Part 1
The Seed is Planted
Almost a year ago, a couple from our outreach group went into the store where Ginger worked at the shopping mall and told her that they were learning to interpret dreams. They asked Ginger if she might have had any dreams that she was curious about. Maybe they could help her discover meaning in those dreams.
Ginger’s response was electric! She had just had a dream a couple of nights before that was really mystifying her. She desperately wanted to know what this dream meant.
This couple was able to help her understand the meaning of her dream and give her encouragement and hope that she really needed at that time.
Ginger just couldn’t seem to get over the fact that she had just had this captivating dream that she just couldn’t get over, and into her store walked a couple of dream interpreters to help her understand what it meant! It had to be more than a coincidence!
Since then, we have been following up with Ginger, offering more support and encouragement—and dream interpretations—walking alongside her on her journey. Her growth has been exciting to watch!
The Signs
Recently, we were sharing outreach testimonies during a video call with like-minded believers. At one point I mentioned going back to the mall to check on Ginger and maybe to lead others into encounters with God.
One of the ladies in our video group spoke up, saying that she wanted to ask me about Ginger because the last time they had been in the store talking with her, Ginger suddenly announced that she was getting uncomfortable. Then she picked up her things, and walked into the back room. She did not come out again while the team was there. This lady had not seen Ginger again since that happened.
I was puzzled by this because I had never seen this reaction from Ginger.
I responded, “Everything seemed fine with Ginger when we were there just last week. She even told us before we left that she liked it that we stopped in to check on her every once in a while because she never had a father.”
I did not realize it at the time, but Ginger’s reaction of pulling away and “escaping” to the back room was a sign of an issue that needed to be addressed in our outreach group.
The Problem
It didn’t take long for me to be shown what the problem was.
I have witnessed this before, and been guilty of this myself many times in the past, but it didn’t dawn on me what was happening until I experienced it myself the very next week.
After our group video call, I experienced a week of witnessing other people having their free will violated by people who had no authority over them, and I also experienced this kind of violation myself.
Two days after our video call, I went to an appointment at a car dealership that I have been very pleased with in the past. I have had a good relationship with one of the salesmen there, and he has been an outstanding advocate to help me make reasonable deals on the last two cars that I have driven.
But that outstanding salesman, with whom I had such a good working relationship, is no longer with the dealership. He had been my advocate. He acted with my best interests in mind, but now he is gone. My experience with this dealership was going to be very different this time around.
When I entered the dealership, I was greeted cordially, and then introduced to a sales associate that I had never spoken with before. As we talked, the first thing that I sensed was that he did not really seem to be listening to me. I tried to explain clearly that I did not need to make any decisions soon, and that I was just exploring my options and gathering information to help me make a decision. He had been told this before I arrived, but it didn’t seem to sink in.
The main reason that I came to the dealership that day was to have my current car evaluated as a possible trade-in. Once my car was evaluated, that would help them give me more accurate price quotes for other available cars.
When I handed the sales associate the key to my car, I asked if they could please run it through the car wash after the trade-in evaluation. He nodded and agreed to that, but I had a sense that he didn’t really hear me.
I did not want to limit myself to only the choices that were available that day. Due to supply chain issues, I had already been told that I might need to order a car with the features that I wanted, because they only had a limited supply coming from the manufacturer. The sales associate is well aware of this fact, of course. Nevertheless, he seemed intent on limiting my choices to what was available on the lot that day.
I was open to consider new or used cars, purchases or leases, but I tried to make it clear that none of the choices that were currently available were what I was looking for. He seemed to become more pushy as the meeting went on, wanting me to make a decision before I was ready, and to buy a car that I did not really want.
Finally, he had his sales manager come into the meeting. The manager sat directly in front of me, and the sales associate stood in the doorway. Now the meeting felt more like an interrogation than a friendly, helpful discussion of options. The pressure was being increased.
Even though I told the sales associate that I was happy with my current car model, and would be interested in staying with that model, he presented me with a printed price quote for a more expensive model that had features in which I was not interested. When the sales manager came in, he continued the push to get me into the more expensive vehicle that I didn’t want.
“Would you just take this model for a test drive?”
I indicated that I was not at all interested. By this time, I had already checked out of the meeting. My body was still there, but mentally, I had already left the dealership. Now I was just looking for a chance to escape without being rude.
“Well, then would you just go and take a look at this model?” the sales manager continued.
When I did finally get back to my car, as I suspected, it had not been washed as I had asked. The sales associate really had not been listening to me. I ended up staying another 45 minutes at the dealership to have my car run through their complimentary car wash.
It was a very clear message to me.
I believe the Lord was trying to show me that this is how we sometimes treat people in our evangelistic encounters. We don’t listen to them. We try to impose our will on them. We are pushy. We try to force them to make decisions that they do not want. We do not want to allow them time and freedom to “count the cost,” as Jesus said, and to consider their options.
Thinking about my experience at the car dealership, along with other encounters I had witnessed during the week, I realized that the Lord was showing me what had caused Ginger to retreat into the back room.
Members of our team were making some people feel uncomfortable, and we may have been in danger of violating people spiritually.
Let me explain.
By comparison, if a man forces himself on a woman, he violates her physically.
**When we ministers try to force our will and our beliefs on others whether they like it or not, we violate them spiritually. **
When we try in any way to impose our will on people over whom we have no authority, we are violating them.
God never does that to us. He consistently honors our free will. When disciples abandoned Jesus and walked away from following Him, He didn’t chase after them. He honored their right to choose their path in life, even if that led them to hell.
Even when Satan entered into Judas after the Last Supper, Jesus didn’t pounce on him, order him to repent, and then lay hands on him to cast out the devil. He instead said, “What you have decided to do, do quickly.”
We have to acknowledge that people have a God-given right to free will and to choose their own paths in life. We never stop loving them, but we must honor their right to make their own choices in life.
There have been recent scandals in Catholic and Baptist churches because the leaders violated children physically. We do the same thing *spiritually *when we impose our will or our beliefs on others. It happens when we are too “pushy.”
Scattering the Harvest
After my experience in the car dealership, I remembered another encounter at a restaurant years ago.
During a Christian conference, I went to a restaurant with a couple of friends and a pastor whom we had just met.
During our meal, I struck up a conversation with the waitress, telling her that we were learning to interpret dreams. I asked if she had any interesting dreams that she might be willing to share with us.
She seemed intrigued. She shared a dream in which she had been attacked by snakes, but she had fought them off, killed them, and come out of the battle uninjured.
My friends and I expressed real congratulations to her, explaining that this dream indicated that she had overcome some attacks that had come against her, possibly in the forms of lies or vicious slanders, and had emerged victorious despite these attacks, with no long-term setbacks that would hurt her in the long run.
A big smile came to her face, and she thanked us for speaking these encouraging words into her life at a time when she really needed encouraging!
Then the pastor spoke up. He had been quiet through our whole interaction with the waitress. But now, evidently he felt that our interpretation was not adequate.
“Young lady, you need to know that it was God who gave you this dream, and now that you know that, you are responsible. God expects a response from you. Are you a Christian?”
Looking at this young woman, I could almost see her invisible walls of protection immediately come up to shield her as she shrank back into her protective shell. Her bright countenance faded as she was confronted by the pastor’s words.
Politely, she responded, “I’ll go to church.”
Then she turned on her heels and retreated into the kitchen. The moment was lost.
I turned to the pastor and tried to explain that the dream interpretation planted a seed in her heart. When he forced the conversation to be about her personal relationship with God, he pushed her into a very personal area she may not have been ready to explore with strangers like us. The protective walls came up because she sensed that she was in danger of being violated by people who were intent on forcing their will on her.
She did not return to our table except to deliver the check and to pick up our payment.
Jesus warned us sternly that if we are not working with Him, we are working against him and scattering the harvest, rather than gathering it.
“If you are not on my side, you are against me. If you don’t gather in the harvest with me, you scatter it.”—Matthew 12:30 (CEV)
If we are not working with Jesus, it is actually possible for us to work in agreement with Satan to snatch the seeds from their hearts, as in the Parable of the Sower. (See Matthew 13:19.)
Apologies Overdue
In the 1957 movie, Fire Down Below, Irena is a woman who has experienced a lifetime of being violated by men. At one point, she says, “Sometimes you wonder what God had in mind when He invented the male sex.”
Speaking to Tony after he offers to marry her, Irena tells him, “I’m no good. I’m all worn out. I’ve been passed from hand to hand. I’ve had to submit to things that nice young American boys couldn’t conceive of in their wildest nightmares. I’ve lived among the ruins. Armies have marched over me. Armies. I’ve been debased. I look in the mirror and I say, ‘What a lie.’ At first glance, a face looks like a face of a human being.” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050397/quotes/)
When Felix finds himself alone with Irena in another scene, he takes her into his arms and begins kissing her. She seems to withdraw into herself in that moment, resigning herself to endure whatever violations he might choose to force upon her.
Felix stops and asks, “What is it? What are you waiting for?”
Irena responds, “I’m waiting for someone to touch me with kindness.”
So many people in the world are waiting to be touched with kindness! They do not know God. If we do not learn to demonstrate His kindness and love in our encounters with people who cross our paths every day, they may *never *know God.
This message is so important that the angel Gabriel was sent to Pastor Roland Buck twenty-seven times in order to convey this and other truths that are clearly written in Scripture, but have been replaced in our belief systems by traditional confrontational approaches to unbelievers which leaves them violated and pushes them away from Jesus. (https://angelsonassignment.org/thanks.html)
“Anyone who is not with me is against me. Anyone who does not gather sheep with me scatters them.”—Matthew 12:30 (NIRV)
Later in the film, Tony says to Irena, “I apologize for Felix.”
Irena responds, “Nobody has to apologize to me for anything.”
Tony replies, “I apologize for the whole human race.”
Phil Wyman was a pastor in Salem, Massachusetts, where a significant number of people are involved in occult activity and make their living from those practices. Phil shares this experience in his book, Burning Religion: navigating the impossible space between religion and secular society:
It was not a new idea. We read about it in Donald Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz. James was the one with the idea of trying it over the month of Salem’s Halloween events. I thought it would work well, but we had no idea how well.
James bought a few monks robes. We had tents and tables. James and Brooke brought some candles and incense, and a handful of friends to man the booth. We made signs, “Free Confessional Booth.”
At first people walked by and laughed. Occasionally someone would nervously say, “I don’t have the time. It would take all day.”
Then a few people began to trickle into the tent, and sit for a confession. They would walk out with big eyes, and occasionally some tears. Things began to gain some momentum when some of my friends who run a Psychic Faire decided to give it a try.
Jeff stood by the door to the tent, handling the people asking questions.
“What do you do in there??”
“Confessions.” Jeff said frankly with a twist of wry. Jeff does wry well.
“But what happens in there?”
“I can’t tell you. You will have to experience it for yourself.” Jeff said, and after a pause, “But it’s not what you expect.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t tell you. Are you up for giving it a try?” Jeff asked with that wry smirk sneaking out from the corner of his mouth again.
They entered the tent as a group. Three Witches sat together in support of one another. Witches entering a Christian confessional booth need backup. Who knows what gallows, or stake piled high with dry faggots hides behind the tent?
James spoke first, “Thank you for joining us in the confession booth. I’m sure you nervously entered expecting to share your deepest, darkest secrets, but we are here to offer another kind of confession. We want to confess to you on behalf of the church.”
This was the beginning of a deeply moving time for my friends, the Witches. I found them half an hour later standing in front of the confessional booth with tears streaming down their faces.
“This is the most moving spiritual experience I’ve ever had,” Leanne said dragging long on her cigarette.
“I’ve been waiting for so many years to hear something like this. This was the high point of my Samhain this year.” Shawn’s makeup was running as he continued to cry.
James and the other monks confessed ancient and modern sins of the church to my Witch friends. He apologized for the Burning Times, the Inquisitions, and the Witch Trials in Salem. He apologized for the Crusades. He apologized for the prejudice and fear in the church, which has caused people to treat Witches with anger, and fear — often in quite personal attacks. James confessed for being part of a church, which imposed its morality upon the Witches, even though Neo-Pagans live by another religious ethic.
Later that day, other Witches began to come through the tent. an entire Psychic Fair of Readers and Seers experienced the confessions. Witches from shops around town heard the rumors circulating about the confessional booth, and came to visit. the tears were many, and hearts of people generally antagonistic to Christianity were endeared to us.
Toward the end of the day a Tarot Reader brought one of her clients into the tent because, “she needed to hear this.”
We are one big sorry church, and that has been our strength. (Burning Religion, p.247-248.)
