The "Miktams" of God

By David Hobbs

“Miktam” is a Hebrew word in the Psalms used to describe a special kind of psalm. Used only 6 times, it introduces psalms that recount David’s most harrowing experiences as a God-follower, where his life was in immediate peril and where only a miraculous intervention by God could save him. These were experiences like the one described by Paul in 2 Cor. 1:8 where he talks about “the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.”
One of the places David uses this term is Psalm 56 where he recounts the time he fled to Gath out of fear of King Saul only to be captured by Philistine soldiers who recognized him as the slayer of Goliath, their hometown hero. They brought him to the king of Gath who could have ordered his immediate execution. David was so terrified by his imminent peril that the Bible says he feigned insanity, drooled into his beard, and “scrabbled on the doors of the gate” (1 Sam. 21:13 KJV). This is the context in which he wrote Psalm 56.
But the whole meaning of the word “Miktam” is not just a scary remembrance. It literally means “engraving” and spiritually it refers to a time when the dark setting of the dangerous experience serves only to highlight the bright jewel of the love of God manifested in the miraculous deliverance. Therefore, the whole episode is remembered not as a traumatic event, but as a golden demonstration of the faithfulness, love, and power of God in the wondrous escape. As such, it becomes one of our most precious “memories of grace,” forever engraved on our heart; from which we can draw comfort and solace again and again as new challenges arise.
One of my most precious Miktams occurred in April of 2006. Some of us from our church were in L.A. to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Azusa St. revival. I wasn’t planning to go because I was in the throes of getting my book Out of the Fire ready for publication. Since I was self-publishing there were lots of details of design and formatting that normally the publisher would handle, the final editing on the content that normally an editor would handle, copyright procedures, permissions to secure--the list seemed to go on and on. The whole process kept taking longer than expected and I had to keep moving the publication date up, a month at a time.
Therefore, as tempted as I was by the prospect of spending a week seeking the presence of God and learning about one of the great revivals of all time, I really didn’t want to lose focus on what I was doing. But then I was told that someone had paid for Marcine and my way, and it didn’t seem right to refuse (good thing, because it later turned out to be our pastor and his wife who were our benefactors). So there we were at the L. A. Convention Center with thousands of others, spending time worshipping and getting inspired about the moving of the Spirit of God.
I have discovered a pattern at such getaway events. I always expect a time of great blessing and experience of God’s presence, but the actual pattern is an initial blessing, then a time of intense dealing in my life by the Spirit of God, a breakthrough, and then more blessing. So after a day or two of good meetings and spiritual experiences, I began to “go through it” over my book. One of the classes I was taking in the morning session was on writing and publishing for God. The classes were good, but they began to dredge up the same old demons I had fought so long in the writing of the book, and even back to the writing of my first book, Waiting for the Dawn, where they almost destroyed me. They involved motive—why was I writing? It was a catch 22 situation. The accusation was that I wanted to write for me, to be famous, to be honored, to be somebody, to exalt self. The only way I could prove that this wasn’t so was to not write, to lay it all down. “See, I don’t need this.” But after awhile I would feel that old unction again. And when I prayed about what God wanted me to do and how I could enter fully into His calling for my life I would sense the Holy Spirit ask, “Whatever happened to that book you were writing for Me?”
But there didn’t seem to be any way I could purify my motives. When I started to work on it again, the secret pride would come back, the dreams of grandeur. I disowned them, rebuked them, rejected them, but couldn’t get rid of them. I couldn’t still the accusing voices because my sense of honesty to an extent compelled me to agree with them.
Now these classes were bringing all these issues to the surface again and I was miserable. The third morning I stayed in the main auditorium instead of going to a class. They were holding a workshop on worship and I thought maybe in the presence of God in worship I could find some answers. But the weight got heavier and heavier. I moved over to a section of seats where I could be alone. I knelt at a seat while the music was playing and it was as if all these voices rose up to surround and mock me—all my inadequacies, inabilities, failings as a writer and as a person, my barrenness as a Christian, the hopelessness of my life--the whole kit and caboodle was slowly spinning around me, mocking and accusing me. It was as if I was in the middle of a whirlpool, a vortex, surrounded by the voices of my failures. “Wow,” I thought to myself, “this is the kind of stuff that drives men to insanity and suicide.” I found Marcine, who was not far away. “I’m in a vortex,” I said, “surrounded by accusing voices; pray for me.”
In a daze, I got up and wandered closer to the front of the auditorium, where the music was coming from. I tried to get as close as possible to the music. People had seats staked out in the front but I found the nearest unclaimed seat and stood there to worship. I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t sing or even speak. I just stood there with my arms outstretched to God and tears running down my face.
Finally the song was over, we all sat down and the musician started to teach on worship. Almost as soon as I sat down I fell asleep from exhaustion. I awoke just as his teaching was ending, having missed the entire lesson, but feeling better.
On the trip home the subject of the book just seemed to come up, and I was able to talk freely about what I was usually too embarrassed to discuss. The experience proved to a turning point in the battle with my demons that finally enabled the book to come forth.

The Soul Vs. the Spirit

By David Hobbs

Heb. 4:12--For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit . . .

One thing my recent gospel trip to India made plain is the necessity of discerning between ministering in the soulish realm and the spirit realm. I find there are many misconceptions about the two. Most ministers assume they are ministering in the spirit realm but most ministry is really done in the soulish realm. A charismatic misconception is that whatever is energetic and loud must be spirit realm. The high church misconception on the other hand, is that the spirit realm must be quiet and reverent—anything loud and exuberant must be soulish (hence “out of the spirit”).
My purpose here is not to clear up all the misconceptions and provide the definitive answer to this question—discerning between the soul and the spirit is exceedingly difficult at times, something only the Spirit of God and the Word of God (see above Scripture) can do. But we need to at least recognize the problem and try to discern in our own lives between the two.
The ideal is for all ministry—all worship, praise, preaching, testifying, singing, etc. to be done in the spirit. After all, the Father seeks those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23). So how do we know when we’re doing that? When we’re singing really loudly? When our flesh breaks out in goose bumps?
Here’s a common scenario repeated in charismatic churches across Christendom every Sunday. The minister comes out to stir up the crowd: “Who do you love tonight?”
“Jesus.”
“Who?”
“Jesus.”
“Who?”
“Jesus!”
“Then let’s give a big hand to Jesus!” (Everyone claps).
I’m not saying this is necessarily wrong. I’m just asking if it’s soulish or spirit? Most people would answer that it’s spirit because it’s concerning Jesus and it's done in a church. But how is it different from the following?
The world knows how to stir up a crowd (remember that the realm of the soul is the mind, the will, and the emotions). Every good band has a warm-up band preceding it; every TV game show with live audience has its warm-up announcer who comes out 10 minutes before show time to prep the audience; every sports team has its cheerleaders to whip up the crowd’s enthusiasm. Therefore since the Holy Spirit is not given to the world but only to the church, how can this be the realm of the spirit? It’s not. It’s the realm of the soul. It’s necessary to awaken emotions, to focus attention, to get people “in the mood” for the upcoming event, but it’s not at all ministering in the spirit, even when done in the church using the name of Jesus! Many churches rarely get beyond this soulish realm in their song services or preaching—it’s all done with human emotion and soul-stirring techniques.
The Bible has a lot to say about the soulish realm. David often had to command his soul to awake, or worship God, get out of the dumps, etc., so dealing in the soulish realm is often necessary. But the soulish realm is basically man-focused and it runs on human soul power. While we are told to love God with all our “soul,” we’re also told to worship God in “spirit.” The spirit realm is God-focused and Holy Spirit empowered. It’s the Holy Spirit moving through us to send worship up to God. Then how do we get beyond the soulish, human realm to that of the spirit?
The Holy Spirit is pictured in Scripture as a dove, while the soul of man is like a bulldozer. Head to head the bulldozer predominates every time while the Holy Spirit flies away. So we must learn to be very sensitive to the person of the Holy Spirit. We achieve that from studying the Word and by spending time in His presence, learning His personality and His ways.
I’ve seen preachers spend congregational worship time in talking with ushers and elders, carrying on church business, etc. but not in touch at all with what was happening in the spirit in worship, and then when suddenly thrust in front of the crowd say automatically,

“Who do you love tonight?”
“Jesus.”
“Who?” (see above) . . .

when the people, under the power of the Holy Spirit had already moved well beyond that point into the spirit realm of love and sweet devotion. Now they were being called back into “pep rally” mode by a minister who was moving by rote with no idea of where the spirit was in his church.

Here’s an idea: where there’s sweat involved, it’s soul. We see a picture of that in Ezekiel 44:17-18. When the priests entered the inner court of the temple (where they ministered exclusively to God) they were to wear no woolen garments or anything that would make them sweat. Because soul realm ministry has a basis in human activity; it requires effort, it produces sweat, fatigue and even burn-out, and is inherently not pleasing to God because of its tainted human origin: man in the flesh cannot please God [Rom. 8:7-8].
Ministry in the spirit doesn’t produce any sweat because in a sense it doesn’t require any effort. It requires opening up and yielding to the Holy Spirit and letting Him flow through (it can be just as loud and exuberant, or even more so, but the source of the power is not man but God).
I tell people that the more in the spirit I get when I worship, the more relaxed I become. When I begin and I’m trying to “prime the pump,” I’m somewhat tense, forcing myself to concentrate, sing loudly, and get my whole body involved (this is the “sacrifice” realm where the Bible talks about “sacrific[ing] thank offerings” [Paslm 50:23] and “the sacrifice of praise--the fruit of lips that confess his name.”[Heb. 13:15]. A sacrifice requires an act of the will—so it’s still the soulish realm). But when the Holy Spirit responds and begins to overtake me, I relax completely and let Him surge through me full strength. Now “it’s no longer I that liveth, but Christ that liveth in me.” [old song lyrics taken from Gal. 2:20]. Those are the deeply satisfying times in worship, where it’s all Him and no me. Then I can truly soar on the heights; then I’ve reached my highest calling in God!
Soulish praying in a corporate setting goes on and on. It’s loud, monopolizing, and it’s usually alone; nobody else listening joins in. But prayer in the spirit draws prayer out of those listening as the anointing of the Holy Spirit in the pray-er touches and quickens the Holy Spirit in them. You can tell when the pray-er hits something close to the heart of God because responses rise spontaneously from the others and rise as a corporate ball of prayer to God.
Likewise in free-singing corporate worship. The soul worshipper wants to be louder than the others and call attention to him/her self. The spirit worshipper listens to everybody else in the room and lets the Holy Spirit flowing from them touch things in his/her own spirit and bring them out in his worship. The worship is organic with no person singled out, but each person briefly rising above the rest and then drawing responses from Holy Spirit in others who then rise above the others, creating a beautiful fabric of worship with each contributing and none predominating. The whole focus is on Jesus anyway.

Experience God In Prayer

By Annie Hickey

David posed this question to me recently: "Do you have an experience where you encountered God in prayer?" Wow!! I had to think about the best way to relate that to the people who might read this. I spent a few days contemplating the challenge. As that was going on, I received a phone call from an attorney I had worked with in the past. He had represented me in a very unusual litigation matter that had been on-going for a couple of years. Although he was not representing me at the time I received the phone call. I need to back this story up a little. The attorney had a legal assistant working for him by the name of Denise. Denise and I had grown very close during the litigation process. Denise has a wonderfully calming voice and a soothing personality. I think that is a real gift. I've never had that. I've prayed all my adult life to be empowered as a woman of quiet spirit. Instead, God seems to give me more boisterous personality with each passing milestone. It reminds me that he has a real sense of humor. But I digress. There were times because of the length of time I worked with this particular attorney in litigation that we had grown very comfortable in our conversations. You know what they say about familiarity? It breeds contempt. I often think of this in terms of families. When people are close to each other, they say things to each other where given exactly the same circumstance with another individual, they would exercise much more restraint or choose words more carefully. The attorney and I had reached this stage early on. When I would be particularly frustrated, Denise just offered such a calming influence that my frustration and anger would just dissipate.

I showed up in the law office two years ago just before Christmas to bring gifts to the attorney and to Denise. I thought a good will showing was certainly in order. Things had been a little strained. I had arrived there from another legal meeting that had been extremely emotional and had gotten what I felt was horrible news in transit. My mind frame was very strained at this point. I entered the office noticing immediately that there was someone else at the front desk that would normally have been occupied by Denise. Upon being shown to the attorney's office, I asked about where Denise might be. I explained that I had brought her a special gift for Christmas.

The attorney began to tell me an unbelievable story. He said that Denise was being deported to Haiti where she was originally from. I had not known she was from Haiti. Both as a Christian and as a person with some political knowledge, I knew Haiti to be a place of social and political unrest and poverty. I also knew that often that environment was very unfair and unforgiving. The attorney further explained that Denise had been attempting to take a trip somewhere that required a passport when something from her past in Haiti had been discovered. It was very likely that the discovered thing was not even true. Crimes and such matters were very often fabricated there. However, Denise had been arrested and sent to an INS detention center to await a hearing that would result in her being sent back to Haiti. Denise's children were born in South Florida and as such were American Citizens. Denise was divorced and I was told she had enough time to get her children to her Sister's home prior to being detained.

I sat there devastated and dejected. I immediately asked what was being done to help. I was told there was nothing to be done. I was told that it was not possible for me or anyone else to help in this situation. I left the office in shock almost immediately. Denise would not even be allowed to apply to return to this Country on a visa for at least 10 years. Being a single mother, my heart broke for her. How could she be torn like this from her children? I knew her to be always caring and concerned. I knew her to be a very diligent worker. It hardly seemed fair. I began making phone calls before I even reached the car. I called anyone of political influence I knew and asked about how to go about helping. I had people making phone calls. I had people with political influence offering to contact the attorney. I was told that there was hope if acted on fast enough. I felt lost. My friend, Doug who had been with me both in Miami and in the attorney's office took time out to pray with me for Denise's safety and for the impossibility of overcoming the government machine that had been set in motion.

Despite our efforts, I never heard of any outcomes nor was I able to track the course of Denise's circumstance. My heart was truly burdened for this young lady. Doug and I spoke of her often and prayed for her often. I could not help but to feel that I had somehow let her down. I was somewhat angry at the attorney for not doing more to help. He was an attorney for crying out loud! Surely he could have filed a motion or something.

Between this past Thanksgiving (2007) and Christmas, my church was sending a missions team to Haiti. I was so excited when the trip was announced. I was determined to be a part of the team so that I could find Denise and reassure her that God had not forgotten her. I was hoping to be a bridge between her and her children also. I figured that was the least I could do. My health had been of some concern. I was recovering from something life-threatening at the time and although I had made significant progress, my physician said it just was not wise to make the trip. I reluctantly agreed to stay behind. I was disappointed and felt that I was letting Denise down all over again. I could do nothing more, so I prayed. "God, you have laid such a burden on my heart for this young woman. Let me never forget to lift up her situation to you. Put someone in her path who can help." I had told Denise's story to several people and I gathered prayer warriors to help in lifting up her situation. I knew that God would make good of this even if I did not know how he would manage that.

This brings us back to the phone call I received last week. I was shocked to see the attorney calling me as identified by my caller ID. I had at some point after Denise's departure moved the case to local lawyer where I lived. The attorney who had represented me in the past worked and lived several hours away from where I lived. He was calling me to ask how I was being treated up here by the attorneys and just get an update on how my litigation was developing. During the course of the conversation, he dropped the most wonderful bomb on me. "You'll never guess who's back working for me?", he teased. "Kathy Mehaffey, I thought she was practicing real estate law now?" I countered. "No...not at all. I think she's doing well though.", he replied. "Then I'm afraid I am not going to have a clue who might be working for you that I would recognize.", I answered honestly. "It's Denise.", he said with excitement in his voice. I stumbled over my own brain at this point. I could not even format a response. That's not possible. I must have misunderstood him. "But Denise was deported to Haiti...", I exclaimed in utter disbelief. "Well...funny thing...she got up to the INS hearing and the judge listened to her story and sent her home. Told her to go be with her children." "That just doesn't happen. " I exclaimed. He said he knew but it had.

Immediately, right then, I felt God's presence in every aspect of my life and my own situation. I felt him right in the vehicle with me. I knew that the burden he had given me for this dear woman was done so that she would be constantly brought to his throne room. I knew that while I had not been able to physically intervene, he had given me a much more significant role. He had wanted me to be undiverted from the ever important task of prayer over her situation. Prayer does not just have it's place in our lives, it should be the foundation of our everyday existence. Prayer keeps us in God's presence. The further we go in our walk, the more our lives should become a means of breathing prayers as well as speaking or writing them. Prayer is the means by which we share our lives with our Creator's.

My own story, as I am sure your is as well, is sometimes unbelievable and incredible. I am still amazed after all the places I have walked to find that God is so concerned with my everyday life. To say that I am thankful for all he is and all he has done is a weak choice of words compared to how my heart really feels. We experience God in prayer and in his answers. Experience him today.

Prayerfully Yours,

Annie Hickey

Author of Faith You Can Borrow