Tag Archives: Holy Spirit

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Spiritual Encounters With God: A Jonah Moment

Spiritual Encounters With God: A Jonah Moment

James R. Aist

“I called to the Lord out of my distress, and He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice.” (Jonah 2:2)

It was the second week of January, 2023, and I was in the hospital for a heart catheterization. If there was any serious arterial blockage, then they would install stents to open the arteries, as needed. My operation was scheduled for early morning, with the expectation that I would be able to go home the same day. However, something went terribly wrong, and I ended up spending the next nine days in the general hospital, followed by nine more days in the rehabilitation hospital. This encounter occurred while I was in the general hospital.

I was in the Intensive Care Unit for the first two days. During most of this time, I was either sleeping or hallucinating, but for brief moments I was awake and in touch with reality. It was during this time in the ICU that I had a very intense, but brief, encounter with God. I was in a place that was void of any light, so I couldn’t see anything. I was not even aware of my body. But, I could somehow sense the very close and real presence of God in front of me. Then a voice began to speak into my mind, describing to me the very dire situation I was in; that I didn’t understand what was happening to me or how serious it was, and that the doctors were doing everything they knew of to help me, but even they didn’t know what to do in order to pull me through. Then I focused my attention intensely on God. I very passionately described to Him how dire my situation was (as if He didn’t already know). I told Him that I don’t know how to survive this situation, and that the doctors don’t know either. And, I told Him that I know He is the only One who can keep me from dying, that He was my only hope to survive this ordeal. It’s fair to say that I made a very passionate and desperate plea for God to heal me and enable me to live on. To my knowledge, there was no response from Him at that time. With that, the encounter ended, and I lost awareness of anything for the time being.

After 18 days I was finally able to go home, and I have since made a full recovery. Subsequently, while my wife and I were studying the book of Jonah, it dawned on me that this experience in the hospital, while differing in most details, had a striking resemblance to the experience of Jonah in the belly of the whale (See Jonah 2:2, above). This fact confirms, to my way of thinking, that this encounter was, in fact, with God.

In retrospect, I believe that there are at least two take-home lessons for me here. First, I am immensely grateful to God for granting my request. And second, I am motivated to respond to this miracle by making good use of the time I have left to glorify God while I am still on this planet.

To read more of my articles on biblical topics,  click (HERE)

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Salvation: Who Is Inviting Whom?

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Salvation: Who Is Inviting Whom?

James R. Aist

On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” (John 7:37)

Different Christian “traditions” have developed their own “catch phrases” to represent biblical truths with simplicity, and, as such, they can be useful tools of communication in the Christian “world.” But some catch phrases do not accurately convey sound doctrine or theology, however well-intended. This article addresses an important example of a popular, yet misleading, catch phrase.

The catch phrase I have in mind occurs at the end of a “salvation message”, when the evangelist encourages the congregation to “ask Jesus into your life”, or something equivalent in different words.  As I was meditating briefly on this particular invitation – which I have heard on several occasions – a red flag went up. So, I paused to meditate further to try and identify the reason for the red flag.

Then it dawned on me: Do we really want to ask Jesus to join us in our sinful, worldly lives? Is that what it means to be born again? Of course not! When salvation comes, it is not us inviting Jesus to join our lives; rather, it is Jesus who is inviting us to join Him in His life, that is, eternal life.

And, these two kinds of life are of a fundamentally different nature. The life we are born into is a temporary, physical, biological life in which we are separated from God. The life that Jesus invites us to enter into is a spiritual life in which we are connected to God forever, just as He originally intended when He created mankind. Being “born again” produces a truly “new life” in our experience, and it can be ours only when we stop resisting God and let Him save us.

That said, there are surely very important ways in which Jesus does want to bless and change us during the remainder of our biological life. For example, He insists that we let Him become our Lord by being obedient to His teachings and to all of the other moral laws contained in the written word of God, the Bible. This means that the true born-again experience will result in a life that is characterized by the forsaking of evil works and the practice of good works. If these signs of a true believer are absent, then we have not yet received the gift of “saving faith”, but instead, we have received “dead faith” (James 2:14-17). Such faith is worse than worthless, because it leaves us believing that our sin problem has been taken care of, when it has not!

Revelation 22:7 says, “The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” Let him who hears say, “Come.” Let him who is thirsty come. Let him who desires take the water of life freely.” This is an invitation from God for you to become connected to Him, sharing His life forever. The “Spirit” is God’s Holy Spirit, the “bride” and “him who hears” is the company of born-again, true believers in Jesus Christ. All of these are inviting you to enter into God’s eternal life. Those who desire to accept this invitation may take the water of life freely. So, if this is you, I strongly urge you to say “yes” to this invitation now, because everlasting life with God in heaven depends on it! There is no other way (John 14:6).

(To read more of my articles with a biblical theme, click HERE)

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No Evil Shall Befall You

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No Evil Shall Befall You

James R. Aist

“Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling, there shall be no evil befall you, neither shall any plague come near your tent; for He shall give His angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways.” (Psalm 91:9-11)

I love to hear accounts of God’s elect narrowly escaping impending disaster, especially when the threat is real and there are details in the story that reveal the hand of God in their deliverance. What follows is just such a story, a miraculous working of God’s providential protection, from my personal experience.

I had spent quite a few weeks in Japan already, including one research visit for more than four months. One of the things that impressed me most about Japan is that it is a relatively safe place to visit and to live. On one visit, I even saw an old, frail, bent-over lady crossing a busy intersection bearing what was obviously a “money bag” of substantial size, headed to the bank to make a deposit. She apparently had no fear of being robbed, even though she was walking alone! So, we had no fear for our safety when the time came for us to make preparations for yet another trip to Japan. I had accepted an invitation from a Japanese colleague to spend a week in Japan to present a series of seminars. The Sunday before we were to embark, we were surprised when two different church members approached us separately after the Sunday Morning Service and eagerly offered to pray for our safety during the trip. At first I was reluctant, explaining how safe it is to travel around in Japan. But they insisted, saying that they were being prompted by the Holy Spirit to pray with us anyway. So, we prayed together for the Lord’s protection as we traveled. And, its a good thing we did, as you will soon see.

Our Japanese “host” while we were in Japan, a professional colleague of mine, accompanied us from one University to another via bus, taxi, train and subway. That was an awesome experience and most enjoyable. When the last seminar was finished, we traveled to a location near Tokyo to spend our last night in Japan, before catching a flight home from the Tokyo airport. My host had thoughtfully arranged our schedule to allow plenty of time for us to get a full night’s sleep and have a leisurely morning, before catching the long flight back to Newark, well rested.

But, late that night, my host received a surprise phone call from his supervisor at work, and we had to change the time of our departure from the hotel the next day. We had to leave for the airport one hour earlier than originally planned, so that my host could report for work an hour earlier. And so we did. The extra hour at the Tokyo airport was not a problem, and our overnight flight back to Newark was uneventful. So far, our trip back was focused on the details of travelling, so we had not yet had an opportunity to catch up on the news of the day. But that was about to change.

We had a long stopover at the airport in Newark, so I began to watch the news broadcast on the big screen at our next gate. I quickly realized that the big news of the day was a deadly sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway…yesterday, March 20, 1995. We were just there, in that subway! Then I listened closely for the exact timing of the attack, and it was exactly when we would still have been in the subway, had it not been for the phone call requiring us to leave for the airport one hour earlier. I was stunned by this realization, and I began to mull these things over in my mind. Then it came to me: this must be why our friends at church had been led by the Holy Spirit to pray for us before we began our journey. We barely escaped being among those being wheeled from the subway on stretchers. Later on, I learned that my daughter-in-law had been glued to her TV when the story first broke, hoping that she would not see a victim with his feet sticking way off of the end of the stretcher. That would have identified me as a likely victim, as I am six feet five inches tall, a giant among the Japanese!

As I see it, the take-home lesson from this experience is two-fold: 1) If the Holy Spirit prompts you to pray for someone, then do it; and 2) if someone says they are being prompted to pray for you, then go for it! God works in mysterious ways to protect His elect, and sometimes He wants us to get involved in the process.

(To read more of my articles with a biblical theme, click HERE.)

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The Promises of God Are “Yes,” and “Amen” – Part 1

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The Promises of God Are “Yes,” and “Amen” – Part 1

James R. Aist

“For God is the One working in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13)

My second daughter, Liesel was a beautiful, musically talented, athletic, sweet and endearing little girl with a special sense of humor. I called her my “Lee-Lee Bell.” She had already professed her faith in Jesus at an early age, before she was 10 years old: in a Sunday School class, she told the teacher that she had accepted Jesus. Then, when Liesel was 10 years old, I had the precious opportunity to lead her in a prayer to receive Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior. Here’s what happened. Near the end of a sermon at church on a Sunday morning, Liesel leaned over and asked me, “When did you make your decision for Jesus?” I replied “When I was 8 years old.” “Is it too late for me to do it?” she asked. I replied, “No, you can do it any time before you die. Do you want to do it now?” After further discussion, we agreed that I would help her do it at home, after church. So, after we had lunch, I asked her if now was a good time, and she said it was. So, that’s when we prayed, and Liesel confirmed, by her profession of faith in Jesus, what God had been doing for! And she said, “This is the biggest day of my life!”

Unfortunately, in the ensuing years, as Liesel passed through her teens, she became unsure of her faith in Jesus. But, like the one sheep that had gone astray (Luke 15:3-6), Liesel already belonged to Jesus, and God was not done with her.

The following encounter that I had with God is not only pertinent, but essential, to the rest of the story. I was attending the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International Men’s Advance at Lake George in upstate New York. One day when they were immersion baptizing in the lake, I stepped forward to be immersed by Pastor Don Yarborough. We had never met, and he knew nothing about me. As I approached him in the water, he just stared at me straight in the eye with a blank look, and kept staring. I thought to myself, “That’s strange; he doesn’t seem to even see me coming.” Finally, as I drew near to him, he reached out his hand to me, we shook hands and I introduced myself. Then he said that something very unusual had just happened; it had happened only once before in his ~20 years of baptizing people. He said that as I was approaching him in the water, he received a prophecy for me, in the form of several Bible passages from both the Old Testament and the New Testament. They all had to do with the head of the household being saved and all of his family with him. He then proceeded to share with me all five of those Bible verses. When he had finished with that, he gave me the interpretation of the message: God wants me to stand on and hold fast to these promises, which he is confirming to me and my children. Wow! Through this prophecy, God had just told me that all of my children will be saved! Needless to say, I was a “happy camper” the rest of that afternoon. But, I didn’t say anything to any of my children about this glorious promise at the time.

In August of 1996, Liesel had just turned 19, and it was time for her annual visit with me in Ithaca, NY, from her home in Norman, OK. As was my custom, I brought up the matter of her current position regarding her faith in Jesus, and we talked about that for a while. It was clear that she had a good understanding of what the Gospel of Jesus Christ was all about, but she said that she didn’t want to profess faith in Jesus again unless she was absolutely sure of it. I was OK with that. Now, I had not yet said anything to Liesel about God’s promise to me to save all of my children. Nevertheless, she looked at me and somehow knew to ask this amazing question: “Daddy, have you ever received any indication from God as to whether or not I will someday become a Christian?” Well, this question blew my mind. I was so overwhelmed by it that, for a few seconds, I was unable to respond. How did she even know to ask me such a thing at that time? I had to conclude that God must have given her that question, and so I haltingly, but eagerly, proceeded to tell her about God’s promise to save all of my children. When I finished, Liesel was visibly pleased and very encouraged by this good news.

God had revealed, in a miraculous way, that He was continuing the good work that He had begun in Liesel when she was a young girl! That was one of the most amazing days of my life. Click HERE to read Part 2, the rest of this story.

(To read more of my article with a biblical theme, click HERE)