It’s almost been a year since my last post here. I go away for months (or even a year) on end and always come back like a boomerang (more on this in my previous post Lies We Believe).
SO MUCH has happened, and I have A LOT to say, so let’s just get into it.
I was sitting in on a conversation with my mom and others recently on working the altar call. If you have no clue what I am referring to let me explain. According to the Oxford Dictionary, an altar call is a summons to the altar during a Christian worship service to those wishing to show their commitment to Christ and receive salvation. During the altar call, often time there are altar workers, individuals positioned at the front of the altar there to encourage seekers to receive all God has for them. This process is what we call working the altar. The conversation was a very impassioned one (as they often are when mom is talking) about the importance of being an encourager and a cheerleader rather than letting our excitement for the souls overtake us and push us into the place of authority (God’s place) where we are now forcing people to conjure up tongues rather than reassuring them that God will give the utterance.
As I listened, I reminisced on when I was filled with the precious gift of the Holy Ghost at twelve. That experience is something so special and sacred, something, that when experienced, cannot be explained away. When you receive the Holy Spirit, God becomes yours and you become His. There is nothing no one can say or do to take Him away from you because you have experienced Him.
I thought back to how I felt like there was no one else in the world but He and I. As my mother persisted in her conviction to treat altar work like a midwife assisting in the birthing of a precious baby, it came to me that her insistence on this was accurate for more than just the seekers but for
the long-time believers as well. Without the experience of initially receiving the Holy Spirit,
navigating the trials of life would be a dead end. I realized that if I never knew about entering the secret place with God where nothing else matters but He and I, I would not be able to withstand the tests of life.
Life, especially lately, has been so weird. The month of July came in like a recking ball with me needing emergency surgery (more on this later), followed by the deaths of six people that I either knew personally, or through someone close to me. I’m not 100% sure If I lived through July or simply cried through it.
Remembering the secret place and my ability to access it was (is) my saving grace.
This same place that I first entered upon receiving the Holy Spirit was now forever open and available to me for me to escape to safety in God, release my heavy burdens, and receive whatever it is that I need from Him. It is the secret place, not because it is hidden from us or that it is forbidden, but secret or private from this flawed world that we live in. People escape into many things in an effort to cope with the here, the now, and the what’s to come, often unknowingly acquiring vices with temporary respite and permanent damage.
Whenever I hear of someone committing suicide, I sit still wondering if they ever knew about or accessed the secret place. I wonder if they had would they still be here.
Mommy’s passionate talk on carefully working the altars, leading seekers into this secret place rather than force feeding spiritual infants into relationship with God makes me pause to reflect on my own passionate
desire to see my family and friends enter relationship with The Most High. I am not convinced that had I been force fed, I would be in such a loving and deeply intimate relationship with God today.
