I don’t know about you, but 2021 was a year unlike any other. Much more took place in my own world than “just” the pandemic. My soul literally underwent a bloody crucifixion. With that, I pray that “I” (my egoic self) no longer lives, but Christ (Jesus Christ of Nazareth, crucified and yet Risen) lives in me. From February of 2021 until this present moment I have been fully immersed in suffering. No need to even go into details, many, many people I’ve talked to have undergone their own. Perhaps this will resonate.

I had no idea what “to do” when my world came crashing down. In a way, I still do not know what “to do”. I am learning it is ok to be human because God was. I literally felt like a man nailed to a cross crying out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” at times. What happened to the high of “tetelestai”?

I was very focused on the “finished” works of Christ. Perhaps I had a perverted image of what that all looked like and was still immersed in a form of my Pentecostal roots of triumphalism. He said it was finished. A victorious gospel. Yet I was lost. I surely did not “feel” whole or “saved”. I sat in the suffering, with God, sometimes/most times with God but ignoring God and just isolating. But handfuls of times He would pierce through that moment and arose things within me. In a strange turn of events (the wind of the Spirit will blow where she wills), I found myself, a walking dead man, encountering/re-encountering LIFE at a funeral of all places. Bizarre. But just like God. In the tomb is where He does His best work.

In and through the tomb He tramples down death by death, and upon me upon us, upon us all in the tombs, bestowing life/LIFE. That was just prior to Christmas. I have been in therapy the whole time, immersed in this thing with God, and found God/Christ is fully immersed in this with me. The scary part was I found He wasn’t the God of my Pentecostal roots per se. There was no NOW word of faith that would appear like a genie in a bottle, waving a magic wand, and BAM, breakthrough came, and all my cares are cast away. Nope. I was nailed to a cross. There, I encountered ONE nailed to a cross with me, and later paradoxically IN me, and all of my egoic “principalities and powers” met that ONE. Through grit and grime, blood sweat and tears, pain, and shame, condemnation and suffering I encountered THE ONE who entered into all of the things listed therein, with ME, in ME, and there was no BAM magic wand. There was “follow ME”.

Last Saturday 1/22/22, while sitting and reading A More Christlike Word by Brad Jersak, I had heard in my heart simply the passage John 20:22. Here is John 20:22: When He had said this, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.