My family and I went through Andrew. As you know I had decided to memorize the nt and some of the poetry books. It was when I was 22 that I began in Rom.6,7,8. I was memorizing 2 verses a day. I was not sure at the beginning if I could pull this off. But as I began to add the verses and remember whole books I began to experience a power that I cannot describe. So the memorization turned into an insatiable desire to meditate for long hours. And eventually has I added 4 more books the meditation had consumed most of my alone time and my desire to achieve satisfaction in my life.
I can only explain it as the voice I experienced in Andrew. You have all of these events going on in your life and they all seem to be orchestrated by the hand of God. But the experience was the joy that you would experience with your first child. So your getting the clothes and your preparing the room. And you have an expectation that you never experienced before. And the memorization was like a baby to me. The times you play with the baby and your interacting with him your filled with life and satisfaction. So the memorization was like waiting every day for a baby. I treated it like a baby. I would go through a pocket testament and wear it out. And I would be thinking about replacing it before the pages would fall out. It was very important to me.
The meditation would act upon me. I used to wonder why a teaching by the apostle would infuse me with power and satisfaction. The more I meditated the more I would experience the light of the glory. As I look back , I have been taught that the doctrinal sections have confessions in them. The confessions where put their to experience the teaching. This began to consume me. I would meditate for hours on the road or in the quite of my mind and I could not stop.As I started in the Psalms i came to this particular one that described a storm that came from the desert and passed through Israel. I had become very schooled in the discipline at this time that it was beginning to flow through me and into my physical exertion.I literally would wake up in the morning and be driven by this power. At times I felt like my eyes were open so wide and my mouth was controlled. I went from pursuing God to God pursuing me.
As you can see after a year of meditation on this Psalm I was wondering what it was like to hear the voice of God in the storm. So when Andrew turned and the eye headed right down my street it was for me in my mind an illustration rather than an event. Because I had decided that I would meditate on this Psalm for the entire time the storm was passing by. Its hard to say this but I was more interested in the work that God was dong than the destruction that I witnessed.
This storm brings me back to the power and the awesome presence of God. I stayed in a house that belonged to a friend because Sandy and I had started our marriage by buying a trailer on 152. I can remember being on the second floor of this house when the gale force winds began. At the corner of this two story house was a big banyan tree. As the winds began to swirl the tree that went up 30 feet in the air came crashing down on the center of our roof and the limbs extended over to the opposite side. We could see the limbs extending in the windows. At this point I got a little scared. But I persevered through by focusing on this Psalm.
As the storm moved over the house the winds got really loud. I still have this noise in my memory. It sounded like breathing. The winds would die down and then begin to blow to a full blast. And then they would start over again. As the winds were picking up speed we began to wonder if the next exhale would blow the roof off. It was teaching me that God works by giving us success that is followed by more trials and opposition. As I look back on my life ive been on the mountain and back down to the valley. But the winds have never let up, they just die down.
Then after Andrew went over through we the next morning we had to get help getting out of the house. The bushes and the trees had all blown up against the doors. When we got in the car to drive around it was like a war zone. Every tree in the path of the storm had blown down. The experience of the storm was etched in my memory as an illustration of Gods power but the devastation was startling. I had began to understand the peace and quite that had resulted from the destruction. You could not hear a sound at night.God had totally turned our lives upside down with 5 hours of wind. The quietness from the total destruction is still something that I have never forgotten.It gave me a living reality of the power of God in delivering us from the opposition. He speaks in a way that there is no question who is in control and after words He leaves a peace in our hearts that is beyond the peace of this world.Ps 29 1 Ascribe to the LORD , O mighty ones,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
2 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
worship the LORD in the splendor of his F51 holiness.
3 The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.
4 The voice of the LORD is powerful;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
5 The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;
the LORD breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
Sirion F52 like a young wild ox.
7 The voice of the LORD strikes
with flashes of lightning.
8 The voice of the LORD shakes the desert;
the LORD shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
9 The voice of the LORD twists the oaks F53
and strips the forests bare.
And in his temple all cry, "Glory!"
10 The LORD sits F54 enthroned over the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as King forever.
11 The LORD gives strength to his people;
the LORD blesses his people with peace.