The Walls of Jericho

Posted on by L Reese Cumming

Morning Sun 1

It is January 13th, 2009; the day of my birth. As to events that first week, I did give my letter to Kim Sprague that morning. She read it while I silently watched, and I do believe there was a bit of mysticism as the common bond of God being in both of our lives became evident.  I’m sure Kim felt something that must have truly been soulful deep; she had prayed for me and it worked! You see there was something that I had not been aware of at the time.

As I had mentioned in my previous post, Kim was attending the School of Ministries at New Hope, late in 2008, and through May of 2009.  She had taken a class in evangelism and witnessing.  In this class her teacher, Ron Rand, requested his students to list those family members, friends and acquaintances that each student felt they would like to see come to Christ.  Kim wrote my name down, along with a few others.  Ron then asked the students to select one from that list that they most wanted to receive salvation. Kim circled my name, and then she began to pray.

It is so important that you all know in your heart that you are in God’s service at all times.  And that you can do God’s miracles as well and as easily as any Apostle.  It is faith, and James addresses faith in noting that, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”

What is being said here is that we are all called to something more than personal faith.  Not to sit with our faith alone, but to put it into play.  To make use of what God has so generously given us – our gifts from God – and to submit to God’s plan for you: in the service of your brothers and sisters. God used His gifts of love and patience – blessed upon Kim – to find a way for me to come home to Him.

Kim suggested church for the coming Sunday, and it seemed right to me.  That’s what led me to New Hope Ministries, a non-denomination (Charismatic) church, where I would receive a tremendous amount of education over the next three years. Continue reading The Walls of Jericho

My Testimony of the Birth of My Spirit

Posted on by L Reese Cumming

What I Was

Sea of Galilee 1

This is the first real opportunity I have taken to accumulate my letters, notes and ramblings on the birth of my spirit – ‘born-again’ – as many would call it.  Where is it in the Bible?  Yes, in John 3:3, Jesus answers Nicodemus with, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”  Better late than ever, I would say, as my birth came in my 57th year of breathing air upon this earth.

I’ve always had trouble in adopting the term ‘born-again’ to refer to what happened to me.  The simple truth is that I had no spiritual life within me; up to the rather dramatic call that God made upon me on January 13th, 2009.  Rather I was a man of empirical evidence, logic, and reason.  I not only did not know whether a god or gods could exist, but I couldn’t imagine why there would be a need for a god or gods, or even care about such matters.  The meaning of life was towards the bottom rung of priorities, unless of course its contemplation could advance my goals.  No, I wasn’t one of those totally self-centered, amoral humans that we all know.  I had been told many times by various sorts of people of my good moral and caring character.  Moderation in all things was my motto.  You might say I was extreme about moderation.  I could do good as easily as I did evil. I was pious as well as a sinner.

Agnostic?  Certainly.  Atheist?  If pressed for a strong opinion. However, I do remember that at times I could spin the pantheistic formula for the world.  God is everything; the ecology of community of all inanimate and animate things and creatures working together in wonderment of self and sustaining creation and transition.  In other words, the term God is a condensation of nature in work, and an acknowledgment of nature’s omnipotence.  Religion was scientific ignorance, and science is the new religion.  It resolved all things without and material that this body and mind of mine had to work with in this world, except it had no answer to all of the things within and immaterial that left me in perpetual wanting of something beyond my grasp. Continue reading My Testimony of the Birth of My Spirit

The Path

Posted on by L Reese Cumming

It’s just that I have been writing like a freak these past three and one-half years, and that’s really odd for me.  Being sixty-one years old now, I can say without any happiness that I rarely read a book or put pen to paper (well fingers to the keyboard) to write about anything.  The only books I did read were fantasy/science fiction, and the only thing I could relate to as God was a pleasantly dull agnostic or pantheistic reference to God being in all things of this world – if there was a god at all.  If pressed, I was an atheist.

Somehow that has all changed, and I have to say it happened all in the span of two hours in the middle of the night on January 13, 2009.  It’s a lot to go into now.  I can say that when I went back to bed, the morning sun greeted a transformed and fully alive person; one reborn, one with spiritual iron for faith.  God is with me now in a most apparent, glorious and eventful way

The Green Path 1So, I want to talk about The Path – that walk that we all must take as God’s children.  The faith, the spirit, being born for the real time; the sanctification, the happiness that one’s path will lead them through and to if one just gives oneself over to He who can give this all.  God before time knew us.  Our parents conceived us.  Our mother’s gave birth to us.  Our instruction manuals….  well without accepting God into our lives, is nothing more than the love of our parents and the world about us growing up, or the lack there of the love that we so desperately seek.

I’m hoping that should one read my words there might be some measure of recognition of common thoughts and events; something that clicks in your mind and heart, and gives you the desire to write a bit in response. I look forward to such discourse, for as I know now, God has high expectations for His children. He looks to the day when we all are one in Him. Let’s give it a try. Blessings.

L Reese Cumming