Texas Gathering, Part Four
Applying the Point of Tension
We’re talking about the steps to create the point of tension; to create a down flow of spiritual energy or attention of lives higher than ourselves. What are additional steps we can take?
Response: I remember you telling us the story when you were a kid and healed a classmate from MS using the name of Jesus Christ. Was a point of tension involved?
JJ: The point of tension in that situation, created there was this. I was sixteen years old and had just been reading in the scriptures about the power of faith and how the prophets of ancient times were able to do these great miracles. I was thinking to myself, “Why don’t we see this in the churches today? We don’t see anything today like the ancient prophets did.” I was thinking that as I was walking home then saw a friend of mine who had been struck with multiple sclerosis a couple weeks previously. She was about a year younger than I was, about fifteen. I saw her but she didn’t see me. I looked in her yard and she was hobbling on these crutches and really struggling to get into her house. I really felt sorry for her.
I was thinking, “The scriptures say that if you ask something in the name of Christ it will be given to you.” So I wondered what would stop me right this minute from demanding her to be healed? Why shouldn’t I do this? At the time I was just starting to go to the Mormon Church and they were telling me you had to have the priesthood and the authority from God, given from the church to you, before you could heal somebody. You had to be an elder or something like that. I was a priest in the church and priests are not supposed to have any power to heal. Once you’re an elder you can have the power to heal. The funny thing is that the elders didn’t heal anybody that I could see. So I thought, “What’s to prevent me from healing her?”
But then I thought to myself, “But the church says I need to be an elder before I can perform any healing ordinance. I’m just a priest so maybe I better not do anything.” But then I thought, “But wait, the scripture says, ‘Whatsoever you ask in the name of Christ, will be given.’ So what’s to prevent me from commanding her in the name of Christ to be healed? What’s to prevent me from doing that?” Then I argued back and forth with myself. The church says you have to have the priesthood to heal. But the scriptures say that whatever you ask in the name of Christ will be given. I kept going back and forth in my mind. But the church says I’m just a priest and I’m not supposed to be attempting anything like this.
I kept going back and forth in my mind until finally I said, “I’m going to side with the scriptures. The scriptures say ‘whatsoever you ask in the name of Christ will be done.’ So I’m going to try it out and see if it works.” So I reached forth my hand and I said, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to be healed.” At that instant I felt a tremendous surge of power go through me. It was so powerful I almost fell down. I ran home. I was scared to death. I thought, “The church must be right. I must’ve really offended God. I think He tried to strike me dead or something.” So I was really nervous and that energy kept going through me until the next day. The next day I felt okay again and thought that I was never going to try that again! I thought I must’ve really irritated God.
Two days later when I went to school the girl was there and had no crutches and seemed perfectly well. I went up to her and said, “I thought you were all crippled and everything.” She said no, the doctor said she’d gone into remission and seemed to be okay now. I asked her if it would come back. She said the doctor had told her it probably would but sometimes in MS you do go into remission. We went all through high school and she remained in remission. We graduated from high school without her going out of remission. I didn’t see her again for 15-20 years. A couple of years ago Artie and I were having a meal in a restaurant and this lady comes over to me and says, “You’re Joe Dewey, are you?” I said yea and asked who she was. She introduced herself and it turned out to be this old schoolmate. I said, “Oh, you had MS back in high school, didn’t you? Did that ever come back?” She said no, it had never come back. Her husband was dead but she was still alive. So, that was interesting.
There have been times when I wanted to do that again but felt constrained not to do it. But in that particular case a point of tension was created. I believe the point of tension was in the argument in my mind between the authorities in the church and the spirit that is within the pure truth of the scriptures; the pure truth that if you have faith you can actually move mountains. I believe that witness gained from the surge of power that went through me from God at that time and caused this to happen was even more important than for this woman to be healed for it taught me a great lesson. It taught me to prepare me for things to come because if I hadn’t learned lessons like that I may still be tied down to the simple doctrines of some church somewhere and not be able to move beyond them.
It’s important that none of us are tied down. This is part of the point of tension to move beyond authority and the power that be in the world that want to talk us out of following that which is within. It’s like Artie and I were looking at the map and I said, “Artie if we go on this back road here we can get where we want to be.” She said, “No, let’s go on this main road. If we go on the main road it will be a lot better.” I said, “In theory you’re right, but I’m not sure we can find that road simply.” I looked at the map and it wasn’t really clear how to get to this main road. She insisted we go on this main road. Something in me told me not to do that. Something in me told me to take the back road but I ignored it because a wife is a very powerful influence. Sometimes if you ignore their advice you get in trouble. So I took her advice and it took us ages to find this main road. The signs in Texas are really weird. It said East when it really meant West and it said North when it meant East. So we went around in circles several times before we found this main road. I had an instinct that told me to take these side roads. I should’ve listened. I kick myself for not listening. So this is the way it is in life. We must listen to our instincts and above our instincts we must listen especially to the soul within. This is an extremely important thing for us to listen to.
Concerning the healing my soul within was telling me that there was something more powerful than having authority given to you by anybody here upon the earth. And that is your relationship between you and God. If you feel within yourself, from the spirit of God, that you should do something, it doesn’t matter who tries to talk you out of it. You should do it. It doesn’t matter whether they be prophet, priest, king or even an angel or some kind appearing out of the blue. You must follow the highest you know. None of us do that all the time. All of us are talked out of what we should do once in awhile. I still find myself being talked out of something once in awhile even though I’ve been trying to correct myself again and again and again. Sometimes I hit it right and other times I don’t listen carefully enough.
All of us are in that boat. Sometimes we don’t listen to the inner voice carefully enough. The thing that all of us have to learn is to listen to that inner voice when it speaks truly. To recognize that inner voice is important because for some of us that inner voice is really just what we want. When we pray for something our prayers are answered because we get what we want rather than what the Higher-Powers-That-Be want from us. When we yield our will to the will of God, then the inner voice will be strong and will be true and we can try it and test it and find it’s reliable. But every time something comes to us, which is true from the Inner Spirit, it will seem like there is an army trying to gather around us to try to distract us from following that voice. Have you ever had that happen? You get something in you that you know is true and it’s like an army of forces begins to gather to try to pull you away from it?
For example, when I received the revelation that I was supposed to marry Artie it was amazing the army that gathered around her to try to talk her out of marrying me. Her daughter thought that I was like Jim Jones. She called everybody she knew. Her dad, which is Artie’s past husband, and convinced him that I was some weirdo with one hand with quirks like Egor; that I was just really weird. She painted the strangest picture. She called her grandma and her grandma flew up here. She immediately got on a plane to save her daughter from this terrible person. Her daughter conjured up this image of me out of the blue and communicated it to everyone we knew. Within days Artie had an army around her to try to talk her out of what she received within herself for we had both received confirmation that we were supposed to be together.
Then one day we were talking on the phone after her mom was coming up and her ex-husband was afraid for her life and her soul and was afraid for her daughter’s safety because she was around a mad man. The image built up was amazing. We’re talking on the phone and she said, “Maybe we should just lie low for awhile until things calm down then we can continue the relationship.” I knew at that point that if I let the point of tension go I would lose her and I knew I had to do something. She didn’t think I would lose her but something within me told me that I would. There was this army gathering around to pull her away from what she had received within herself.
As we were talking on the phone she said, “It’s just too much to handle. I think I’ll lay low.” There was a moment of silence where I felt the spirit and I knew she was feeling it during the time of silence. I said, “What do you feel right this instant?” She said, “I feel peaceful. I feel good.” I asked, “Do you want to pursue this feeling or do you want to pursue the opposite of this feeling?” She said, “I want this feeling.” I said, “So, what are we going to do? Are we going to pursue this feeling or are we going to quit?” She said she wanted to pursue this feeling so I told her then we’re not going to give up. We’re going to continue this relationship no matter what happens, no matter what your mom thinks, no matter what your daughter thinks, no matter what your ex-husband thinks, no matter who comes pounding on your door demanding that you not see me. We will continue this relationship and this feeling will continue. I asked, “Is this a deal?” She said it was.
To her credit, she didn’t go back on her commitment. Most people would. I’ve seen this happen time and time again. People get close to the Presence then an army of negativity comes to take them away from that next step and they yield to that negativity. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. The negativity is so powerful. Then when you yield to it you have a false sense of peace because you don’t have the bedlam around you anymore. You seem to have a peace but it’s not the real peace. It’s not the peace that Artie felt when I asked her what she was feeling. She decided that she wanted to pursue the real peace. To her credit she withstood all the assailments she got from her mother, her daughter and everybody who came out of the woodwork. It was beyond the imagination. She withstood them all and she stood her ground and we continued the relationship and are still together.
I’m very thankful that she stood her ground that way. Not many people do because when you make a step forward, even with something simple, like say you want to quit smoking. Are there any smokers in the group? Rick is. Rick is good at quitting smoking. He’s done it about a hundred times. But when you try to quit smoking doesn’t it seem like everyone who smokes comes out of the woodwork offering you cigarettes? It seems like an army comes to you to get you to try to start up again. In any step of progression that you make you will have an army of negativity to try to pull you back to not only where you were before but lower than you were before. It’s like the scripture that reads, “When a man casts out one devil, the devil goes forth and finds seven more, more evil than himself. And they come back and they possess the man. And the last state of the man is worse than the first state.”
This is what happens. It’s dangerous to move ahead. It’s actually dangerous; dangerous to be a disciple of Christ. It’s dangerous to move ahead. It’s dangerous to progress. It’s not easy because when you do an army will surface and this army, coming out of the woodwork, will have the faces of your friends, the faces of your family, your religious leaders, your political leaders, your neighbors, and they will all try to pull you back so your final state will be worse than it was when you tried to make the step forward.
The only way through this is to take the step forward and stand on that step forward no matter what happens. When you take that stand you’ll find out that all the winds and the storms that are surrounding you are illusion. They don’t really exist. You just thought they were real. You give them power but they have no power. They have no power to pull you back. You just thought they had power. When you really take a stand and make a firm decision, you can stand. There is nothing that can pull you back. There is nothing that can stop you from your onward movement once you attain that faith in yourself and in your relationship to the spirit you can move ahead. Remember you can always move ahead. There is always a way. When you begin to make a step, the more important step it is, the more difficult it will be and the greater will be the illusion that you must take a step backward.
I think the goal of our relationship together is for us to always take a step forward into higher spiritual consciousness, higher relationship between you and your soul, between you and the spirit of God within yourself, and to take that firm step so that you will go where you have not gone before. It will be difficult. When you move forward, taking the step isn’t as hard as standing there after you have taken it. Once you take the step then attempt to stand there and prepare for the next step, you will have a hurricane of force trying to pull you back. Even though when you take the step it may not seem so hard at first, to stand there and keep that communion with the higher parts of yourself and the higher parts of your connection with the spirit of God — to be able to stand there requires the first key in the book, which is the power of decision, to decide a thing then prepare to stand.
Remember the parable in the story? There were four guys who died. There were two paths. One path led to heaven and one path led to hell. It seemed very strange to be told this by this angel. Two of them were so terrified that they did not even want to take a step. One guy made a firm decision. He didn’t know which path led to heaven and which one led to hell but he was supposed to choose one of them. He decided that no matter what happened he would make the best of it and stand on the highest that he knew. This is the way it is in our life. We don’t know for sure if the next decision that we make will led us to heaven or to hell.
Say you marry someone. Is anyone getting married in the near future? When you get married you don’t know if you’re going to heaven or to hell, do you? You don’t know that. Half the marriages lead to heaven, well SOME of them lead to heaven, and a good percentage of them lead to hell. So, you don’t know for sure, even though the person may seem like a nice person at the moment. You don’t know where it’s leading. So when you get married you’re a bit like the guy in the parable. But you have to say to yourself. “I’m going to live by the highest I know and make the most of it.” That’s about all you can do. If you do that one thing, stand by your decision to live by the highest you know and make the most of it and be true to yourself, the highest inner part of yourself, you will come out a winner in the end.
Delivered May 24, 2002 at the Gathering in Wimberly Texas.
Copyright By J J Dewey
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