chris bernardo :: Blog :: The Diver on the Top Platform

I had a vision a few weeks ago.

I was seing a diver on the topmost platform, stretching his hands and toes, gaining his balance, summoning his concentration, and preparing. He was getting ready to launch himself away from the safety of solid ground. Away from the normal, upright position that we're all so comfortable with. Away from safety, away from the edge.

His toes gripped the edge, and curled as his muscles tensed. He was aware of every muscle and bone. He saw himself perfectly controlled and centered.

*************************

I had a God thing happen to me recently. I went out to dinner with a friend of mine, instead of going to church. I felt the Lord was telling me to do the dinner instead.

We met with 3 other couples that I didn't know real well, all invited by our friend. The guy who ended up sitting across from me turned out to be our church's youth pastor's old youth pastor from like 13-14 years ago! I only met the guy a couple of times before, and I didn't even know he was saved, much less a minister. We didn't go to the same churches back then, but we were in the same city.

We sat there the whole time and talked about the kinds of prayer meetings we used to have in the early 90s. The kinds of deep worship experiences we had back then, and we kept saying "It's not like that anymore."

I remember how we used to pray in groups of 20 or 30, and the presence of the Holy Spirit of God was so thick, it looked like a haze was hanging in the room. We would get so caught up in worship that we lost all sense of time. One time, I felt that I was kneeling directly before the feet of the Lord Himself, seated on His throne. I didn't ever want to leave, but He told me 'You can't stay here like this- you have people to see.'

We talked about how perhaps that we used to be in a low level revival of sorts, and we didn't recognize it because we didn't have a lower frame of reference to compare it to. We just figured that's the way it always is! Little did we know.

I don't know about you, but the last few years has been a struggle with the status quo. The comfort zone mentality. The unwillingness to get really radical the way we used to, as a body. Sometimes I feel like if I really stretched out and took a walk outside the boat, that nobody would understand.

Anyway, that's just our experience, but it was eerie how we were perceiving the same things in different churches. This former youth pastor understood EXACTLY what I was saying.

But as we walked away from each other in the parking lot, I got this vision of the diver. He was pausing right before his dive, and taking one last look over his shoulder, at the way things used to be...