​Developing A New Way of Looking at Life Pt. 2...By Murray

I was stunned! Flabbergasted! It exactly described where I stood on the mountain! It was the verse about the ancient paths I received coming down the mountain that I didn’t look up!
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It was all about finding rest again, just like the Lord had spoken of in Montana! Incredible! God once again used a physical act, my hike up the mountain, to produce faith and awe in me! Amazing!
The Root Revealed
Later in the week I had a meeting with one of the former youth leaders named Donna. She had been telling me about a course she was taking called Life Skills. In this course one of the things they do is play games to cause emotional responses. They would do things like have people sit in a circle and everyone would be given little puzzles of squares they had to put together. All the pieces were mixed up and they needed to be past along to one another until everyone had the right pieces. It was the rules that made putting the puzzles together difficult. The rules were that you couldn’t talk or even uses gestures, there was to be no communication. If you wanted a piece of the puzzle as it was held in front of you you took it, if not, you didn’t. The trouble such a simple puzzle could cause is quite unbelievable. The people who struggled with fear and intimidation would just sit there, those with control issues would ignore the rest of the group and just work on their own. It really hit you where you lived.
As Donna was describing this process to me, God gave me a revelation; this is what he was doing to me, causing events to happen in my life to reveal the state of my heart. God was pushing my buttons! Every time I tried to do something, fix something, or get somewhere it failed, and I got angry! My computer, my car, trying to get up the mountain! I must have turned pale or something because Donna asks me if I was Ok. I told her that I thought that I was beginning to understand the pattern of all the things that have been happening to me. If I couldn’t get something to work I would get angry. Donna asked me if I had ever had events happen in my life growing up where I felt like I could never win approval or make the grade and then get angry. I was about to say no when it all came flooding back, my relationship with my Dad. I hadn’t really talked to him since high school. Sure small talk, but I basically froze him out of my life. I had worked for his construction company and was only aloud to dig holes; I wasn’t trusted and felt that after all my years of affort, I couldn’t win his respect. Finally in anger, I had given up trying to win his approval, to show that I was a capable son in his eyes. My efforts could not win the praise and respect I longed for so I stopped trying and in anger froze him out.
The revelation of this stunned me! I hadn’t given these issues any thought for years...but here they were. I had tried to earn my fathers approval by my efforts and here the Lord was working on me because I was doing the same thing with him and modeling that unknowingly in His kingdom to all those I led!
This extra emotional burden was all it took, I began to collapse and slid into burn out. I cried all the time and became emotionally unhinged at anything. I could no longer look anyone in the eye or even think coherently. I became the biggest failure in the world...in my own eyes.
It is hard to describe the next season of time. I remember going to see my doctor about how I was doing. He walked into the office and I started crying. I remember the staff guys at church were going somewhere and I was supposed to go. Something happened about money. A small thing, I couldn’t take it, I ran to my car and drove off. Things like that. It’s hard to lose everything that western culture tells you makes a man.
God however was incredibly faithful, and proved his character to me over and over.
Healing of the Old Paradigm Begins
I went to counseling with a wonderful Christian brother at Elijah House Canada. I learned I had a lot of father issues to deal with and that they were affecting my view of God and how I thought He viewed me. I remember at one point I wrote a letter to my dad. To tell him how I felt. I had no intention of mailing it, it was more for me, to be honest and not be afraid to be real. I remember just working it all through when, the next day, my dad called me! It was wonderful, without me even asking we talked about all the things that were issues, the very things I had written in my letter. I even found out things about his childhood I never knew. Without even knowing it my dad had responded to my letter as if he had read it. I began to believe the Lord may want to heal me after all.
Another incredible event happened, maybe even more incredible then my meeting with my dad, this event was how the Lord provided. As you can imagine in the state I was in I was next to socially useless. I was afraid for our family, where would the money come from? I remember telling my kids that I would have some time off, what would they like to do? “We want to go to Disneyland!” Was the resounding answer. {As my heart sank to my feet} “Well, lets ask God to provide the money,” so we all prayed and left it with the Lord. The next week I was going through the mail and in an envelope I found a check for $5000. Once again I began to cry. For this reason; here I was burnt out, completely useless for anything by man’s standards. I had nothing left for God. I would even get the shakes trying to go to church. Church was a realm of absolute failure and despair to me. And yet with nothing to give, with no strength or word of praise on my tongue, the Lord supplied my needs, not only my needs but also my kid’s desires. I remember asking my kids if they remembered what they had asked God for.
“Sure,” they said, “We asked God for money to go to Disneyland.
“Well,” I calmly stated, fighting back the tears, “Here is the money you prayed for, it came today.” The look on their faces I’ll never forget. Intimacy with the Father and trust in His goodness began anew for them, and for me, right then. At my lowest point, when I had nothing to give the church or even emotional strength to give to God or my family, when everything I thought manhood was was stripped from me, I met the father; and it turned out all he really wanted was to be my friend.
I wish I could say school was over and life was going to get back to normal, that favor of God was going to return, but things seldom go as we have planned. Upon my return to staff at the church the head pastor went through burnout as well and took time off. In fact it wasn’t long before all of us were seeking more mature brothers to speak into our lives. I see now that this was God’s plan. To teach us not to be so goal oriented. To be relationally oriented, to find mentors, to slow down. To allow God to be our friend as well as Lord.
The Continuing Story; The Journey and the Lesson
During this next chapter of my life and the life of my church, the Great Author once again began to spin his tale using physical events as foreshadowing, as signs, only this time we were all listening and wondering where He was going and how we were to follow.
It was a beautiful day. A good day for a walk on the prairie, so that is what Gareth and I decided to do. Our prophet friend who had been at our church 18 months earlier was coming back and I think we were all a little nervous. As we walked along and talked about our last year an eagle suddenly appeared and dove into the creek beside us. Without even making a splash it pulled a fish out of the water and flew away. Gareth turned to me and asked me what I thought that meant. I said that I guess we would find out.
Our meeting with the prophetic fellow was tough, He told us we weren’t out of the woods yet, asked us if we had heard of the dark night of the soul. Also lots of stuff about fathering and needing mentors.
We all had our view of what was said and what it all meant.
Suffice it to say after the horrible year we had just had we were expecting a clean bill of health. To not be out of the woods was tough. I remember Gareth going to a lake in the interior to think it all through. When he came back we got together and he told me about his trip. “You know, a strange thing happened one day as I was walking along the shore of lake.” He said. “ I was walking on the beach and I saw an eagle, it dived into the lake to get a fish, it missed the fish, went straight into the water and had to swim ashore. That eagle totally missed it.” Yes and that, with the previous eagle event summed up our meeting with the prophetic fellow, we had missed it. Eagles are more common here in Canada, but I have never seen one catch a fish or ever heard of one missing a fish and having to swim to shore. Once again I knew that God was giving us puzzle pieces, our paradigm was still out. We needed more information to make the turn and position ourselves properly before God. The information was soon forth coming.
I remember it all too well.
The sun was streaming through the windows at church. I was reading my bible as I listened to Gareth preaching the Sunday morning message. He was talking about the difference between power and authority in the Kingdom of God. How you had to give up power to get authority. He used the example of Saul and Samuel. He preached, “Samuel had power, he was a judge of Israel, he could of tried to hold onto that power in Israel, to retain governmental status. But he freely gave it up, following the Lord was more important to him. However in giving up the power the people respected him and trusted him all the more. They saw his integrity, his honesty, and his commitment to God. He had won the right to speak into peoples lives.” He continued, “Saul however did the opposite. He coveted power and what the people thought of him. It drove him so much he was willing to kill to keep it. In the end he had no authority in the people’s lives for they no longer respected him. And then the statement I will never forget,
“You need to give up power to gain authority.”
Right then the bank of lights above the stage went out. I saw it, made note of it, didn’t feel the Lord’s presence strong or anything so I wrote it down. Strange to go out on the sentence you have to give up power for authority.
My wife had been home that service, the kids had been sick that day. As I told her about the morning and got to the part about giving up power for authority our lights in the house went out, came back on, went out again, and finally came on. Now I was feeling spooked, twice on the same sentence? What are the odds of that! Time to pay attention! Class was in.
Next on the list of church meetings was a home group leaders meeting in the sanctuary. I was just talking to the leaders about giving up power to get authority when the bank of lights above
me went out again, on the same sentence! The third time this has happened on the same sentence! We all kind of laughed but I was really spooked now, the odds were now insane of this just being fluke chance. Also there was nothing else on that breaker to take power but a few lights. In all my years at the church they have never gone off, and they never went off again.
We went through a difficult period to say the least.
I have heard it said that tension isn’t a sign of trouble it is a sign of something happening. We had a lot happening. We were all on the same journey but definitely not on the same spot on the trail. The change in paradigm had all started way back when God Rock closed. We had an understanding now how performance driven we were, how time to ‘do’ for God was more a priority than to ‘be’ with God. But what do you do for all the people who need home groups and care and all the crisis stuff when you’re in a massive transition and you don’t know where to go? We had to learn to lay down control. To really listen to each other, to not care how it looked but to follow what we thought God was saying even if to the western eye it looked foolish to not care what the people thought; to give up power to win authority with God. It was a struggle and there was a lot of miscommunication between us. I think it went on for months. The reason I mention this is that we not only had communication problems with each other but everywhere. My computer wouldn’t hook up to the Internet. Then the D drive got erased. {Twice} The network of computers at the church crashed. The phone line, line #1, the main one at the church went dead. One of the staffers digital read-out on the car went fritzy and began to read everything wrong. It all pictured exactly what was happening in staff at the church, miscommunication.
I guess as things go it went as well as it could have. It was time to move on. I had felt it coming for a while but had no idea what to do or where to go, in fact the church went through a huge transition after that, many coming, many going. But a parting in love, knowing the timing was the Lord, and that is the main thing.
A funny thing happened on the day that I resigned as a pastor at the church. The antennae on my car broke off, and I was ecstatic! To many a vehicle represents their ministry or what is going on in their life. If they see a vehicle in a dream or picture a lot of times that is what it symbolizes. We can see this in our local colloquialisms as well. If someone asks us how we are doing we often say things like, “I’m just going around in circles.” Or how about, “I’m stuck in the mud.” Or maybe even, “I just can’t seem to get out of first gear today.” These are a few of many common expressions that are symbolic of how we compare our lives to vehicles and how they are operating. I believe God just picks up on that idiom and uses it as a tool to show us, how we are doing, where we are going, etc. We will discuss this type of phenomena in greater detail later.
When that prophetic minister came to our church the first time I didn’t know these things. It became obvious as time went on. At that first conference, now a year and a half previous, both Gareth and my car’s came away with huge dents in them. Someone ran into the side of mine. His I don’t know how it happened. As it turned out we both burned out, “crashed,” and had to take time away. Also on the day I quit, my antennae, which had been bent, somehow broke off my car. Believe it or not I was ecstatic about it. You see if a car equals ministry then the antennae was me. It had been my job as the prophetic covering or mentor in the church to hear and try to interpret for the church and work with the prophetic people. It had been a huge burden over the last few years to try and plot a course for the church when I could barely find my own. Burdens like this are hard to let go of, especially when you have relationship with so many people after so many years. What if my resigning wasn’t the Lord, what if I was supposed to continue to hear for the body, even in such a wrecked emotional state? The antennae coming off the car on the day I resigned gave me peace to know my decision to leave the church and move on was right. I
no longer had to hear for the church. I was released of that duty, and after a few years of great stress it was welcome. It was then that I realized how much watching for physical signs from God had become a part of my life. How, once you understood the language, it was as credible as any of God’s other ways of communicating and gave me that wonderful feeling, yes, God is in control.
Looking Back, Keeping Track
You have now read the story of my training in hearing the Lord through the Great Author’s of signs, events that foreshadow what the Lord was about to do. I hope you can see and maybe even feel, what the journey has involved. Losing an old paradigm to gain a new one can be a very costly venture. For me I had to give up my security from my education, my Pastoral position, and my seniority in the church. I left many good friends behind. It took losing everything that I had built around me as security to see life through different eyes. I learned to see because I had to survive.
Before we leave this story I would like to lay out for you very clearly all the puzzle pieces that God was giving to our church and to me that came through foreshadowing, or in other words, sign language. It may be good for you to re-read this section keeping these things in mind. Treat these events as puzzle pieces from the Lord. See how they all fit together, see if they all tell the same story, follow the progress of the journey of learning as it comes piece by piece. Go back and reread this section not as a story, but as a puzzle slowly being completed by the emerging pieces. This was the process God used with Peter in Acts 10, this is one of the process God uses to speak to all of us. He gives us a little info at a time, as we can handle and understand.
Timeline of Physical signs;
#1) -Pastor’s vehicles both being dented at first conference with prophetic minister
#2) -The heat being off and no chairs set up at fist meeting of God rock, the first meeting in
January
#3) -The tent on the island and Isaiah 6:6-7
#4) -The REST AREA sign
#5) -The Iron Mountain Mine sign
#6) -The hike up Sumas Mountain and the cross roads
#7) -Computer crashes/car problems
#8) -The two eagle signs
#9) -The power going out 3 times on the words; you need to give up power to get authority. #10)-The crashing of the computer network at the church and the phone line and events surrounding.
#11)-The antennae finally breaking off the car.
This is not of course a complete list of events that God spoke through. It is however the list of physical events that the Lord spoke through. When re-reading this section to see how all these things fit together to tell the story, watch how they all fit with all the other methods that God used to communicate as well. Together they make a wonderful story designed by the Great Author to reveal his heart and purposes.
God’s Solution to Man’s False Paradigm
It’s amazing how strong our perception of reality is, and how off track it can be. I really had no idea of what the Lord was trying to say to me until many physical prophetic events, signs, had happened. I didn’t even understand why God thought it was important to say it. I didn’t think I had a problem. I put in 60 + hours a week, I spent all my time thinking about ministry, even when with my family. I learned to view every meeting through the perspective of where that meeting would take my ministry in 5 months. I worked for a few years at half time salary because I believed so strongly that generation x was going to bring revival to the world. I really did. When I could finally see that I was wrong, I crashed. All those hours, all those years put into ministry based on a false paradigm; that my effort could produce the kingdom of God.
Did God try and tell me earlier? I’m sure he did. But in the church I was in and the stream we flowed with we all believed what I believed. It was strange to think otherwise. I had put a pair of glasses on that colored my whole perspective of the world. I saw life through youth revival and that was it. It was what mattered.
 
This is an excerpt from Murray’s book, “If This Were A Dream, What Would It Mean?”, Fresh wind Press, c2007.