How I came to farewell my denomination of 40 years. Or, How do we know that’s God’s voice?

Does God speak things to you? Even without having touched on this topic with each of them, I’d wager I have friends at every point along that spectrum. 

Some who might say, “Dude (people my age are, after all, GenXers), if you think God is specifically speaking to you outside of the Bible, welcome to heresy.”

Others who talk about hearing God about as clearly and specifically as one could possibly imagine and certainly beyond what most experience.

You might reside at one of those ends or somewhere in between. I’m not today writing to convince you of anything. 

As a college student thirty years ago, I discovered that spectrum along with the fact that some people seemed to have “more” of God than I did. So I wanted it––Him––too. [It’d be immaterial for my purposes here to get into what I think was good or bad about all that was going on there; for now the point is just the story.]

One night, in a long session of earnest seeking and prayer, God spoke. He told me something about my future. Something good that was going to happen to me. And the reason I was being told ahead of time was so that I wouldn’t struggle with pride when it happened. 

Sure enough, the next day, it happened. 

Just not to me. It happened for somebody else.

Not purposely and certainly not knowingly, I’d stepped out in true faith and sincerely believed something my God had told me all while imagining the entire thing. 

At least I’d been smart enough (“you mean faithless enough” the Enemy would long taunt) to keep one foot in reality and make a pre-arrangement with God:

“IF…if for some reason this doesn’t come true? And it turns out this wasn’t You? I’ll meet you THERE where I sit on THAT marble ledge to wait for the cafeteria to open. And we are going to deal.” 

I was sitting. And we dealt. 

As best I can remember, it took rather some time for shock to wear off and devastation to sink in. Hours, perhaps days, but the real effects were long-term. My newfound conviction that God’s voice must be out of my reach devastated my ability to engage the topic for the following five years. For fully ten years, it handicapped me significantly. Not until fifteen years after the fact––the difference between age 20 and age 35––could I honestly say that I no longer experienced its effects when talking or praying about hearing His voice. Fifteen more years are now passed, and well, it’s finally an old, almost humorous story overwritten by many others and hardly thought of. 

_____________

Earlier this year I watched a video put out by the president of the denomination I’ve worked in for two decades and otherwise been a part of for four. He announced a celebratory demolition event at the denomination’s new national office property. 

And the Lord said to my spirit: “You’re going to be at that.” 

That’s odd. Really? I wonder why? That’s like… (checking map) 9 hours away.

But I pretty quickly jumped to Ohhh… hey! I’ll bet I could do that on the motorcycle! Might set a new record for myself…yes! I am going to run this by Tammy. 

And I began to plan my trip, operating out of a sort of a learned default that obeying even when not sure of the reasons is almost always preferable to skipping out because of doubts. I’d come a long way in 30 years. That old college-days wound was such a non-factor by now that it failed to cross my mind even in instances like this.

I did think a lot about the possible whys for such a trip, however, and while I really couldn’t say much for sure, what I began to say out loud to my wife and a few friends was, 

“I think… I’m going to say good-bye to my denomination.” 

Now while that wasn’t exactly a super logical statement, it was also not completely disconnected from a few certain things on the horizon that could have been construed as clouds. Six months earlier, I had filed an official complaint/report about a leader. There was a mediation process of sorts under way. There’d been an inquiry. But in no way did any of those present like some demise of the relationship was imminent. Perhaps some end lay beyond a bend in the road I could not see? I had no real ideas, but even if such an end was months off, I could easily appreciate how a loss like that would be best grieved properly.

Three days after the president’s video released, my denominational employment was terminated. Do we actually need reminders that His sovereignty is not limited by bends in the road? As if. 

But I wouldn’t experience the shock of the news for seven further days until the notice arrived via FedEx. No warning, hint, or discussion had preceded it. It contained one sentence of rationale. Nothing further has ever been added to that.

Clearly there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than I’d been privy to.

Suddenly, my good-bye trip had become über-pertinent.

A few asked why on earth I would consider even bothering with the situation any more––surely I was not still driving up there? But I figured that if the best I’d come up with was that this was good-bye, how could getting that irrevocably confirmed do anything but confirm my trip as well? 

I had to go. Fortunately, I did not take my motorcycle. (If you liked that sentence, take a moment to savor it, maybe print it out and stash it away, because you will never see it again.) I wasn’t in a good place, and driving a car was all I was going to be able to handle. The growing realizations about what people up the ladder must be believing about me… things that had never been explained to me… had left me the night before begging God for sleep for the fourth night in a row. 

Thankfully enough sleep came that by morning I felt I was okay to drive. IF the Psalms were playing. Anything else or nothing over the speakers left me rocking and jittery. But praise God, by Psalm 70 I had stabilized, and then had a car to myself for wonderful, wide hours of phone conversations. That night, at a childhood friend’s house, I slept in an unknown bed with an unknown pillow in a strange room of a strange house better than I’d slept in a week. Finally, tackling the final couple driving hours the next morning, I was back on the road to being myself again. 

_____________

At breakfast I was met by friends driving down just to be with me. When we arrived at the event together, I held back with hat, sunglasses, and covid mask, desperate to stay anonymous. While at the same time fighting to stave off wild imaginings about God engineering deliverance from our nightmare by sending some rescuer with more power than those who’d come against us. Foolishness.

I was there to say good-bye and nothing else. I took my moment alone in front of the demolition fence and reflected on my entire professional life. And felt nothing. Disappointing? Perhaps, but hardly surprising seeing as how I was standing in a parking lot I’d never been in looking at a building I’d never entered.

No catharsis, no tears, no word from above, no sense about the future, no anger, no self-pity. Silence.

“Well, it was really nice seeing you, Dann. We’re so glad we came to eat breakfast with you. We’re going to take off, now. You?”

“Actually, you guys go ahead. I’m going to find a spot at the edge of the parking lot for one more listen in case I’m still going to hear why He sent me up here. Thank you guys so much for coming. I will remember it for the rest of my life.”

I walked to the back of the parking lot and headed to a light pole where it looked like maybe I could sit down. 

Even before I’d gotten to it, He started in:

What if it wasn’t Me who told you to drive up here? What if it was just your imagination?

Yeah, and? I replied.

Oh, my. 

Apparently 2021 is irrelevant even in 2021, then?

Thirty years back, now, sitting there in my mind, even as my physical body is sitting here in the present. I already know his next question––and simultaneously my next answer.

How would you be?

I’d be fine. I’d be… totally fine…

BOOM.

See how far you’ve come? You’ve grown to absolutely know My voice. Along with knowing that it doesn’t matter about reaching 100% certainty about every thing every time, as that is not to be expected. It threatens nothing.

_____________

It truly did not matter to me if “You’re going to be at that” had turned out to be me––though I didn’t believe that––instead of Him. Without thinking much about it, I’d just acted anyway, allowing Him to direct from there. Neither my own faith/worthiness or his faithfulness/worthiness were connected to it like they had so very much been in my youthful episode. So what if I’d gotten this one wrong? I’d done the best I could with the spiritual discernment I possess at this time, and I did what I thought was obeying. If it turned out not to be? Okay, fine.  

The King had just reminded me that I have obeyed his voice over and over again in the fifteen years since my great wound concerning it healed over. Not to mention those times in the previous 15 where I’d stumbled through learning to navigate intimacy and abiding while still unresolved. 

And here, now––during the trials of 2021––I have yet to tell most people some of the ways He has at times spoken. Some of the most spectacular ways of my entire life. 

He has seen me. He knows it all. 

And He cares so much for me that he brought me nine hours from home to say something totally off topic that He declared was the topic. To sit me on a piece of hot concrete that would symbolize a piece of cold marble from thirty years earlier and grant one final healing touch to an old wound I hadn’t even realized could still use it. 

He hadn’t abandoned me then or ever. And isn’t it something how even our failures become integral pieces of how He fashions us into the child He is making us? Every part of me…100% redeemable.

I’d have driven nine hundred hours to be given a message like that.

I looked up and saw my car across the emptying parking lot. 

It was time to go home.