After every time of exaltation, we are brought down with a sudden rush into things as they really are, where it is neither beautiful, poetic, nor thrilling. The height of the mountaintop is measured by the dismal drudgery of the valley, but it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God. My Utmost for His Highest - Oct 2nd devotion
Thursday night, I shared with some folks including Ralph Walker around a fire about some moments in my homeless experience months ago where I experienced fear, grasping at trust in the Lord's protection. I shared about my first night in Aurora detailed in the note "I AM HOMELESS: Day 14 - 2 Weeks in. After dark" If you don't remember, I got into the 2nd biggest city in IL for the first time, in a large, unfamiliar shelter where no beds were left. The guy I tried sleeping next to at a table warned me that there were "sharks" everywhere. He told me, “You’re the new bait with long hair, and the niggers will fuckin prey on you. ““Tomorrow, I’m not your friend.”
I also shared briefly about getting in late to the "Satan House" in Toronto. In my determination to stay at the Seaton House, it happened to include various factors that made it physically perfect for me including its location and its late curfew. When I was told that I should go anywhere BUT the Seaton House, as it was reportedly the worst homeless shelter in Toronto and the biggest in Canada, I knew that I had to go! As I signed in there, I saw someone else who had just had their locked locker ransacked and was reporting this. The man signing me in told me that when I slept, instead of keeping things in my pockets, I should keep them in my crotch. I noticed others tying things above their beds for folks on top bunks, and followed suit. I also noticed the showers,
Many if not all of the shower curtains had cuts in them so that those showering could keep watch of their belongings while showering.
One night, I walked alone on a street later than I liked to get back to the "Satan House", around 11:30 PM. People had been robbed at knifepoint on the same street in broad daylight earlier that day. I walked through a little crowd that I suspected included drug dealers and prostitutes, was flanked by men who came across the street as I walked through the crowd, and the Lord protected me, untouched.
What I failed to share with the guys around the fire occurred just this past Saturday, that's a bit more painful and humiliating to share about. It may also receive more condemnation, as people who have little tangible comprehension of the Spirit's leading may consider it complete stupidity to be in the situations that I come into when I have the option of avoiding them entirely. After spending some wonderful time with homeless folks and those with Chicago's Beloved like Pat Hecker, I left with a Catholic brother by the name of Paul Bucklaw for the mission where he stays. The Lord's called Paul to minister amongst the homeless for far longer than I. It's a blessing to know him, and His dedication to our Lord in this regard is encouraging in a nation where his ministry faces much condemnation and criticism by those that knew him prior to becoming homeless, who may have even respected him prior to purposely becoming low for Christ and for the least of these.
Paul graciously gave me the ticket on the L to get to Pilsen, and we walked to the shelter. There I signed in, and was directed to a place near the bunk beds and cots where there was enough light to read the Word prior to going to sleep. While I was in the Word, a large black man with a blonde wig and homosexual tendencies approached me. He began talking with me for maybe 5 or 10 minutes, then left. After my private time in the Word, I was instructed that I was required to take a shower. A man on staff unlocked the showers for me, and I locked the door behind me as he left. Soon after, I heard a knock. There being multiple showers within the room, naturally I opened it. It was the same large black man that had approached me before. I am thankful to God that I hadn't taken my clothes off yet save possibly my coat. He waited in there, speaking with me, waiting for me to begin taking my clothes off. While there were curtains, they only separated the showers. There was no curtain on the front of the showers. I did not take any more clothes off, and it was 5 or 10 minutes before another black man walked in, ready to take a shower. The one with homosexual tendencies left almost immediately, and I was thankful to God for His provision. The new guy told me how, last night, he had been in the mission for the first time, and someone had kept looking through the door at him while he took a shower. He thought that it was a staff person, but found out that it was the man who had just left, and had gotten angry with him when he found out. The two of us took showers, and were not bothered. I went to bed from there, on the top bunk, but within minutes, heard another man climb into the bed immediately beside me. After a few seconds, I had a feeling that I smelt the same scent that I had smelled prior, the large homosexual with the blonde wig. I looked over, and maybe 2 feet from me was the wig. After looking over for a second, he looked back. I tried to go to sleep, but could not. I believe that he waited til 11 PM, when there is no longer admittance to the mission, prior to taking the available bed next to me. After maybe 10 minutes, I felt something in my hair. I got up in bed, and saw him pulling his hand back towards his bed. I reversed where my head was, and scrunched up in my sleeping bag to be a few feet away from his bed. I wasn't bothered again, besides a bit by the bed bugs I saw crawling on my bed the next morning.
This occasion also reminds me of another experience in homelessness, in which a man started making a weird motion out his window as he approached me with his car as I was walking along the street in the opposing direction. A white man of maybe 55, he asked me if I wanted to go and jack off with him. He said, "I'll pay you money." He saw my ragged appearance. I didn't have much money. What if I had been in debt, been a single mother with children, and was addicted to crack? I can see to some degree how people come to prostitute themselves. There would already be so much humiliation and despair in my life if I was such a lady prior to coming to that point of simply saying, "yes, I want money, I need money, and will play your game to get some." In a society where forces of darkness already use money to enslave most people to be a part of the machine of the capitalist economy, it does not seem so unnatural. Whatever it takes. What if I didn't know God, and didn't trust in His provision for money, disbelieving passages like Matthew 6:26? Most Christians don't effectually believe it anyways, even if they say they do in theory. It's only by the grace of God that I can believe it for a moment, as I've seen time and time again that it's true. I know a homeless chain-smoking alcoholic named Bob who's had maybe 3 heart attacks, yet still gives blood plasma for money, simply lying on the form about not having any heart troubles.
I am reminded as I reflect on my experience Saturday night how important it is to know the voice of the Lord, to know that where you are is precisely and definitively where He wants you to be. Otherwise one could find himself in a dangerous situation entirely unnecessarily. Please pray that the Lord would break my pride more and more, and that I would realize that my own notions of logic are relative stupidity in comparison to the wisdom of our omniscient Creator. Please pray that I would submit before Him, including submitting before the call to hours of replenishment daily, what many might consider lazy or monastic, yet I feel is vital for my life to be anything more than a single drop in an ocean of billions of people amidst a single grain of sand in a vast desert of time. He must become greater; I must become less (John 3:30). The calls in Scripture to legit replenishment abound, and "obedience is better than sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22)." If I serve the Lord with my ministry, with the Lord merely adding a little spice to the equation, instead of allowing Him to show me how He wants me to be apart of His ministry in redeeming this world, what I'm apart of will be of little relative consequence. Please pray that I would see the truth of my words, for I keep yapping about them without them being an effectually lived reality.
I am also reminded that no matter the trials I face, there is no better place to be in life than exactly where the Lord wants me to be. Please pray that I would trust in and live this reality more, even when it hurts for a time in the valley.
I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church . . . —Colossians 1:24We take our own spiritual consecration and try to make it into a call of God, but when we get right with Him He brushes all this aside. Then He gives us a tremendous, riveting pain to fasten our attention on something that we never even dreamed could be His call for us. And for one radiant, flashing moment we see His purpose, and we say, “Here am I! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8)... we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom...To be a holy person means that the elements of our natural life experience the very presence of God as they are providentially broken in His service. We have to be placed into God and brought into agreement with Him before we can be broken bread in His hands. My Utmost for His Highest - Sep 30 devotion
http://utmost.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_uwWPE6lQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1ytWr7pEB0 "I will run the race set before me, I will seek Your face as the prize of my life...The Earth sleeps and slumbers, lullabied by the sounds of peace and safety... I will run!"
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