About This Project

the journey before us

I do not naturally desire God with all my heart and mind and soul, for “there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God” (Romans 3:11). This is why the journey to communion with God can be a bumpy ride. As human beings, we all face the same battles and temptations to connect with God.

At the same time, you may be tempted to look at some Christian leaders and marvel at their intimacy with God that appears to continually overflow with great blessing. You may assume they are somehow special, or that God has given them an experience that is not available to you. This is not true. God offers you the most intimate relationship with Himself—indeed, it is the same intimacy that Jesus had with His Father when He walked the earth. Jesus longs that all His disciples “may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me.” (John 17:22b-23a)

beginning intimacy with God

My own journey in such communion with God has often been challenging. In my mind, it began when I was a teenager after I had secretly borrowed two books that had been lent to my mother by a friend. One was entitled, What Happens When Women Pray, and the other on Bible study called Lord Change Me! by Evelyn Christenson. I was enthralled. I didn’t care that I was reading about women praying because as I followed her suggestions on how to pray, things happened. God was suddenly real and personal, and He was dramatically reaching into my life as He answered my prayers. It was a similar experience with the book on Bible study. As I learned practical ways to study, God began speaking through the Bible each day—directly to me! I had never realised such a personal and direct encounter with God was possible.

This period of my life was revolutionary. At the time, I didn’t really like church and Sabbath’s were bothersome. However, because of my personal devotional times, I knew God was real. I knew He was my God, and nobody could persuade me otherwise.

As I left for college, my personal times with God continued to nurture a rich experience with Him. God regularly reminded me that I was His son, a thought that continually amazed me. I remember times when I had to run back to my college room because I felt such a compulsion to pray. I wasn’t always sure why—I just knew I had to spend more time on my knees.

going deeper

Eventually I graduated from seminary with an MA in Religion and began work as a pastor. I was still single and so the time normally allocated to family matters was instead devoted to extra Bible study and prayer. I had no TV and the internet was yet to appear, let alone mobile phones, so I had no distractions. Life was often gruelling, but I was learning to fall upon God whenever difficulties appeared. In these early days as a pastor, I consumed book after book on prayer with each one opening up new vistas of spiritual possibilities and fresh encounters with God. It was wonderful.

At this time, God permitted a number of personal experiences with satanic forces. It was not pleasant and almost overwhelming. Eventually I realised that God was trying to instil in me the reality that my “struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). Consequently, to make progress in such a supernatural battle, I could not dare to imagine that I could rely on my human abilities and power. To combat supernatural power I had to have God’s supernatural power. There is no other way of doing ministry or surviving as a Christian.

learning to live on external power

At the end of my first year in ministry, a number of events conspired together which became a foundational period for the rest of my ministry. At the end of a trip to West Africa, I became ill and was immediately admitted to the tropical diseases hospital in London. The doctors thought I had a haemorrhagic disease and were debating whether to put me in a sealed bubble. As I lay on my bed in isolation, hardly able to speak, I received a letter containing astonishing accusations which resulted in my reputation becoming shredded. I was sick for so long that my work contract was not renewed.

While in hospital, the doctors also found a problem with my heart. After a pacemaker was inserted to help my heart beat correctly, it became infected and had to be removed. A couple days later, after five years of dating, my girlfriend and I decided it was time to break the relationship.

I lay on my bed feeling completely broken. I had lost my job, my reputation, my health, and my dreams of future happiness. I could only muster one prayer. I told God that I didn’t have a clue how to pray and so asked the Holy Spirit to pray for me.

Instantly—and this is the only way I can describe what happened next—it felt as though Jesus walked into my room and stood by my bed. The pain and burden of the preceding months lifted and I was filled with a peace and joy that was inexplicable. My face was transformed with a smile that radiated from my face and literally stayed there all night until the morning.

Most importantly, I experienced a supernatural filling of a physical energy. Even though I was currently without a pacemaker and so my heart naturally beat around forty beats a minute, it felt as though jets of energy were whizzing around my body, even causing my fingers and toes to tingle. I now had the energy of a young child. I was more than grateful.

However, as the weeks went by, there was another aspect of my life that I began to grumble about. In the face of God’s goodness, I insisted in complaining. I knew I had a rebellious attitude—but I did it anyway. As weeks passed and I continued to complain, the supernatural energy I had received gradually faded until it was completely gone. I was now in exactly the same situation as before my transforming prayer.

This made me really angry. For a couple months I fumed at God until it eventually came to a climax. I finally blurted out to God, “Look, you have taken away my health, my reputation, my job, and my dreams of future happiness. You supernaturally gave me energy and now you have taken it away. I have nothing left!” I was not anticipating a reply, but a voice replied as clear as a bell, “Yes, that’s the point. I want you with nothing.”

I burst into tears. I knew God was right. He wanted me to have nothing so He could be everything. When I was filled with such supernatural energy flooding my body, I thought that God was healing my heart. But He didn’t. The hospital confirmed that my heart was still beating around 40 beats a minute by itself and a second pacemaker was fitted. I didn’t fail to get the point: God wanted me to remember that from now on, my life literally depended on an external power source.

too busy to pray

It was a painful lesson, but strangely it was also a lesson that was hard to remember. Five years later at the age of 33 and still single, I was asked to take a job in church administration. God led me to this position in repeated and miraculous ways and I was excited to see what God was going to do. But I had a problem. I had an “important” job and I was busy. From morning till night I had a full agenda.

Knowing the significance of building any ministry on prayer, I immediately started a prayer network as the foundation for my new work. But there seemed little interest in prayer and I soon put that aside for other things that seemed to work better. The pressures mounted and I began to crumple under them. During that time I burnt out severely. I felt like a husk of a human being. I was always tired. I had no interest in anything. I became increasingly withdrawn. I felt utterly empty inside. I didn’t smile.

One morning I was sitting at my desk studying my Bible in a desperate attempt to see why I was struggling so badly. Unexpectedly, a voice spoke to me, “I have allowed things to fall apart so you can see how strong you really are.” I dissolved into tears because I knew God was right, again. I had been trying to do ministry on my own.

That’s not to say I stopped studying my Bible or stopped praying. I did pray and I did read my Bible, but it was not the type of devotional life that led to any conscious flow of divine power into my life. It was not real communion with God. I was preaching and teaching, but I was trundling through the forms of a devotional life. I was not dependent. My ministry had become the sum of what I could do rather than a display of what God could do. And what I could do was not very much. For too many years, in spite of everything God had taught me, my spiritual life had become a series of sporadic spiritual highs and much longer lows. I had become spiritually bipolar.

Just writing this down is bewildering and mortifying. How can someone whom God has blessed so much respond like this to Him? Years passed and little changed. I was now married and would regularly complain to my wife that I did not recognise myself. I felt restless and unfulfilled, despite the fact that I had written articles, curriculum, Sabbath School lessons, a book, and begun a PhD—all in the area of personally spirituality.

Externally I may have appeared ok, but inside I was getting angrier and increasingly bitter about many things. I burnt out again. Day after day I would wake up and stare at the wall. I felt nothing. I had no physical energy. I felt no enthusiasm for anything. I felt profoundly damaged and broken, and I wasn’t sure if I could ever recover. But I kept thinking back to my early days of ministry and the amazing times I had with God. In my mind, this remained my benchmark of what “normal” life with God should be like.

re-discovering communion

One day I decided to see what Ellen White had written on the subject of communion with God. I was amazed at what I read, particularly that every aspect of who we are is impacted by spending time in God’s presence—that “the effect of such communion on body and mind and soul is beyond estimate” (Ellen White, Gospel Workers, 200). I could easily see how communion with God impacts the spiritual life, but body and mind as well?

I began to force myself to organise my devotional life better. I set a specific time and place where I would spend time with God and ensured I was there every day, whether I felt like it or not. Within a few days I felt a change beginning to work inside. I could sense God’s power in a way that I had not experienced in years. I began to have more physical energy. Unexpectedly, I become more helpful around the house. I became more involved with the children. I began to seek out people rather than wish I could withdraw from them. My memory became sharper. I began to re-discover my purpose for ministry. Most importantly, an appetite for spiritual intimacy with God returned. After more than a decade, I began to recognise myself. I felt at peace. It felt miraculous.

And it was. You see, starting from creation in Eden, human beings were designed to live with God’s power within them. The filling of the Holy Spirit is not icing on the cake for the Christian but is a nonnegotiable component of how God designed humans to function. Without the constant nurture of the Holy Spirit in total dependency on Him, we are incomplete, powerless, and in the context of the spiritual battle around us, defenceless.

living life fully human

I began to realise that during my early years with God, I was like a fish that had no idea it was wet. The work of the Holy Spirit had been urging me towards ever deeper intimacy with God. This was an unrealised blessing of grace. It was only when I drifted spiritually due to the pressures around me that I recognised I had left the water. I knew something was wrong, but could never fully explain what—although perhaps I did know, but felt too irritated to do anything about it.

So when I say that I began to recognise myself, I was actually recognising the consequences of the presence of the Holy Spirit within me. It was His presence within that caused me to be fully human. This is how God designed us all to live as human beings—continuously living with our Creator in intimate communion. It is therefore my greatest desire that this book will help you to practically experience this communion for yourself, and to be satisfied with nothing less.

moving forwards

As you go forward to deepen your intimacy with God, I would like to offer a prayer for you that was influential at the beginning of my own journey of learning communion. It is a prayer the Apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesians. I have split up the verses so you can see their content with greater clarity,

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you 

          the Spirit of wisdom 

            and revelation, 

so that you may know him better. 

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know 

the hope to which he has called you, 

the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 

and his incomparably great power for us who believe. 

That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. (Ephesians 1:17-22)

All the best for the Journey!

Gavin Anthony

Hollywood, Ireland

May, 2015