THE LAST WORD

Letter from God

The Last Word
By Ole Anthony, with Skippy R.
Issue #193, May/June 2004
During the first few years after I became a believer, I got messages from God.
OK, sure. You're thinking Ole of Arcadia. But it wasn't quite like that. Sometimes these words would come at times of crisis. Other times they came out of left field and at odd times.
Always they were words of great comfort, althugh often the tone was one of chastisement and seemed to be directed not only to me but the Church at large.
These messages were a support to me when I felt virtually alone and struggling with a faith that didn't seem to fit into any of the ecclesiastical structures I was presented with.
This was not great literature. It was in my own "voice." And it wasn't quite poetry. (Otherwise I could talk about all my favorite poetry terms, like assonance, synecdoche and enjambment.)
No, it was more like a prophecy. But, really, just how do you explain "hearing voices?" There's probably a lower circle of purgatory for people who publish their conversations with God – maybe somewhere between bad schizophrenic poets and presumptuous prophets.
On the other hand, every believer surely must have experiences similar to these, if only to escape from periods of darkness back into the light.
About three months after my conversion experience, in the spring of 1972, I found myself in a position that I could never have imagined.
I was homeless, and living under a bridge in west Dallas. It was just after dark and I was getting cold and hungry but not yet desperate enough to go to a homeless shelter.
The essential takeaway from the night I became a believer, or more accurately when God "revealed His Son in me," was that I could never again help myself or lean on my own arm of understanding to meet my own needs. So in those intervening three months, I had walked away from everything I had been doing.
All my assets had been invested in projects – a ski resort in Colorado, off-shore oil exploration, a movie, a national television series and other "deals." When I neglected all these projects, all the assets either disappeared or went to my partners and there I was, broke, homeless and hungry.
There were several other homeless with me under the bridge. I listened to them talk about how they could fix the world if they were president and all the things they could do if they were just given a break.
I looked at them and my own miserable condition and began to think that maybe I had misunderstood the conversion experience. Maybe I had lost my mind. Maybe my "God experience" was all wrong.
I sat there under the bridge and totally emptied myself from what was going on around me and in me and humbly asked God to reveal His will.
I didn't hear an audible voice but from somewhere deep inside I heard these words:

"You have received Me. But now I see your loneliness, I see your fears, I see your guilt and frustrations. I see your endless search for love and fulfillment.
"All this must be in order for you to come to the end of your own understanding. Then you can hear My voice.
"Listen carefully amid the noise of the world and you will hear: I love you. I shed My blood to make you clean. You are simply a vessel for My new creation, so believe it is true.
"You are lovely in My eyes and I created you to be exactly as you are. Do not criticize yourself, or get down for not being perfect in your own eyes. That leads only to frustration.
"I want you to trust only Me, one step, one day, one second at a time.
"Dwell in My power and My love and be free. Be yourself, always. Don't allow other people's opinions to run you. I will guide you if you let Me; but take your eyes off yourself.
"Be aware of My presence in everything. I give you patience, love, joy and peace. No one else can. Look not at cause and effect or principles for answers, look only to Me in all things. But, take your eyes totally off yourself.
"I lead, I change, I make; but never when you are trying. I cannot fight your efforts. Be not concerned with yourself. I will change you without your knowing it. I am your perfect Shepherd.
"Let Me have the joy of making you like Christ and lead you home.
"You are to love yourself and love others simply because I love you. My will is perfect, My love is sufficient. I will supply your every need with no effort on your part.
"I love you."

I "knew that I knew" that I had heard clearly and distinctly from the Father. I knew that I had heard correctly that I could never again help myself. I knew that His faithfulness would always be there if I got out of the way. And I found out that the Bible confirms it for all of us.
I knew that because of His humility, He could not occupy His temple if I was there. And maybe most importantly, I knew that for the rest of my life I must live in weakness.
I have failed Him many times since then. And each time, by His grace, I have been able to repent and leave myself behind.
A few years later another word came at an odd time. I was asked to be a guest on the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship television program, called Good News.
Demos Shakarian, the founder and host of the show, introduced me with great fanfare and subsequent applause from the audience.
He was a short but dynamic man and he reached up and slapped me on the shoulder and said, "And what has the Lord done for you today, Brother Anthony?"
I said, "He has messed up my life today and every day since I have known Him, because He is not interested in my life, He is interested only in the revelation of His Son in me."
There was silence from the audience and Mr. Shakarian. That pretty much ended the program. However, I received hundreds of supportive letters from those in the television audience who, like me, were weak. They heard the message, too.
These "messages" are not unique to me, of course. Christians have been "taking no thought" of what they will say and hearing the voice of God for centuries. Sometimes it got them killed.
An old Celtic prayer is a good example. It still has power, although the author is unknown:

Oh Jesus Christ, Thou Son of God!
My own eternal self!
Live Thou Thy Life in me.
Do Thou Thy will in me.
Be Thou made flesh in me.
I have no will but Thine.
I have no self but Thee.
O Jesus Christ, Thou Son of God!"

May His life, and His Word, be made flesh in us all today.


Ole's morning bible study is available here.