Going a Little Deeper
A really insightful statement had been made to me, but I was being coy about how heavily it hit me. I was soon to get hit a little harder.
Chapter 4: Nicole’s Turn
Nicole, a woman in the congregation who I have seen share mighty prophesies, then came up to me. She didn’t skip a beat. The pastor’s hand might still even have been on my shoulder. She said while the pastor was prophesying over me, that she saw a train, a rushing train. Nicole asked, “Trains, do trains mean anything to you, or subways?”
I said “Maybe,” or some similarly non-committal answer. In my head I was constructing the same narrative as I had with Pastor Rick less than a minute earlier,“If she has the gifting shouldn’t she be the one to tell me if trains mean something to me?”
She said something about moving forward with God mightily like a train.
I was doing the same thing, blocking her gift, being non-committal. Accordingly, her prophesying over me stopped. What I had just experienced was perhaps the most shocking thing I had ever experienced in that church, and it was often very intense at church. The Holy Spirit always showed up there. It was not the first time I had an experience that I could call the most shocking thing that had ever happened in that church.
Yes, I didn’t want to lead the gifting that Nicole or Pastor Rick had, so I shrugged my shoulders and said that dismissive thing to myself, but I also was playing it cool, because, frankly, I was terrified. I hate to be the center of attention. I hate for things to be about me. I feel terribly unworthy when attention does turn to me. Sure, it can be uplifting for a moment. It can be a massage for the ego. It can be a pat on the back. Quickly though, I manage to pull out of that and to turn attention on any one of a thousand things that feel more deserving.
This was quite the case of stage fright. With just two words, it felt like the Director of the Universe had turned a spotlight on me and told me to go act. “I’m watching you Allan Stevo. And I love you,” could not have been said any more clearly to me, but it was said like this “4 a.m.” and “trains.”
Chapter 5: I Needed To Get Out Of There
What was my reaction to that? To God penetrating into my heart with two words? I wanted to run away as quickly as I could. It was too intense. I was unworthy. I had to go.
I didn’t want to leave, but I had to get away. I needed to go back to safe Allan-controlled territory. My eyes were closed, but my mind scanned the terrain of the church for where I could hide for a minute: the bathroom! Yes, of course. The bathroom was the solution.
Maybe more significant than running away from others, I felt like I needed to get away from the intensity of the sanctuary. I needed to get away from God for a minute, who was showing me a glimpse of what life was like on His terms. Two little words were all I could handle. TWO LITTLE WORDS! Can you imagine how intense it must have been for Moses to have seen God the way the Bible describes? (Exodus 33:18-23) I could barely breathe after having two little words spoken to me. In the quiet bathroom I could pretend to be in charge again.
I let what was happening around me come to a natural conclusion as people broke off and started to pray for others around us. I disengaged politely from those around me. I needed to go be alone for a minute and I would likely have run to the bathroom at full speed had that been a culturally acceptable thing to do. Instead, I slipped away from the large circle of prayer warriors and casually walked across the sanctuary.
I went to the washroom for what seemed like a few minutes to collect myself, in isolation from others.
Chapter 6: The Bathroom
The bathroom door closed behind me and there was silence. The intensity of the Holy Spirit kindly did me a favor and stayed out there the way I hoped it would. I did not know if I wanted to yell. Or cry. Or collapse. Or rip my clothes off in anguish. I opted for a less dramatic route and just took a few deep breaths.
I asked God if trains mean something to me. I knew the answer already, but I wanted to know God’s answer. He said yes. Perhaps a dozen reasons that trains meant something to me quickly ricocheted through my head. Each one of those instances could have left me in tears for an hour in the sheer emotion of what any single one of them meant. A dozen flashed through my mind, yet each could have left me a total mess. Did she actually just say what I think she said? As I write this, even more continue to flash through my head. I’m not sure a single word exists that could have evoked more meaning for me that the word Nicole said to me. But then it was said next to what Pastor Rick said to me too: 4 a.m.
I then asked God if I was to take a train home to be with family for Thanksgiving, which was a few weeks away. The day 10/18 appeared in my mind and burned in my mind for days after around trains. I knew that I was supposed to be on that train on 10/18.
My skeptical side took over. Was I being played? Was this real Allan? Was this some kind of parlor stunt? You’ve only known these people a couple of years, Allan — yeah, people who I met a couple of years ago and who I have spent Sunday night after Sunday night together with, seeing them at some of their highs and some of their lows. It wasn’t a parlor stunt was it? My skeptical side shut its mouth.
There is no way that Nicole could have understood that the word train could have meant what it did. But then there was also the word from the pastor, about 4 a.m. That is the time that I usually either wake up to pray, or plan to wake up to pray. Most people are not awake at 4 a.m. Pastor Rick knows little, if anything, about my prayer life. He could not have known what he was saying to me. I have experienced words from God before that have been spot on, but it remains shocking to me how incredibly unpredictable and accurate they can be, as they pierce through layers of defenses.
If at this moment, dear reader, you are looking for any possible excuse to explain how this could happen absent God, please do not do that to yourself. Please do not convince yourself that some carnival trick you read a book about or some psychological phenomenon that you watched a Discovery Channel episode about is more likely than the possibility that God is real and that He loves you enough to touch your heart in this way. That cynical tendency that you let run rampant in your mind will do a really effective job keeping you closed off to the things of God, if you let it. I know.
I lived that way for years. And I called that cynical and overcritical tendency in me positive words such as “rational,” “scientific,” or “sober,” when they were no such thing. I spent time bending and twisting reality as much as I could to convince myself and others that what was clearly God could not possibly be any such thing. I was drunk on cynicism and called it sober. I was irrational in my adoration of atheism and called it rational. I was unscientific in my displeasure for religious expression and called it scientific. I was a determined liar, filled with bias, trained by the world, running from God, likely without even realizing it.
That does not have to be you.
With one last dumbfounded look at myself in the bathroom mirror, I turned toward the door of the bathroom, and pulled the door open, down the short hallway that led back to the sanctuary, where the room was thick with the presence of the Holy Spirit.
-Allan Stevo
This is a selection from my forthcoming book, “The Amtrak Vignettes.” A neat story began with the writing of “The Amtrak Vignettes” in October 2023. Every day until that story comes to an end, I intend to share a part of it here. It is a part of my faith journey as a Christian, a faith journey that has been deepened since the Ides of March 2020. Some of it gets pretty wild and nothing that a “reasonable” person would find himself in the midst of. Few will be scared off by it. Instead, many will grow deeper in their faith. I know that, because I know my readers well, and I know that few come here expecting me to give a milquetoast version of anything. Come here to be challenged. Stay here to have your life changed. That, I believe, is what will come of this work. You can support that work by signing up below.