Of particular grief to me is the people I run into who cannot see God as He is because of the errors of His people and even their teachings.  I have been one of those on both ends.  I have been one who could not see God because of His people, and I am one who has hindered others from seeing God because of my mistakes in life and teaching.  The latter grieves me far greater.

Upon reading an excerpt from Michael Heiser’s book The Unseen Realm, I was moved by an experience I had with God fifteen years ago. 

The struggle I was having was an area in my life I was worried I was not in perfect obedience to God.  I worried I was in sin because of a particular scenario I kept being placed in.  I had been crying out to God for months to help me understand where I was, and where I needed to be.

Fifteen years ago, I had the following dream:

I was in a building that I knew to be a church with the name of Grace.  It was a huge complex, and I was wandering around because I wanted to get back to my hotel room.  I thought I could walk through this church (because it took up many city blocks) to get back to my hotel; but the church just kept going and going and going.  I wandered from floor to floor, through corridor after corridor.  I kept thinking I would follow the building around and down the blocks to my hotel, and then get to my hotel so I could get to my room.  But it kept going on and on and I kept walking on and on. 

In one large room there was a group practicing for a drama.  Down a hallway were doors after doors of ministry offices.  There were lobbies and foyers spread throughout and people milling here and there.  Finally, after walking for a long, long time, I was wondering if I’d ever reach the end so I could get out and get to my hotel.  I approached a fellow who was with a handful of other people in a foyer, and asked him if he’d show me how to get out so I could get to my hotel room. I heard myself tell him my room was 411.  He led me to an outside entry door and pointed to a row of buildings before me that looked like warehouse docks.  He pointed directly to one particular building and said, “See that building O?”  And there was an “O” marked on the building by the door.  He said to go through that building and out the opposite doorway.  When I got out, I was to reenter Grace at the nearest entry, and my hotel room was in that door.

The hotel was actually part of the church.

When I awoke, I began talking with God.  I had been telling Him over the past several months (as I was walking through this strange scenario that I was trying to discern), that I felt lost.  He spoke to me as I awoke, and said, “While you’ve felt like you were lost, you were lost in My grace.  You’ve never left My grace, Michelle.”

It was then that I realized God’s grace is vastly larger than anything we can imagine.  It goes on and on.  There are compartments and areas we know nothing about until we stumble upon or into them.  His grace is enormous.  Even when I felt like I had gone outside of the church grounds, I had not. 

Staying in a hotel indicated a temporary place for me.  Even in that temporary place, I was within His grace.  I have never forgotten that dream.  At times when I worry that I’ve strayed, haven’t held the straight and narrow, haven’t been abandoned to my Lord, I am reminded of my dream.  The vastness of His grace is beyond our understanding. 

God often speaks to me in numbers and symbols.  The hotel room being 411 was a message for me.  The building titled “O” was a message for me.  These messages help me understand God’s character, help me understand things in my life or circumstances, etc.  That particular year, and even years after, I had dreams of multiples of four.  I also had numerous encounters with eleven.  And sometimes I had them both together, as 411.  This was a personal message to me.  Numbers can mean different things depending on the context, and I had to seek God for years to understand what He was showing me over and over with this. 

I also knew the O was significant.  The building I was to enter was called O, and the door I was to go through was labeled O.  I searched for six years for the understanding for the O before I found it.  It happened when I was prompted to buy a book that broke up the books of the Bible and aligned them with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.  As I was reading this book, six years later, I read the following:

“In the Bible of Alard, the initial Letter of the Song of Songs is the “O” of the Latin phrase OSCVLETVR ME (Let him kiss me). It is drawn much larger than most illuminated Letters, taking up almost the entire width of the text column. The scribe filled the remaining vertical space with the rest of the first two words. Though it is hard to see in the reproduction, the two figures are labeled with the abbreviations XRS (Christus = Christ) and ECCLA (Ecclesia = Church). Christ covers His Bride with His cloak and their cheeks are intimately pressed together at the exact center of the tri-radiant halo so they share the Sign of Deity, suggesting the full presence of Christ in His Church and the fulfillment of God’s promise to make all believers “partakers in the Divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). I have little doubt the scribe thought it providential the initial “O” naturally accommodated an optimal representation of the union of Christ with His Bride embracing within an unbroken circle like a wedding ring. “

[The Bible of Alard is an illuminated manuscript of the Latin Vulgate from the eleventh century.  Eleventh century caught my attention.]  Here is the accompanying symbol O for the Song of Songs:

This is part of the reason I love God so much.  He weaves the present with the past and even the future, with full knowledge of our inmost being.  He knew I would be in a crucible of sorts in 2006, but would not have the understanding for the O until 2012.  So He gave me what I needed at that point (2006), but then prepared me over the next few years for understanding the building that I was specifically to enter:  the union of Christ with His Bride, and the intimacy of a bridegroom with his bride (let him kiss me…). 

Entering through the door of intimacy would lead me ultimately back to my room:  411, which is a story and message God has been steadily weaving throughout my life for fifteen years now, and of which I have only received parts of the whole. 

I share this because the world and the institutional church have done a grave disservice to the character of God.  We who are children of God, who wrestle against the flesh to achieve unity with Christ, have been misled to think we can somehow lose our position in Christ by mere sin or disobedience.  What a lie!  What a shame that this is something held over us, like a weight encumbering our very liberty of movement. 

Look at what John G. Lake said in his sermon “Reign as Kings”:

“This thing I am teaching you about our union with God is not known in the great body of Christians.  All they have is forgiveness of sin.  There is no actual union with God.  They do not know that the new birth is a real incarnation.  They do not know that they are as much the sons and daughters of God Almighty as Jesus is.  The great body of the Christian Church has no dominion, does not know it.  They have the most befogged concept of what God has done and what God is to them, and what they are to God.”

Nine years after the revelation of the O, God would give me the revelation of the 411.  I’m still sorting through that revelation.

I end quoting Michael Heiser, because it is the full circle for me on the liberating truth of God’s unfathomable grace.  May it set you free as it has me.

“The history of Israel’s kings illustrates the point.  King David was guilty of the worst of crimes against humanity in the incident with Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite (2 Sam 11).  He was clearly in violation of the law and deserving of death.  Nevertheless, his belief in who Yahweh was among all gods never wavered.  God was merciful to him, sparing him from death, though his sin had consequences for the rest of his life.  But there was no doubt that David was ever a believer in Yahweh and never worshiped another.  Yet other kings of Israel and Judah were tossed aside and both kingdoms sent into exile – because they worshiped other gods.  Personal failure, even of the worst kind, did not send the nation into exile.  Choosing other gods did.

“The same is true in the New Testament.  Believe the gospel means believing that Yahweh, the God of Israel, came to earth incarnated as a man, voluntarily died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sin, and rose again on the third day.  That is the content of our faith this side of the cross.  Our believing loyalty is demonstrated by our obedience to “the law of Christ” (1 Cor 9:21; Gal 6:2).  We cannot worship another.  Salvation means believing loyalty to Christ, who was and is the visible Yahweh.  There is no salvation in any other name (Acts 4:12), and faith must remain intact (Rom 11:17-24; Heb 3:19; 10:22, 38-39).  Personal failure is not the same as trading Jesus for another god – and God knows that.”

Our faith in God through Christ is the only prerequisite for being found in His perfect grace.  Trials, circumstances, even sin, do not expunge our position in grace, because it is found in the person of Christ.  If our faith is in Christ and Yahweh, and we have no other gods, we need not fear that we are lost in any capacity.  His Grace is able to keep us.