, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” (Hebrews 4:12-13 KJ2000)
Fourteen years went by from the time I prayed for Sandy in front of the congregation before I could feel the presence of the Lord again. Everything stopped. A sense of His presence was gone, the Bible quit speaking to me, and my prayers hit the floor with a thud. I had no meaningful fellowship with other Christians. He also stripped me of the pride of the work of my hands with long periods of unemployment. I was thoroughly dead by the time He finally showed up again in a way that I could recognize as Him. As I started to feel His presence once again, He spoke to me while sitting in a church service and said, “You have not been this way before.” These were the same words God spoke to the Children of Israel as they were about to cross over the Jordon at the end of their 40 year wilderness. He also reminded me that a seed that falls into the ground and dies doesn’t look like what springs up as a sprout. The idolaters that left Egypt 40 years earlier were not the ones that God took across the Jordon into the Promised Land.
About this same time, my wife and I started going to a home fellowship again. A lady named Kathy had been battling cancer in her abdomen (Yup! Re-runs). After what I went through 14 years earlier, I would never have volunteered to pray for her healing. I figured that God didn’t want me to do that any more. Because she was weak, the leader of the group decided to take the meeting to Kathy’s house so she could be there. That evening her husband carried her down the stairs from the bedroom and put her in a recliner in the corner of the living room. At one point during the meeting, the leader’s wife said to me, “Michael, I want you to stand in front of me and hold out your hand without touching me and pray for me.” I said, “Alice, I feel like a nickel waiting for change. I think you ought to be praying for me.” But she insisted, so I did what she asked.
Next thing I knew, Alice fell to the floor, thump! So Kathy said, “Michael, will you pray for me, too? My cancer is flaring up again and the doctors aren’t giving me much hope.” I thought, “Oh boy! Here we go again — more dying!” Her husband scooted her off the chair onto the floor so we could all get around her and pray. I held my hand above her torso about six inches and started praying quietly as the others joined in. All of a sudden I felt a strong magnetic buzzing in my hand, and as I swept it back and forth from her chest to her abdomen, the buzz got stronger over one spot. She had her eyes closed and said that it was like having an MRI–she could feel everywhere my hand moved. I started hearing the word “pancreas,” so I asked her if the doctors had told her that she had pancreatic cancer. She said that they had.
We decided to keep praying until that feeling left my hand. About 45 minutes later the buzzing stopped. At that point Kathy sat right up and said, “Okay, that is healed! Now pray for my kidneys. They said one of my kidneys is dead.” So I went around behind her, and without touching her again, moved my hand back and forth from the left side to the right. The buzzing in my hand started over the right kidney, and she confirmed that was the one. We prayed for about thirty minutes. Finally the magnetic buzzing quit. Kathy jumped up and said, “Okay, I’m healed.” Off to the kitchen she went to make us all a snack tray! Mind you just two hours earlier she had to be carried into the front room. The next day she went to the gym and worked out. God wanted me to know that He still loved me could heal my broken heart as well.
About a year later I was asked to pray for another woman, a widow with terminal cancer. She was also healed, but it was not immediate and there were no signs of power that went with the prayers. Do I think that I am a healer? NOPE! I believe that the one who receives the “gift of healing” is the one who is healed! But I have learned what Paul meant when he said, “When I am weak, then am I strong.”
I know that some of you have gone through similar circumstances, and I hope this has encouraged you. There has to be a death in us before the power of His resurrection Life can be manifest in and through us. Since God raised me up from my spiritual death in1994, He has used me in many diverse ways but told me not to put a label on what I am in Christ as so many people do, claiming a particular calling and title. The flesh loves titles! Most of what I do is write what I hear the Spirit saying here in our little home in the back woods of Idaho, then share it with the body of Christ over the Internet. I keep as low a profile as I can. It is no longer about me! I pray often that Paul’s words would be true, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” And, “I can do all things through Christ who is my strength.” Amen.
Oh, that car that Sandy drove into the tree? They had the auto body class at the local technical college fix it up. One night it caught fire and burned, and that was the end of it. Yup, the odometer read 103,000 miles.
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:24-25 RSVA)
A Wilderness Voice 
Great Word of encouragement Michael! God Bless, Cathy
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Cathy, thank you for your encouragement as well, dear sister. May He bless and keep you always, Michael
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I believe it, because the Bible says it and the Holy Spirit confirms it, but if you should dare witness these spiritual gifts and occurrences to the average Joe or Jane Christian their eyes glaze over. Thank you, thank you for having the courage and holy boldness to actually post some of your experiences on the blog to encourage those, (like me), that need it.
Jesus bless you,
Scarlett
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Scarlett, you are welcome. I am glad to hear that you were encouraged by my experiences in Christ. It seems that most the saints that I know would rather read about something experiential than something that is strictly theological in nature, so the Lord keeps drawing me to be poured out as His drink offering unto Him.
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7 KJ2000)
Thanks for your comment, dear sister.
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Michael,
What an encouraging word, my dear brother! How well I can identify with your experience and how many have been the years that have come and gone while it would appear that the initial seed of the”call of God” that burned in my heart many years ago would never bring forth the “vision and fruit of that seed”. Many have been the seasons that have come and gone and many have been the times when I wondered if that seed would ever die and bring forth its intended image in and through my life. We all can rest in the fact that we know even when all outward evidence is lacking, that He who began a good work in us, will allso bring it to pass in His timing”!
The time element of the seed falling into the ground and dying to the time when we begin to witness evidence of the “much fruit” is the time that we indeed must “walk by faith and not by sight”‘, knowing that….the work is His and so is the LIFE that shall come forth and knowing this, we can enter His promised “rest”!
Thanks again for your article. I am sure that the article will encourage many…. Well done, my brother!
May you, your wife and family have a wonderful Christmas and a physically and spiritually properous New Year.
Love and Blessings,
Bill
P.S. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe that my wife and I communicated with you and another brother many years ago, whose name I cannot recall at the moment, but the name George seems to come to mind.
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Bill,
Thanks for your encouraging comment! You wrote, “We all can rest in the fact that we know even when all outward evidence is lacking, that He who began a good work in us, will allso bring it to pass in His timing!” Yes, that is for sure. Abraham was a classic example of this AND we are living with the fruit of what happens when we try to help out God with our flesh when He delays His coming. The world is full of Ishmaels that are raising havoc as well as the Ishmaels we have also put in motion over the years. Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do NOTHING.” BUT if we abide in the Vine, WE WILL BRING FORTH MUCH FRUIT.
Yes, the brother you were trying to think of is George Davis. We still have a website together, though we have not posted anything new to it in the last couple years.
http://awildernessvoice.com I still see George a couple times a week and we fellowship together on Sundays in their home.
Bill, may the Lord bless you and your wife this coming year with an ever deeper relationship with His Son,
Michael
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Sounds so familiar. God’s ways are not our ways and He *will* cleanse the temple. He loves us so dearly and has no intention of letting us stay in the mud 🙂
I’m finding as the years roll on that others need to hear the words of my testimony and it isn’t one bit easy. That sort of nakedness is tough. But those coming along with us need to be encouraged. They need to see that a living a powerful Creator speaks to His children. They need to hear of His love and tender care when I didn’t deserve His regard. But mostly, they need to be encouraged that He can and will fulfill His promises in His own timing, even if He has to move heaven and earth to do so.
Thanks, Michael-
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Thank you, I. M. for the confirmation. Yes, it is obvious that God is an iconoclast. Every Dagon in our lives will be pulled down before Him. If we bring His presence into our temple as the Philistines did with the Ark, we can expect everything that we have been worshiping will be broken. Sound familiar?
As for our nakedness, no it is not easy, but as we draw ever closer to His Light it not only exposes all the hidden recesses in our hearts but it there to heal. Those roots of bitterness in us that defile not only our hearts, but the lives of those around us (see Heb. 12:14-15) are what He is after. He does not expose these things, these wounds from our past, to embarrass us, but rather to bring them to the surface so WE can see them for what they are and cry out to Him to root them out so we can move on. All the time He is doing this he holds us to Himself with His great love and hopefully He can bring others into our lives that move in that love and can encourage us to keep going and know that the work that He has started in us, HE will finish.
I want to put a link to your blog on here for many of our readers will be able to relate to the abuses you and your children have suffered in your marriage and churches and hopefully they will read how the Lord has also healed you and be encouraged. thoroughlychristiandivorce.wordpress.com
God bless you, my friend. I hope you have a great time with your friends over the holidays.
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Your testimony(walk with God) is so heart warming and real. I thank you for sharing. My God becomes more real to me when I read of portions of your journey.
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Hi Pat!
It is always a blessing to hear from you, my dear sister, and to hear that He has used His story in me to draw you closer to Him.
Know, dear Pat, that you are in my heart and in my prayers.
Michael
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Thanks Michael ~ an encouraging word today for me , it hits the nail on the head.,instead of me hitting my head on the nail. it brought tears to my eyes. some times in the isolation even though we know whats going on we can still lose sight of what is going on, if that makes sense. i read this post and then read my daily Sparks meditation and had two confirming words. Thank you Jesus. this is the article from Sparks
wayne
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Yes, Wayne, you make perfect sense to me. When God does to us what they did to Joshua the priest in Zechariah and starts stripping away all our old sinful garment and religious coverings, it can hurt. It can be like pulling off one of those old gauze bandages from a wound so you can replace it with a new one. The trouble is that the scab has grown into the gauze fibers and some of it comes off with the old bandage and it hurts. It is at times like this that we forget that we ask for God to heal us.
I think that all of us didn’t know when we started praying for Him to do a deep work in us, that it would involve so much pain. We just thought that God was like Tinker Bell and would get out His magic wand and touch us on the head and “shwing!” we would be an instant super-christian, all cleaned up and ready to rock. With hind sight I can now see that we who are Christ’s servants are not greater than our Master and that HE TOO had to learn obedience through the things which He suffered. BUT, the further I get down this road and see the results of His great working in us, the more I pray with Christ, “Never the less, not my will but thine be done.”
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thanks – sometime we just need a little help getting our eyes and heart back in the right place , in the heavenlys
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Hi Michael,
I have just finished reading this and I am astounded as to just how parallel our experiences have been. I too like Elijah have begged God to let me die, to take me home now! But, the wise and tender hearted Father that He is has not granted a yes to that cry! I relate to Elijah (his fear and his depression, dispair), Joseph (natural family hating me, as well as my church families rejection and cutting remarks), even with Moses and his desert existence (mine is just beginning,ugh).
God, used me in various ways many years ago, but that part of me is so…dead that even the ashes have disappeared! Today, I am empty, broken, disillusioned and not knowing what is up or down. My self esteem was already extremely low, now I have NO self asteem, it has been completely shattered and I have said,’good riddens’! I pretty much have turned into a social recluse. But, it is not all negative, it just looks, smells, sounds and feels like it! Wait, there is no smell for the carcuse that was my spiritual body has decomposed! There is no dust from the ashes, for the stormy winds have blown them all away! OK, sorry about that I just got a bit carried away!,LOL
Susie
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Susie, you made me smile as I read your appraisal of your old dead body turning to dust and blowing away with the wind. You see, Ezekiel also came across a sight much like yours. I used to wonder as I watched what was left of my old life being blown away by the winds of God, why Ezekiel said, “And behold the bones were VERY dry.” What was wrong with the dead bones of what was once an army, just being “dry”? God knows just how deep His work in us has to go to get rid of the stink that He can smell. Here is the link to what He showed me about Ezekiel’s vision at the end of my wilderness trek: http://www.awildernessvoice.com/DryBones.html
Thanks for your comment, dear sister. Be encouraged that He has you right on schedule and that the work He has started in you HE will complete and you will be a work unto HIS glory and not your own. AMEN!
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Now I am smiling! Lately when I readhow God will finish the work that He has started in me, my heart grabs it and strengthened by it and encouraged. I AM Finally believing that it is true! I feel that it is true and I KNOW that it is true and going to happen for me! I have never felt this assured before!
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Susie!!! I am so happy to hear this, dear sister! Jesus said, “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them that you have given me; for they are yours. And all mine are yours and yours are mine; and I am glorified in them. (John 17:9-10 KJ2000). Paul wrote, “When he [Christ] shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day. (2 Thessalonians 1:10 KJ2000).
The glory of the latter house will be greater than that of the former house because it is Christ who is dwelling in His holy habitation not that old Adam. We will remain His clay vessels, but the Treasure in those vessels will be clearly seen.
Maranatha!
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I have just finished reading about, Dry Bones. I love it when God uses a simple analogy, a word picture to get through to me; it always speaks a greater message than one that bloated with excess wording. My brain just cannot handle a barrage of long winded details! It overwhelms me something terrible.
Know that when I wrote what I did about my bones being so dry that there wasn’t any dust left behind; I honestly did not know about your message about Ezekiel’s Very Dry Bones! I thought that I had lost all ability to be inspiring!?
My shutting down Q’s Corner was timely. Immediately following you came on the scene, then Susanne, her articles and your articles have reached [me] at the perfect time! This is amazing to me!
Praise the Lord!
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O am feeling a strong life giving connection here you folks, a comforting sense of security that I have not felt on Facebook! So glad that I shut that down, if I had stayed it would eventually have led me astray.
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Facebook can be dangerous, indeed, Susie. There are people who are more interested in attacking us than to build up the Body of Christ in LOVE. BTW, did you get my email today about the Google+ circle thing?
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I deeply appreciate your honesty with which you wrote about your (also negative) spiritual experiences in the past, Michael. As you might know, I can relate to it. Although I already wrote about a part of it here https://enteringthepromisedland.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/the-temptation-of-spiritual-gurudom/,”…maybe, the Lord will allow me to “go a bit deeper” in the days ahead and write more about my own experiences with the power of God.
Also, this is a wonderful thread of comments here – the Body of Christ at work, so to speak, and that is so encouraging to observe! 🙂
Much love to all,
Susanne
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Thanks Susanne for commenting on your own “death to a vision.” Though the way you went through this (and still are?) is different than it was with me, I think the principle still applies. The way I see it your temptation to rise up and become a “real somebody” was even greater than it was for me, but you were much more quick to put your knife to the throat of the “child of promise” than I was. Hopefully your wilderness will not have to be as long as mine, dear sister.
We all love you very much, too,
Michael
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Thanks Michael, and everyone else, for all your encouraging comments – it does help to hear what others have been experiencing in their walk… so many similar experiences. Susie wrote above about being stripped of her ‘self esteem’. That’s a common thread. I’d like to share some words that Father gave me a few years back. I’m not a poet, but He just gave me these words one day, and I hope they may be helpful to you as well.
“I Come to Offer My Life”
Father, I come to You to offer my life ─ me.
It is only then that I see – there is nothing there to give…
Nothing of worth…
Nothing that the King of the universe could possibly see of worth…or want…
…and yet…
You… want… me…
He made me…
Am I my own, to do with as I want ?
No, He… made me…
How can I have anything to give Him, when He… made me…
Doubly, I belong to Him…
─ Firstly, He made me for Himself,
─ And then, when I ignored Him and went my own way…
…He bought me back…to…
…Himself…
How could it be so ?
That the King of the universe could possibly want something worthless…
…And then I see…
He made me… He loves me…
He knew from the beginning what I would be… and still He made me !
And even though I see nothing that He could possibly want…
…He sees…the possibility of …
…Himself…
Blessings in Him… Gordon H
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Gordon, There is this song by Anne Murray that seems to fit how many of us feel about our Father and what you wrote her reminded me of it:
“You Needed Me”
I cried a tear, you wiped it dry
I was confused, you cleared my mind
I sold my soul, you bought it back for me
And held me up and gave me dignity
Somehow you needed me
You gave me strength to stand alone again
To face the world out on my own again
You put me high upon a pedestal
So high that I could almost see eternity
You needed me, you needed me
And I can’t believe it’s you I can’t believe it’s true
I needed you and you were there
And I’ll never leave, why should I leave, I’d be a fool
‘Cause I finally found someone who really cares
You held my hand when it was cold
When I was lost, you took me home
You gave me hope when I was at the end
And turned my lies back into truth again
You even called me friend
You gave me strength to stand alone again
To face the world out on my own again
You put me high upon a pedestal
So high that I could almost see eternity
You needed me, you needed me
You needed me, you needed me
I realize that some lines in this song might not quite fit with our theology, but it is the spirit of the song that touches me. Thanks brother for your poem and your comment.
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Wow I’m simply blown away by your article and the comments! I’m right in the middle of dealing with some difficult people including myself and all I want is that God will be exalted in the whole deal…truly each of us needs to be dead to our own opinions and alive to Gods thoughts…may it be so for 2015
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Yes, my brother, I am praying that along with you for all of us.
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I can relate to your message. In 1988, I had revelation about RHEMA &, our prayers can be a Bride-bridegroom relation and 3 others. I kept teaching these things but no further WORD. till
a couple months ago. I received how to enter rest from Heb. 4 as you stated. Herbert Orr: Pat’s
husband
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Very moving, Michael. I know that longing to hear His voice.
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Anna, Thank you so much, dear sister! He will truly fill that longing in you.
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