The Presence of God

I picked up a handful of books to read on holiday, and began with "I dared to call Him Father" by Bilquis Sheikh, the true story of a Pakistani noblewoman who searched for God and was called through dreams by John the Baptist and Jesus into the Kingdom. Bilquis shares her journey, learning the delight of resting in God's presence and how to remain in His presence. This set the stage nicely for the next book I turned to, Selwyn Hughes' "Understanding the Presence of God". I can recommend both of these to anyone looking to deepen her discipleship. Meanwhile I continued to read through the New Testament. Sunday morning, the day of my journey home, I read Acts chapter 18, stopping when I reached verse 18: 'Paul stayed on in Corinth for some time. Then he left the brothers and sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. Before he sailed, he had his hair cut off at Cenchrea because of a vow he had taken.' This last sentence particularly caught my attention and my curiosity. I thought about Jesus saying that we shouldn't swear but to let our yes be yes and our no to mean no. (Matthew 5:33-37). Ok, Paul probably hadn't been present in body at the Sermon on the Mount so hadn't physically heard Jesus speak these words, but nonetheless one gathers Jesus gave him a pretty thorough grounding in the Spirit – yet here was Paul making a vow which seemed important enough for the writer to include in the narrative, yet not so important we're told what the vow was. "So what was that all about, Lord?" I asked, and left the question with Him.

Sunday evening I went to the Prayer Meeting at the Beacon. Simon began by reading Psalm 76 and inviting everyone to say aloud what had caught their attention in the Psalm. For me, it was the first part of verse 11: 'Make vows to the Lord your God and fulfil them;' - I explained about my reading from Acts and the question I'd had. Mercedes' attention had also been drawn to this verse, and she brought some words of wisdom from Ecclesiastes 5:5: 'It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfil it.'

All this talk about vows set me wondering: had I made a vow and not kept it, perhaps? Was this a gentle reminder, a gentle prompting from the Spirit? Even as I asked the question inwardly, a rush of joy bubbled up and the memory came to mind of a time nearly 30 years ago when I promised God that if I could meet a man to whom I could imagine being married, then I would worship Him as He wanted to be worshipped. God had done His part within a year, but at last here I was, with a sincere heart worshipping God, and His Spirit was affirming to me that my vow was fulfilled. Into my mind came the words "Your healing is complete". Alleluia!