I love writing, mainly because it brings honour to my Creator. I love Him, He’s my Dad, I want to know all of His business. King David said we should love God with our whole heart, mind and strength. This is me worshipping Him with my whole heart, mind and strength. Writing allows me to do this, in never ending praise. Life feels complete whenever I do this.
But writing is also dangerous, because the audience itself can become the allure, to please them could become the goal, because who doesn’t like a good response, some great feedback, even criticism is attention, and it’s dangerous because it shifts the focus onto me and away from Him. I repent of this, try and take feedback for what it is, leave the audience behind as I climb the mountain, and get back to these intimate letters between Him and me.
I did not want you to think I do this for the compliments. I would be mortified if you did. It is the reason I am going to tell you about the greatest compliment I ever received, because there is nothing you could ever say, or not say, that will beat this compliment. It is a phrase very dear and precious to me. No other compliment has ever come close. While I share with you what is still a vivid memory, may I ask you what the greatest compliment is you have ever received?
It happened when I was twenty-seven years old, the year of my baptism, which seems like such a long time ago now. I went to a church, where the pastor occasionally asked me to give sermons, which I did. It was uncomfortable but I enjoyed it, like some other activities which come to mind.
Although the church was Christian, it kept the Jewish festivals, and as such, there was the eight day festival of Sukkot, or Tabernacles that came up in a few months time. The pastor asked me if I would go to the Kingdom of Swaziland and deliver two sermons during that time. I agreed and began deliberating over what to speak on. It began to stress me out more and more because I did not have the faintest idea who the audience was.
My regular prayer time is 5am ever since I can remember, every morning, without fail, is my alone time with my Creator. I began praying that He would give me some insight who this collective was I was going to speak to. What did they need to hear, what did He, the Father, want them to know?
I prayed this for a few days until… well something happened, something that I had never experienced before.
As I sat there with my arms wide on that old leathery couch we still own, I closed my eyes and I was immediately in ‘a place’. It was so vivid and so real that I quickly opened my eyes and saw that I was back in my living room in front of the empty fireplace, but as soon as I closed my eyes, it was as if they were open to a new world, and though I had never seen it before, it was somehow familiar. It is strange, but since that event which took place over two consecutive mornings, it always reminds me that eyes which are open, always sees less than eyes which are closed. Faith and prayer.
This is what I saw.
I was already halfway up a rising stone staircase when I opened my closed eyes, walking upwards towards a man at the top of the stairs I knew to be Jesus Christ. He didn’t look like any of the pictures that ever depicted Him. He was unassuming, yet friendly, excitable, warm and He immediately embraced me. Tears rolled down my cheeks back then, as the memory of that encounter still induces the same tears as I write this.
We were standing on a large ancient stone platform, probably the size of a football field, hovering above the earth. Behind Him were two enormous, old thick trees, with roots plunging in and out of the stone and hanging over the edges down towards earth. Earth itself was entirely covered with trees, as if it were hiding lush gardens. There were no visible man-made structures and the sky was a clear blue, with no sun anywhere to be seen.
I quickly opened my eyes to see if I was indeed in two places at the same time. Astonishingly yes, and again I opened my closed my eyes.
The tree trunks had two thrones carved into them. One of the thrones was occupied by a hazy, blurry shape of a man I could see in my peripheral vision, but as soon as I looked directly at Him, He was not there. As soon as my gaze returned to Him who was standing before me, the Father was back in the corner of my eye. I remember my knees buckling and I sat down right there on the step, with my Saviour quickly sitting down beside me.
I didn’t know what to say at first, so we sat in friendship and silence for a while. I heard the sounds of the most beautiful birds below and the sound of playing children. Lots of children. He eventually said that He would assist me with the two messages I was going to give and I didn’t need to worry, which I had completely forgotten about, but sensed that I had asked well. We talked a little more, about innocuous things I can no longer remember, even though I wrote it down somewhere.
He then asked me the following question. He asked me to ask anything from Him, and if it was His to give, He would give it to me. Knowing this was an important question, I asked whether I could think about it and He said of course and again embraced me, right there sitting on the step. I opened my eyes to my living room, but when I shut my eyes, He and future earth were no longer there.
To say the very least the experience left me elated. I thought a lot about His question, and though I had mostly always gone through life knowing I had everything – and by everything I mean not too much to make me forget the Lord, and not too little that I would steal – especially a beautiful wife I had just married, and the knowledge of God, which was in itself a treasure that increasingly made everything else of lesser significance – it left just one thing I wanted.
I wondered when I would have an opportunity to answer Him, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long, because the very next morning, same place, same time, the same thing happened, He was there. I often think about why the same thing occurred two mornings in a row and all I’ve come up with, is that if it happened just once, I would have forever doubted whether this incident was just some sort of figment, but happening twice made it into an experience that has sustained me all these years, until I should again see Him face to face.
Again we sat on the steps of this hovering stone throne slab, and again Jesus asked me to make my request known. And so I asked Him if He could tell me the day of my death, and how I would die.
I asked wrong.
I asked wrong because I’m sure I saw a shadow of disappointment cross His face, but the Lord was gracious in His answer, as He always is. “Stephen, I am not going to tell you that. There are so many surprises in your life ahead, good surprises, and that knowledge will dampen those surprises.” It’s not verbatim but His answer to me was something like that. We spent a little more time talking and as much as I wanted to, like a clingy child remain with Him indefinitely, we parted.
Though my life since have been dotted with experiences more subtle than that encounter, but there nonetheless, it is those two mornings I often reflect on, which has sustained me with an indestructible hope, and how I crave to be in His presence always. It is something I desire for everyone, a close brush with their Maker, for the promise that is written is true, that; “if you draw near to Him, He will draw near to you.” I am convinced it was not a miracle that occurred, but a glimpse into reality, because this interview we call life, is the real miracle. We’re inside of it.
It’s taken me more than twenty years to pluck up the courage to write this down, because I didn’t want you to think this experience in some way makes me in any way ‘special’, whatever that means. If anything, because of some of the severe stresses in my past, the Lord took pity on me, seeking to encourage me, but more specifically in this instance, He had highlighted the importance and concern He has for the ‘community’ I enquired about.
After twenty years I am still somewhat disappointed in myself that I didn’t ask for something nobler, like wisdom, or generosity, or more compassion, and I tell myself, which is true, that those qualities did not have the same value to me, as they have now. I blame many things on the folly of my youth. I was young for a long time. Maybe I needed to see my own failing in a missed opportunity to appreciate those qualities more, as I now walk through life collecting better answers to His question, but what has become ultimately evident, and as shocking as it may sound, is His desire to fulfil my every need, and grant my requests as the servant King behoves, was not just for that moment, but something which still stands, and will well into eternity, and perhaps that was the point – I have asked everything from Him, and everything He has given, and is still giving.
What is the greatest compliment I received?
For Jesus it was when God exclaimed from heaven; “This is my beloved Son, in whom I’m well pleased”, and indeed because of Him we all stand under those same words, even though we struggle to believe it completely because of our constant failures, so until such time we all stand more confidently under those words nearer the end of time, for me, the greatest compliment came from someone else.
Though Christ did not tell me explicitly which two messages to prepare for the church in Swaziland, I had the knowledge implanted, and imbued with a renewed vigour in my spirit, I set to work. Arriving in Swaziland at the festival, I met the members of the church, and most notably was an extraordinary large and prominent family, who all trailed behind one giant of a man – Prince Mbilini Jameson Dlamini – after his tenure as Prime Minister, was then advisor to the King when I met him. I delivered the two sermons, the first about the Kingdom of Heaven, details expounded in parts of scripture not much read in the churches of today, and the other about encouraging ourselves to interrogate all of our motivations more often and more thoroughly, the why of our doing things.
It was during one of our final evening banquet dinners I found myself opposite the Prince, and as a man who sat on the United Nations Council at the time, he generously shared some of his insights. But it is what he said to me at the end of our last evening, after we had talked through some of the points of my presentation, that rolled a stone into my throat.
He simply said this:…
“God has sent you to us.”
I’ve been called many things. Some good, some bad, but that small phrase – being ‘sent’ – is one that encourages me, because the compliment not only combines the fact that someone saw the Almighty’s fingerprint somewhere on me, but asked the all important question; why I would waste my short life on endeavours that are not sanctioned by my Creator? Are all my endeavours sanctioned? Absolutely. How do I know? Faith and prayer.
Criticism is hard to hear because it means one has blind spots one wishes one didn’t have, and some of those changes can be painful, and compliments are equally as hard because we are human, which means we most times don’t see how compliments fuels our hubris, but being ‘sent’… I doubt if there is any praise better.
“How, then, can they call on the One they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?
As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.”
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