Memorization: I end this paper where I began—my experience that God is real through Scripture memorization.
I finished my first interim pastorate on April 18, 1999. I had learned a lot during that first interim pastorate, and felt that I had finally had a “successful” pastorate, thanks to my new definition of success as a Tugboat: “To help God succeed.” I sensed that the Torrance First Baptist Church was prepared for its next permanent senior pastor. Its pastoral staff was no longer conflicted. On the 39 mile drive home that last Sunday in Torrance, I prayed about my progress in being an effective pastor, “Lord, please don’t leave me where I am. Help me keep growing.”
I was still working for Promise Keepers, and had accepted an invitation to be the speaker at an upcoming Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast in Ridgecrest, California (125 miles from my home in Tustin) two weeks later, May 4, which was that year’s National Day of Prayer. The event was sponsored by the local Kiwanis Club, which also asked me to speak at their monthly lunch meeting that same day. I had also agreed to represent Promise Keepers by attending an evening prayer event later that day at an Evangelical Free Church in Huntington Beach. As I drove home from Crestridge, I felt tired and decided to skip the evening event in Huntington Beach since I wasn’t speaking there like at the earlier events in Crestridge.
Upon arriving home around 4 pm, I found myself locked out of my house. I had the key to the regular lock on the front door, but had given the dead bolt key to my son Paul, who was a youth ministry intern on the staff of our home American Baptist church, twelve miles away in Fountain Valley. He was at church when I arrived home. My wife Sharon was out of town on a Woman of Faith trip. I called Paul and suggested we have dinner near the church, so he could give me the dead bolt key. After dinner, I started home but this thought crossed my mind: “I’m close to the Huntington Beach church, so I might as well go to their meeting.” So I did.
At the end of the evening, feeling exhausted after the long day, I made a beeline for the door. But someone tapped me on my shoulder. Turning around, I saw a woman I had not met before, who said, “I didn’t want to come to this meeting, but God told me there was somebody I was supposed to pray for. You’re it!” This woman, I later learned, was from the Vineyard church in Anaheim that had been started and pastored by John Wimber until he died 18 months earlier. I allowed the woman to pray for me. She put her hand on my chest and prayed. When she was done, she left. Just as happened to me in London in 1984, as soon as the woman finished praying I felt a warmth in my heart—God’s love for me. It was an awesome feeling! I drove 15 miles home, no longer feeling exhausted. I delayed going to bed, in order to not lose this feeling. The next morning, the feeling was gone. But I woke up with a sense that I was supposed to memorize Scripture. I also sensed which Scriptures to memorize that day. This daily awareness of what verses I should memorize continued for the next three months, around the theme of the third person of the Trinity–God the Holy Spirit and his work. I felt a special enablement to memorize more verses per day than usual, and ended up memorizing 400 verses in three months—about 5 per day. Since then I have continued memorizing most mornings, at a slower pace—about one new verse every five days, which is 4% of the pace I had during those three anointed months.
When that special 1999 season of memorization ended three months later in August, two things happened in quick succession:
- An American Baptist Church in Alhambra, 35 miles from Tustin, asked me to interview for their interim pastor position shortly after their senior pastor resigned. It turned out that the Chairman of the Alhambra church was the brother of the Chairman of the Torrance church. Hired by their Interim Pastor Search Team, I began my second interim pastorate there on Labor Day Sunday, 1999. It lasted until February, 2001 and left me once again feeling like a “successful” tugboat. My new, positive attitude about pastoring was reinforced one day in 2000 as I drove to church after working a full day of hospice. I was on the 710 freeway, approaching the church, when a commercial for an employment agency started on my radio: “If you love what you do, you are truly alive.” I responded, “That’s me!” I thanked God for allowing me to earn a living by doing what I love—being a tugboat as a hospice chaplain and as an interim pastor! I felt truly alive, with great personal fulfillment as a Tugboat pastor and chaplain.
- Three weeks before starting my second interim pastorate in Alhambra, I was meditating, early one morning, on a passage I had recently memorized: Ephesians 2:12-22. Suddenly I had a Eureka! moment: It felt like a revelation was given to me of a deeper meaning than I had ever understood for Ephesians 2:15: “His (Jesus’) purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both to God through the cross.” It felt like God was giving me new insight into the centrality of the incarnation of Christ: that when he (God the Son) was conceived by the Holy Spirit as a human being in his mother Mary’s womb, it was the beginning of what the Bible calls “the new creation“: The Creator of our world (Jesus: John 1;3) starting a new creation by creating himself the first member and head of a new, superior human race. Intuitively, I immediately saw a connection to 2 Corinthians 5:17: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, new things have come.” I also sensed that God was giving me the assignment to research this topic. This sense has never left me, and I have been focused on unpacking the meaning of what I now call the New Creation incarnation of Christ for more than 24 years. All kinds of additional insights have come to me about the incarnation (God the Creator merging with his creation by being born in human flesh) being the start of the New Creation, about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, and about what the New Creation’s future new earth and new heaven will be like for those who themselves have become new creations “in Christ” by their faith in him as their Savior and Lord.
This experience reminded me of the Apostle Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:17-18: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” It culminated three months during which I felt anointed and guided in memorizing 400 Scripture verses, starting with prayer at a meeting neither I nor the woman who prayed for me wanted to attend: “I didn’t want to come to this meeting, but God told me I’m supposed to pray for someone. You’re it!”
CONCLUSION: What started for me as faith without experience on August 2, 1971 has now become a rock-solid affirmation–based on the experiences of God that I have reported above–of what the prophet Ezekiel recorded God saying 78 times in Ezekiel’s book: “Then they will know that I am the Lord.” Once again I say with confidence and thanksgiving, because God has allowed me to experience his faithfulness in guiding and providing, that I know that God is real!
I thank you Lord for your faithfulness in helping me know from experience that you are Lord, and for giving me great personal fulfillment as you promised in John 15:11: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete!”
INVITATION: This blog, New Creation People, picks up where “My Story: How I Know From Experience That God Is Real” ends: sharing the results of my 22 years of research into the new creation incarnation of Jesus Christ, in one article on each of five topics: The New Creation (Article 1: “Jesus: Creator, Member and Head of A New Human Race“), The New Humanity (Article 2: “Your Greatest Promotion”), Join The New Humanity (Article 3: “How To Become A Member Of The New Humanity In Christ”), the New Self (Article 4: Your New Self: God’s Presence in His New Temple”) , and The New Heaven (Article 5: “When the future new Earth Is Promoted With You Above The Highest Heaven”). I now will write other articles about New Creation life in Christ, and I will start doing short videos, also. I invite you to read and listen to my efforts to articulate what I have learned since 1999 about these topics, and to give your feedback–on this blog or on my personal email: pastorpaulbarnes@gmail.com.