I’ve been told all your life to stay away from drugs, from alcohol, from tobacco. I’ve been told all my life the things to stay away from, to avoid…the sin that would mess me up and make God mad at me.
Why does it seem like we’re only good at pointing out the wrongness and criticizing the things that are broken? Is the point to stay away from the things that are damaging or is it to find the things that are LIFE, the way we were created to live?
I was created to be loved and to love, to know and be known. I crave intimacy. There are so many broken substitutes for love…shallow emotion, a craving for affirmation, lust, porn, cheap sex in an endless string of self-gratifying relationships. But if my focus is saying no to the substitutes, but not finding and getting the real thing I was designed to need, sooner or later I will settle for one of the substitutes. Crap food is better than starving to death.
I was created to do battle, to fight, to protect, to set free. But if I never find the war worth fighting, I will vent my aggression in ways that are at best a waste of time and at worst violently damaging to the people around me.
I was created to get high.
Just a few months ago I would have quickly rejected the suggestion of getting high. See, I know that’s WRONG…I’ve been told so all my life. Sure, I enjoy the occasional beer, but I can honestly say I’ve never been drunk in my life, much less under the influence of anything harder. I wanted to do the right thing…and getting drunk and high was definitely NOT a part of that. It’s right there in the Bible!
But secretly I would have wanted to try it. To experience something outside of normal, something so powerful that it shifts your whole perspective, supercharges your life for a few moments, pushes you into a new realm of just BEING…really who wouldn’t want that just a little?
I didn’t know how bad I did until I experienced it in Honduras two months ago.
Before the Race, I had heard about things like “falling out in the Spirit,” or “getting slain in the Spirit”…they were just Christianese terms for some weird things that happened in charismatic churches. I knew it happened and had decided to be open to the idea, but I had never seen anything like that with my own eyes.
And then one night in Honduras, in the middle of squad worship, I found myself lying in the middle of the floor, laughing uncontrollably.
It started with a few worship songs and some spontaneous encouraging words by my squad mates. I was in a place of simply enjoying the Father for who He is and I kept praying that He would do something NEW with me. Then Sidney Ann Fowler started to speak, and it was like her words were a Holy Spirit flamethrower…out of her mouth flowed passion and truth and life and the whole atmosphere shifted.
That’s when I started to see the Father…I was in His throne room but He wasn’t on His throne. He was standing in front of me, looking me straight in the eyes, straight into my spirit, with a huge grin on His face. I stood there smiling back at Him and had a massive urge to lie on the floor. What? Lay on the floor? I had never seen this happen in my home church. Was this even a thing? In the moment I decided this was about me and the Father and I didn’t really care what anyone else thought about it.
So I laid out face down on the floor and immediately saw my heavenly Dad laughing. He was looking me in the eyes, laughing uncontrollably. It was like He had heard the greatest joke of all time, but it was more than that…it was a laugh of pure enjoyment. In the laugh there was a question “Isn’t this good?”
“Yes, this is very good.”
His laugh triggered something inside of me and the only thing I could do was laugh back. It was also a laugh of pure enjoyment…a son laughing with his Dad about the best inside joke in the universe.
So I laughed. And laughed. And laughed.
I don’t know exactly how long I laid there on the floor laughing, but I do know that at some point I rolled over and saw one of my squad mates standing beside me, and all I could think was “I wonder what would happen if I touched her?” So I reached up and touched the back of her calf…and she collapsed like I had shot her.
Laughing.
Honestly a couple months ago, seeing a people sprawled out on the floor in the middle of a worship set and laughing uncontrollably would have offended the crap out of me. I would probably be asking the same questions some of you are asking now. “Surely the Holy Spirit is more orderly and dignified than this? Why would you even want that? That seems so unnecessary. My relationship with God is just fine without all of that.”
My response now is this: why would you want to live any other way? Why would you not want to experience the joy and humor and laughter of your heavenly Dad in a way that completely wrecks you?
I know I do. Because there is absolutely nothing like being drunk with the presence of the Spirit and infecting others with His joy at the same time. The high I’ve secretly wanted to experience my whole life is better than I could ever describe to you.
In the weeks since that moment, I haven’t been taken down by the Holy Spirit giggles again. But you better believe I continue to experience the incredibly intimate and satisfying relationship I have with my Abba Father. And I continue to pass on His fullness to others just by being around them.
So now I notice that the times I start to slip into bad habits and selfish responses to situations, it’s almost always because I haven’t gotten my Holy Spirit fix lately. It’s less about trying to live better and more about just living in His presence.
It’s a good life. You should try it.
Go get high.
