My Undeniable Encounters with the Prophetic (SWC)

My Entry for the Supernatural Writing Contest

Long exposure of a thunderstorm blowing in on Pike's Peak in Colorado.

This is the story of my nearish-death experience, with a touch of context and my encounters with modern prophecy along the way.  After a gap year, I started learning about spiritual gifts by reading books from Kenneth Hagin and Gordon Lindsay.  When I discovered that both authors had started schools in the 70s,  I enrolled in Lindsay's Christ for the Nations Institute (CFNI).  It was a bit like attending Xavier's School for Gifted Children or a Christian version of Hogwarts. On my first day, I met the new team I was to be a part of and we started with prayer.  A Saudi girl started to prophesy.  She started out by asking which one of us was Kyle.  I was dumbfounded.  She didn't know me and was just another student like me, not a leader with access to the team list. How could she know a Kyle would be there?  I have met like one other Kyle in my life.  What she said next is for me to know, but it was powerful, overwhelming and something I will continue to think on for the rest of my life. Later she apologized for calling me out in front of everyone and embarrassing me. (I had been super embarrassed, but I blamed God not her.)  She told me about her story of coming to the school.  She had been seeking direction from God about what to do next in life and saw a photo clear picture in her mind of the schools most iconic building, the men's dormitory.  


She had never heard of the school but looked it up online and weeks later there she was in Dallas, prophesying to a shy teenager from Michigan.

I only attended CFNI for one year, and I know I missed out on a lot.  The first year was such an adjustment that I assume as an older, wiser and more disciplined second-year student I would have been more able to fully appreciate the program.  Some of the students there were like me, unfocused and just beginning to get their feet wet in the things of God. Some students were just plain religious,  but there were so many others who were simply on another level.  They had this aura about them as if they had spent the day sitting around the throne room with God and were just visiting earth to mix with us mortals before returning to heaven.  I admired them, but they were so impressive that I had the impression that I never could or would be like them.  

Regardless of the amazing experience that I had there, I only went for one year and then moved back home to Grand Rapids.  I asked God for direction about which church I should attend.  I was still bit foggy on the whole hearing from God thing, but the answer seemed to be that he would tell my girlfriend Katie which church to go to.  At the time, she was in Rowanda, but when I had the chance I told her about my conversation with God.  She said that she had been asking God the same thing and that his answer was that we were to go to the Church her high school acquaintance Justin went to. God, wouldn't it have been easier to just show me a picture of the Church's logo instead of having me ask Katie to ask Justin what church to go to?  Maybe if I would have spent another year at Christian Hogwarts I could have just gotten the picture, who knows. Either way, after my second week at the new church I was convinced that we heard correctly.  There was a shortage of Churches in my area an active expression of the supernatural, but God had pointed us to the perfect one for us.  

Sparing you the details, after several years at that awesome Church I had managed to grow very slowly spiritually if at all.  Katie and I were now married and we felt like our lives had stagnated.  We had achieved our goal of building a photography business that kept us both employed comfortably full time, but it wasn't enough. We decided to focus our energy on taking advantage of every opportunity our Church offered for growth.  Two weeks later I was diagnosed with cancer.  WTF God?  I decide to follow you with everything an immediately get cancer?  I really should have done a second year, then maybe I'd know not to say WTF.  

Here is where things got interesting.  I was at home when I received the call that my biopsy results were in.  It was confirmed that I had Hodgkins Lymphoma.  I was devastated, but I had recently decided to be super involved in Church life and had to leave promptly for Thursday worship practice.  
After the band finished going through the set, our leader Angela, who is a recognized prophet, had us spend some time enjoying God's nearness and waiting on him.  She heard a word from God and said this.  "One of you has just received news or a report of some kind, and God wants you to know that it is not from him."

Wow.  Maybe diving into Church life at that moment was exactly what I needed.   I wish everyone was able to have a direct message from God in times of crisis like that.  With sudden faith that I would survive this, I decided not to tell my church that I has cancer.  I didn't want to be seen as the cancer patient and have every conversation for the next few years start with the words, "so how are you feeling?"  That totally happened later on.   But before people knew what was up I received another word from God.  After playing drums at a Wednesday night meeting, a middle-aged woman who I didn't know very well came up and said, "I have a word from the Lord for you.  I have no idea what this means, but he says, 'You will not waste away.'"  Again, I was dumbfounded.  This is for real.  God is really speaking to me.

I had two clear words from God about my cancer, but I found it very difficult to hear God myself.  Maybe I was hearing him as clearly as when he told me which school to go to and what church to go to, but with everything I was going through I found it very difficult to put any trust in what I thought I was hearing from God.  Having him speak profoundly through two other people who did not know I was sick was much more reassuring than the quiet nudges I was accustomed to.  The only problem was that I didn't know what to do next.  I had a word that I wouldn't die, but nothing else.

I asked Angela to seek God for me because I was having a hard time knowing what to do.  I didn't like what she heard.  In short, she related that God wanted to me to take the best of both mainstream oncology and alternative medicine.  I completely rejected this word and told myself that she must have heard wrong or misinterpreted.  I didn't think that God would ever use chemo to heal someone because it is so toxic.  If he can raise Lazarus with a word, why would he let me suffer through chemo?

I probably should have listened.  I bounced around from health guru to health guru until I ended up broke, broken and in the ER.  One night I started having unbearable back pain. It got so bad that I couldn't be in any position other than sitting up.  I didn't want to wake my wife, so I spent the whole night sitting up in pain.  In the morning, I told her that I was in extreme pain and that I thought my lung had collapsed because I could feel fluid moving around in my side with every breath, and it breathing was difficult.  After loads of tests at the hospital, the doctors found that there were liters of fluid around my heart.  It took an emergency surgery drain enough fluid to ensure that I would survive the night. The surgeon said that he had never seen so much fluid around a beating heart and that I was lucky to be alive.  The next day they did a second surgery and left a tube in my pericardium so that fluid could drain into a bag over the next few days.  Then I got the news that the cancer was now stage 4.  It was in so many places that it would have been easier to tell me where it wasn't.  

This was the lowest of the low for me.   One of my friends started telling me about how I would go rock climbing and hiking again, but I couldn't believe it.  I couldn't see around the mountain I was facing.  I would like to tell you that it was my own spiritual maturity and training that told me what to do next, but I think it was God's idea.  All I wanted to do was worship.  In my mind, praising God in the worst of circumstances seemed like it would be the most powerful kind of prayer.  So that's what I did.  During my stay, my friends and I filled that hospital room with music and praise.  I started experiencing God in tangible and profound ways.  I began to feel God so strongly that it was like a high.  It was all I wanted to do.  Movies and TV became so boring to me.  If I wasn't working, all I wanted to do was connect with God.  All I had to do was focus my heart and mind on him and boom, I was in his presence, or rather, I was aware of it.  I thought back to my time at CFNI, how I had admired but felt so disconnected from those students who were so close to God that you could feel God just by being close to them.  I had thought I could never be like that.  I thought they were born like Noah with eyes that shown like the sun and the appearance of an angel (see Enoch 105:1-3).   I thought I would never be able to pray for more than five minutes without forcing myself to, and here I was, addicted to the things God.  I would stay up late into the morning praying, worshiping, reading, meditating, writing or walking with him.  I began to have dreams and visions and to prophesy.  I couldn't explain it.  I didn't try to be like this, but all I wanted was more and there was an endless supply of more.  I didn't recognize myself, nor did anyone else.  

As much as I prayed for a miraculous instant healing, God didn't seem as concerned about the cancer as I was.  He seemed a lot more concerned about me being close to him.  I always argued with God that it would make a better story if he just healed me all at once, but I think he thought my version would be boring. I think the story that he wanted to tell is that he still speaks.  He is always whispering his love and guidance to us, but when we need him to yell, he will. He won't always stop us from walking through the valley of the shadow of death but he will go in with us if it means that we come out the other side walking a little closer to him.