God Revealed ... in Faith-Stirring Experiences

As the chapter title suggests, the four stories that follow illustrate a few of the many events in my life when my faith was firmly established or reinforced by the palpable presence of God — in different ways, through different messengers. These were experiences where it was impossible to miss the significance of what was happening when it was happening. If you have had similar experiences, it is not likely you have forgotten them. But perhaps there is still more to learn from them by remembering.

I encourage you to read, remember, and reflect on how your life has been, or could have been, changed by those times when what was happening was incontrovertibly important. Realizations, even years later, may in fact be the key that unlocks the door to future enrichment.

My Mystical Adolescent Experience

At the age of twelve, I was a spiritual lightweight with heavy questions: Is God real? If He is, does He exist now or only in the past? Does God know who I am? Is He really watching over my every move? Will He answer my prayers? When people say God has spoken to them, are they lying or delusional? Does God really speak audibly, and if so, why can't I hear Him? And the list went on.

What little I had learned about God came from extended family, friends, and limited reading of the Bible. The fragments of the God story I'd gathered from these sources, as well as from differing Christian faith traditions and Jewish friends, did not present an intelligible or cohesive description of God; instead they elicited further questions.

It was a quiet, peaceful afternoon during my summer vacation from school in 1960. As an adolescent without a job, I found the summers provided ample time for baseball and thoughtful contemplation with little stress. My parents were working; my brother was down the street playing with friends; I was alone in a perfectly silent home. Lying on my bed with nothing to distract or interrupt me, my thoughts inevitably turned to the well-worn paths of my religious questioning.

What exactly would a world without beginning or end be? If God was eternal — existing before any physical matter or substance existed — who would be in this forever-world, even after the universe was no longer extant? I wasn't concerned about how all living things were created or how this created universe would ultimately end, but rather why humans were the superior intelligence and yet so inferior to God.

My mind was totally occupied with the possibility of an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent God. I was not attempting to induce a mystical state, nor did I have any expectation of meeting God. I was simply engaged in deep contemplation over the questions and curiosities that consumed my young mind. While in this meditative state, however, I felt totally at peace — removed from the confines and constraints of my body. I could almost describe it as an "out-of-body" experience, although that description seems inadequate. I felt weightless, as if I were suspended above the floor of my room. I felt nothing but physical warmth, peace, quietude, painlessness, and great joy.

But these surreal sensations were dwarfed by something else: a very vivid connection with the Divine. No physical vision of God, no verbal communication, but an awareness of His presence that was unlike any I had ever felt before or have felt since. Enveloped and embraced by a bright warm light, I was filled with comfort and indescribable love. It was not unlike the comfort I often felt as a child just being in the presence of my parents, even when there was no physical embrace or verbal communication. Similarly, the pure, unconditional love I felt that day on my bed — of Divine parent for child — was reassuring and undeniable.

Oh, to remain in that state forever, but too quickly — in minutes — I felt myself drifting away from God's loving embrace. As the reality of my body and my physical surroundings crept back into my consciousness, I longed to go back, but sustaining the experience seemed out of my control.

A few days later, I had a brief reprise of this experience, but all future attempts to recreate it failed.

As I grew older, I repeatedly and futilely sought this transcendent experience. For years I feared I was drifting away from God because I couldn't return to the same feeling of closeness I had when I was twelve. Perhaps my mind had become cluttered with too many other interfering thoughts to be able to attain the same ecstatic, transcendent state.

The questions continued: Why had I been given this experience when I had no personal relationship with Jesus or any knowledge of saving grace? Had I experienced the love of the almighty God and was this God the same Jesus I had heard about? Were they really one and the same? What was this concept of the Trinity? Why would a young boy be given such a glimpse of God with no prior knowledge or context for the experience?

Despite my unanswered questions, I always recognized my experience as a gift from God, but I kept it to myself. As an adult, I worried that if I shared this event, others would consider me crazy or on the extreme religious fringe. But several years ago, I decided to risk it. It was at a retreat of the lay leadership of my church that I finally recounted my story. To my amazement, two other influential church leaders shared that they had enjoyed the exact same life-changing experience during their adolescence: During moments of meditation over similar questions, they had become aware of and felt close to God. And just like me, neither of them had been able to repeat this mystical state later in life.

Why had I been given this ecstatic glimpse of the Divine and why had it happened only twice? What was the point of what grew into a lifelong, seemingly futile, yearning to return? Could my yearning for such glory be part of God's plan for my life?

Once again, I was amazed to find that some answers would come from unexpected sharing — with a saint who lived almost two millennia ago. In my divinity school studies I wrote a research paper on Saint Augustine and read about two ascensions he had experienced more than 1,700 years ago that are documented in his famous Confessions. Like me, Augustine felt weighed down and rapidly pulled away from his mystical experiences, and, like me, he desperately wanted to return.

Augustine interpreted his ascensions as gifts from God and glimpses of the Divine; he determined that because of his own sinful nature, he was not able to repeat what had happened. As an adult, he had succumbed to temptation through carnal transgressions that he felt were the cause of this "weighed-down" feeling.

As an adolescent of only twelve years, I didn't have the same guilt over transgression, so I could not relate to this interpretation. However, in retrospect, I can accept that my human capacity to sin could separate me from the Divine.

As I read Augustine's accounts in this ancient text, I marveled at the similarities of our experiences ... and a palpable sense that now finally — in my postretirement studies — God was speaking directly to me through the recorded history of one of the great early Christian theologians.

Today I believe this kind of direct experience is a gift from God, a gift that instills a strong faith that enables the recipient to understand and follow God's divine calling. In my case, and in the case of my church colleagues, the calling was to become clergy or lay leaders in our faith communities. And perhaps our inability to reproduce the mystical state is also part of God's plan to create a burning desire to return to that ascension and to encourage others to seek a similar relationship with God.

Like Augustine, my church friends and I all came to realize in our evolving belief traditions that the way to achieve permanent salvation and assure ourselves of an ultimate ascension to God was through the saving grace of Jesus Christ. It could not be reproduced through future meditation or through replication of our adolescent events, but rather through accepting the sacrifice of Christ as our own redeeming grace.

My adolescent ascension convinced me that such mystical experiences are real and the accounts of theologians and others over the centuries are credible. I believe that my brief ascension to God was a gift that revealed aspects of the Divine I hadn't previously contemplated.

I am convinced that I did not trigger this ascension, but rather God willed it as a providential gift. God was not visible to me in an earthly sense but I came to "see" and "know" Him in a personal way and to believe unwaveringly in His existence. I can also now call it a gift of faith that ultimately led to my salvation through Christ and my permanent relationship with the Divine. To my delight, I learned that Augustine came to similar conclusions in his later writings.

I'm certain that many others over the centuries have enjoyed mystical experiences similar to my own. Fifty years after my own ascension and more than 1,700 years after Augustine's, the accounts in his Confessions spoke to me across the centuries to give me a better understanding of what happened to me and how it prepared me for, and indeed called me into, service in God's kingdom.

For Reflection

Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

Psalm 73:23–25

I believe God provides experiences that reveal His existence, strengthen our faith, and give guidance. These revelations can occur not only when we are children, but at any time during our lives. At a crucial time of spiritual questioning, my experience undeniably confirmed to me that God was both real and aware of me. And even though I could not repeat the experience more than once, the faith-stirring impact has remained throughout my lifetime. I can joyfully echo the words of the Psalmist in proclaiming to God, "You hold me by my right hand," and with that knowledge, "earth has nothing I desire besides you."

Some of us are fortunate enough to recognize a divine presence at the time such a revelation occurs. Whether or not we immediately perceive His hand, however, these experiences allow us to develop greater faith and spirituality — even if we only learn from them in retrospect. If you're among those who never perceived a divine presence at the time of its occurrence, it may be very difficult now to identify such an experience, but I would still encourage you to try.

Think back on times when you were particularly distressed or challenged — perhaps when you brushed with danger, or when you felt moments of strong unconditional love from a parent, relative, or friend. Although at the time you may not have recognized the impact of a moment, you may find, looking back, that it was through God's presence in a single, fleeting moment that you came to believe that a higher power was possible, and even at work, in your life.

Almost every story in this book is a retrospective reaffirmation of God's active role in guiding and shaping my spiritual awareness and development. I find it ironic — and yet hopeful — that I'm learning from some of these experiences only now. Perhaps this delayed learning — lessons to be unwrapped at future moments in our lives — is also part of His spiritual tutoring and plan for us. The passage of time often has a way of "sharpening" the lens through which we view these moments as they really were — revelations of His existence.

Sue's Prayers

During my early years of marriage, I was obsessively driven to succeed in my career. And ironically what helped keep Sue and me together was her response to my nearly all-consuming work-related efforts; she was not only tolerant, but she was supportive of my work habits and time away from the family.

I knew I was neglecting my family as a father and as a husband. Because of the heavy work demands, I typically slept only four or five hours a night for almost thirty years — certainly not a healthy habit.

In an attempt to manage my time more effectively, and create family experiences and personal interactions with Sue and the kids, I adopted a few coping techniques that helped. I took annual one-on-one trips with each of the five kids, we would take at least one full family vacation every year, and I practiced liberal use of email correspondence and daily prayer.

Involvement in the church helped as well. Early in our marriage, Sue and I began to regularly attend church, Sunday school classes, and church-related events. We also served the Lord in leadership roles within the church community. Sue taught Sunday school and church-sponsored day care while I served as a deacon or trustee in many of the churches we attended. These practices added a welcomed faith-related dimension to our lives that most certainly enabled us to better cope with the otherwise hectic pace. But in a strange way it also added to our stress by consuming even more of the precious limited number of hours available each day.

My various coping techniques provided some relief from stress, but there is one profoundly dramatic factor that has had the greatest impact on our relationship — a factor that came by way of Sue's grandmother.

Sue's paternal grandmother, Grace Smolar, was a woman I loved deeply and respected greatly for her expressions of faith to her family members. She prayed before every meal and taught Sue to say bedtime prayers every night. And it was this practice that contributed to the strength of our marriage, especially one night during one of our most tumultuous early years.

I was a young executive attempting to climb the corporate ladder, but despite working very long hours and devoting myself entirely to my career, I was losing favor with an extremely demanding boss who wasn't satisfied with anything less than superhuman results. I worried about losing my job. At the same time, my father had been diagnosed with cancer and I had little time to devote to him or to my young family. The stress was affecting me physically. I'd dropped from my normal 200 pounds to 170 and my typically healthy, smiling face reflected sadness and sleep deprivation.

I was dead tired but so stressed over my future, our finances, my seeming inability to "get it all done," that my body simply would not relax. Much as I longed for sleep, it would not come. But after what seemed like hours, finally exhaustion overcame me, and just as I felt myself about to drift off, I heard Sue:

"Dear God, please be with Fred and give him the strength and courage to deal with the difficult situation at work, help him to reconcile his differences and misunderstandings with his boss," she whispered in that lovely, soft, voice. "God, please relieve Fred's stress so that he may regain his strength and his health while he also frees up time to spend with his ailing father and his children. They miss him and need him, Lord." Sue was saying her nightly prayers.

She probably thought I was finally out and couldn't hear her words — but I did hear them, and so did God. Tears welled up in my eyes and a lump filled my throat as I tried to avoid audibly sobbing — interrupting her prayers and revealing that I was listening to her intimate conversation.

How many times over the years this happened. And how precious these moments are to me. This is what got us through the rough spots: knowing that I was not alone, that my spouse was a strong believer, and that she was not simply relying on me to see us through the challenges of young married life.

Today I am convinced that God indeed listened to and answered Sue's — and my — prayers. I thank God daily for faithful grandmothers, mothers, and spouses. They are some of the principal people who have made such an important contribution to my faith, my spiritual development, and my happiness. And their influence, passed on to my wife, has been a key factor in the strength of our marriage.

For Reflection

And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

James 5:15–16

God has spoken to me through the voice of my wife, Sue, on many occasions. She has been an incredibly supportive wife of a certifiable workaholic while she very ably ran the household and raised five children. Witnessing and hearing her bedtime prayers touched me greatly and led me to a far deeper relationship with God. While she was speaking intently and sincerely to God, He was speaking to me through her.

Think back on how you have come to your own Christian faith. My guess is there have been pillars of faith in your background who set an example for you and whose abiding faith was an inspiration in your own spiritual development. Try to recall who they were, what they did or said to influence you, and how you might uplift others.