We are all born into the camp called mankind.  God's gift allows us to enter into His camp called the kingdom of God.  To enter we must be born again.
     I was born into the first camp in 1951; I was born again into God's camp in 1972.  Attending church regularly I did all that was expected of me, but still felt inadequate and wanting.  I believed that a greater joy remained when reading the scriptures and hearing the testimony of others.  I wanted to be assured that God loved me and was indeed present in my life.  Feeling imprisoned still in the camp of mankind and needing to know the certain way out of this camp according to the truth of the scriptures,  I began searching anew, driven on by this continual thirst deep inside of me.
     A new quest began.
     My search continued while attending seminary in the year 1983. As part of the requirements to graduate, I became involved in a prison ministry at the Greenhaven Correctional Facility in New York. When entering the facility, I was required to sign in stating my name and purpose for visiting. I wasn’t sure what to write down as to my purpose for being there. I noticed that others wrote down: “Legal Counsel,” or “Psychiatry,” or “Training.” My friend and associate wrote down, “Spiritual.” What on earth is “Spiritual?” I thought to myself. I was surprised by my reaction to what he wrote—I felt ashamed. This word seemed so nebulous and somewhat spooky. This bothered me for many days to come. I needed to sort this out. I have used this term so many times in the past, why would this bother me now? I came to realize that what bothered me was this: “I did not know what it meant!” Here I am studying in seminary to become a pastor and a future Army Chaplain and I did not know what the word “SPIRITUAL” meant. The use of this term made me feel as though I had no real purpose in life; at best, perhaps, a mushy purpose. What is the meaning of the word, “Spiritual?” The answer to this question became a lifelong quest.
      The fog over this matter has been lifting steadily through the thirteen years of pasturing and sixteen years as an Army Chaplain. My job as a spiritual leader in these endeavors was to understand both God and people. In order to better understand God, I embarked upon the goal of reading the Bible from cover to cover every year. I have been doing this since 1983. This was the best decision of my life! God is Spirit and I knew that I had to learn as much about God’s nature and purposes that I possibly could. Knowing God is a spiritual endeavor. In order to better understand people, God placed me in the best laboratory to study them, the church and the Army. I was surrounded by people! I had to lead them, work with them and comfort them. I had to do this with my own inherent limitations: that what I believed about both God and people was right! So I began to lead, teach and comfort according to these beliefs. There was a problem! The problem was that the people I was trying to lead and teach also believed that they were right. Naturally, conflict arose. Who was right! I began to get in touch with my own limitations and came to the realization that I only see in part. I also came to this conclusion—that I am normal. What is true for me is true for all of us—we live in a spiritual predicament of that which is really true and the limitations of what we believe to be true. We live in our own personal worlds, the world of our own making, that is, the world of our own beliefs. This is the spiritual camp of being human.
     With these realizations came this key connection: “Beliefs are born from the human spirit.” We are spiritual beings! To be human is to believe. Our spirit’s work of believing is operative in everything we do. Slowly the pieces started to fall into place. Principles began to develop in the form of fully articulated sentences.
     In time the ten principles of belief, as outlined in section one (Man's Camp), was born. The first nine principles described in this section describe the “human predicament.” In order to better understand this human predicament, we will ONLY look at the human condition (without God) in these nine principles. This means that we will not introduce any concept of “God” until principle ten in order to better understand the confines of the camp of mankind. THIS IS IMPORTANT.    In the tenth principle we will look at our beliefs about God and how they completely govern everyone’s view of reality.
     Section two (God's Camp) took more time. Decades of cover to cover Bible reading began to pay off. I started to see the existence of a great and wonderful theme expressed throughout the Bible. This theme seems to bind the whole Bible into one seamless story. From the first book of the Bible, Genesis, to its final book, Revelation, this story became clear, “God is our Refuge.” God and His kingdom is the camp to which all of mankind is invited but few seem to attain.  The Bible is the wonderful story of God’s creative work restoring the paradise that mankind lost in Genesis. God’s message is an invitation for all of us to come back and live in the Refuge of God’s Presence to live with Him in His camp. This is God’s REST or SABBATH. The believer is to live in the presence of God’s AWE beginning now and extending into eternity. Living in the reality of God’s awe is the foundation to true belief. This is to be the believer’s reality. The Bible is filled with the testimonies of those who responded to this call. In their testimonies they referred to this Refuge/Camp in various ways, sometimes as “A Fortress,” other times as “The Promised Land,” “The Sanctuary,” “The Rock,” “The Sabbath Rest” and in the New Testament “The Kingdom of Heaven.” The Refuge can become our own personal reality. We enter into the Refuge through the spiritual action of belief.
     The section (God's Camp) of this story was born.
     Section three has been slowly developing since my pasturing days. Early on in my pastorate I read a small book, a favorite in The Christian and Missionary Alliance, entitled, “The Authority of the Believer” by John MacMillan. This book had a profound influence upon me. The more that I read the Bible each year the more I realized that what John MacMillan wrote about was, indeed true. We do not live alone in this world—we are filled with the Holy Spirit. This is authority! Living in the Refuge with God, God's camp, makes us a peculiar people, a different people, a holy (separated) people, endowed with the power of God’s Presence—His very life! If we believe this, we as spiritual beings will begin to rise above the realities of this present world and begin overcoming them with the REALITIES of God’s PRESENCE.
     My quest continues to this very day. We are SPIRITUAL beings through and through. All that we do is born from some belief, a combination of the true and false. All of our beliefs, even the most precious, are comprised of both. We just don’t know how much of each—we can’t know for certain! Welcome to the humbling human predicament. Welcome to the spiritual world of BELIEF, our personal reality.

​A Personal Story