I had a heart attack last Sunday.
On January 12th, 2020, around three o’clock in the afternoon I came face to face with eternity. My wife and I had just enjoyed a nice lunch and since the weather was so pleasant, we decided to take an afternoon drive, something we often do. I began to feel the pains of the attack and pulling into a parking lot, we decided it was time to call 911.
The rest is pretty much a blur, the EKG in the ambulance, the meds, the ER. I was told later they had ninety minutes to get me into surgery or my heart could be damaged, or even worse.
Now, most men my age—I’m 59—have likely done brief mental experiments of what that operating room experience might be like. In my case, I had assumed that I might experience the fear of impending departure from this world. Perhaps physical pain. Perhaps regret. Who knows?
I felt none of that.
What did happen surprised me. It shouldn’t have, but it did. It wasn’t the kind of surprise that was unexpected, for even as it was happening it only confirmed the deepest heart thoughts of a follower of Christ. As I lay there on the table and the team led by the doctor began the work of looking into my heart and ultimately clearing blockage and leaving a stent, I had instinctively begun to pray. Not for myself, although part of the prayer included seeking strength for the moment, my heart and mind went to my wife first. I prayed for her even as I knew she was falling apart in the waiting room.
The next series of events is where the surprise came. I began to worship the God of the universe even as the medical team had instruments in my heart evaluating, cleansing, and repairing my heart. I prayed for the nurses, doctors, their families and kids.
And I worshiped Christ and thanked him for the Cross. I thanked him for my life and for rescuing a poor boy from Waco, Texas and surrounding him with wonderful people all along the journey of this glorious gift of life he had chosen to give to me.
It was in that instant, in the moment that could have been the bridge I crossed into God’s presence that I knew something I had only known a few times in my life, but to a much lesser degree.
I felt pure joy.
It was as if God had flooded the room with heaven, with his hand guiding the process. The words themselves—pure joy—were imprinted into my mind. I was ready for eternity because of the unspeakable miracle of the Cross of Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son and that on that cross, in some mysterious, irrevocable way; he saved me, delivered, rescued and redeemed me.
It was as a Master Artist painting a masterpiece on canvas with his little child at his feet. In the innocence of play, the little one reaches up and touches the masterpiece. In that moment of contact, the wet paint of the canvas was transferred to the child’s hand and the child’s handprints transferred to the painting. Both were changed.
God had let me touch heaven and his presence in a special and empowering way and I have the paint of heaven—pure joy—all over me and inside me to a degree beyond my own comprehension.
Prior to this encounter, I have always experienced and understood the place of joy in the life of the believer. It is solid biblical exposition and evidence I seek to be the foundation of my faith, ratified by the experiential relationship with the claims of God in his word regarding his Son Jesus and the empowering Holy Spirit. There is no room in a solid faith for mere mysticism and subjective encounters without the solid concrete foundation of the historic reality of the Bible and the real, actual resurrection of Christ.
This was not drugs. It was not the emotional response to a crisis. It was a real, powerful demonstration on an individual basis of the true nature of the claims of Scripture.
As I look deeper into my own heart and understanding of his word, one additional blessing of joy keeps bubbling to the surface. It is the joy of presence. First, the presence of God and his empowering Spirit in the ongoing life of the believer. But there is another joy that cannot be overlooked, for it comes in the very word “fruit” as it refers to joy as a fruit of the Spirit in the life of the believer. The fruit is not for the tree or the plant. It is for others. It is in our relationship with God we find the power of his presence for our lives and he gives us the gift of the presence of others to “spur us on to love and good works” (cf. Hebrews 10:19–23.)
As my pastor, Pastor Mario was praying for me in the hospital I thought of something his dear wife, Pastor Ruth said in church not long ago. She compared the intricate workings of a watch to the intricate workings of the Body of Christ. We only see the externals and experience the product of the watch and tend to take the internal complexities of the watch for granted. We never really think about the complexity of the actual work of God using the various people in the Body of Christ to come together in one function. The work of the Body of Christ was laid bare that day, for they are like the medical team that rescued me. We never see them do their finest work, but when we are given a glimpse of how that happens, we can only respond in thankfulness and joy.
It is not unlike a person with a crisis in their spiritual heart. They come into the church and if that church is a healthy, biblical church, they hear the gospel proclaimed and lived out. They see and experience the spiritual “medical team” at their finest—praying, worshiping, serving, meeting needs, healing and making disciples.
God has given us the gift of pure joy and it comes from his presence and the presence of his people working together as God calls them.
God is the Master Artist. He is also the Watchmaker.
We can reach out and touch the masterpiece and get a little of heavens paint on us, the pure joy of his presence in our lives—a presence that brings together all of the intricate complexities of the body of Christ, all that is behind the face of the watch.
I hope you will indulge me as I quote a few sentences that became even more real to me the last few days. I wrote these particular words myself in my book a few years ago and the Lord reminded and confirmed them in me this last week:
"The trudge of the weary in the night, descending from the darkness of the wilderness, simply seeks abode along the simple path. It is our life, our dance, our journey to seek in the darkness a trail to the lights in the distance, the lights of warmth and hope and possibility. We traipse through the night, through the jungles, with cold, heartless knives in the wind, piercing us. The lights of the city draw us with promises of an eternity of sustenance and the presence of others, of things beyond our dreams.
"And God. An eternity with God.
"It is God that draws us to this city with his music of heaven. When our pursuing Creator reveals himself to us, the drawing is immeasurably compelling and uncontainable. It is joy, unspeakable joy we discover, and we find it all along the road. It is often masked in the wilderness crucibles along the way. As an enemy lays a minefield, the evil one has planted them along our path as he seeks to halt our march to the city. They were brought in by the destroyer when he trespassed into our hearts on the dance floor in Eden.
"It was not the destroyer’s cause to give us joy, but in God’s inscrutable workings, these crucibles along the way transcend the deviant goals of the evil one. God makes us instead the masterpiece of his choosing in the necessitous spiritual groaning of our soul. It is with us in our spiritually destitute and penurious crawl that he dances and transforms our painful limping, step by step, into a waltz of grandeur and beauty."[i]
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[i] Bounds, Ben. The Divine Chase:Responding to a Pursuing God. Bloomington, IN: Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan, 2017, 11.
Ben Bounds is the founder of Mercy Road Ministries (www.facebook.com/mercyroadministries/ also www.benbounds.com). He has served as pastor of churches across Texas for the last thirty years and is an ordained minister with The Christian and Missionary Alliance. He is currently engaged in an active writing and preaching ministry.
He is the author of The Divine Chase: Responding to a Pursuing God published by Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan, 2017.
Ben is the host of Staying in Bounds, an on-air Bible devotional broadcast daily on KWJV 103.7 FM Weslaco, TX which can also be heard worldwide online at www.kwjvthestar.com.
He may be reached at benbounds695@gmail.com or through his above website, facebook page or Parler page at Ben Bounds @gma695.
©2020 by Ben Bounds. All rights reserved.
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