"Sometimes the ego will use the element of surprise. It will throw something at you all of a sudden, right out of the blue. That is when most people, myself included, lose it. We lose it when something happens suddenly and we are not anticipating it or we didn't expect it.
Three days before I came up here, I got a phone call that my oldest brother had a very major heart attack and typically, I reacted in panic. I thought, 'Oh my God, I have to get a plane ticket. I have to get up there earlier than I planned.' But it was like there was this voice that said, 'Wait, just abide.' So I called everybody I knew and a lot of people I didn't know, for prayers for him. He is home now and he is fine. Even though he had two major heart attacks, there was hardly any damage to his heart and he is doing wonderfully well.
The other thing that was unsettling to me was when I went to bed that night and finally got to sleep, I was awakened by him calling me. He said, 'Hey Pen,' and I sat up and said, 'What? What?' I looked and there he stood and I thought, 'My God, he has passed over. He has passed away.'
I looked at him and he said, 'Pen, what do I do?' I said, 'Do you see anyone?' He looked around and said, 'Just you.' I thought, 'How odd that he just sees me. Am I dead? No, I am not dead.' Then I thought, 'Well, maybe he only sees me because he hasn't entered spirit yet. Maybe he is still enough connected to his body.'
He said, 'Do I go back or do I stay here?' I said, 'I can't tell you that. From the love of me for you I want you to stay here, but I can't tell you that you have to stay. You have to choose.' He said, 'Well, what do I have to do?' I said, 'Call on the Holy Spirit.' Now you have to know my brother Bob. He is not a religious man. He believes in God, but that is about all. So I said to him, 'Call on the Holy Spirit.' He said, 'I don't know how to do that.' I said, 'Okay, I will do it for you.' So I called on the Holy Spirit and I said, 'Please come and help him to choose correctly.'
I will tell you, one of the hardest things I have ever done was not to say, 'Please help him to stay.' When I said, 'Help him to choose correctly,' there was like something released and he disappeared. I thought, 'Okay, that is all right. They are doing something with him.' I didn't know what they were doing with him, but I knew they were doing something with him.
A few seconds later he is back again. He says, 'Hey, Pen, what do I do?' I said, 'I just called on the Holy Spirit.' He said, 'Well, do I stay?' I said, 'Bob, I can't decide that. You have to decide that. I want you to stay. Your family wants you to stay, but you have to decide.'
So I called on the Holy Spirit again and this time he kind of looked at me and smiled a little bit and he left. I didn't know if he was staying on the earth or if he was going into spirit. I didn't know that. Nothing in anything that happened told me one way or the other.
But a sense of peace came over me and with that came the realization that it didn't matter. It really didn't matter whether he stayed in the flesh or went into the spirit. He was all right and was with God. There was that God-present moment with him and in that moment we were not separated whether he stayed or whether he didn't.
When I got up in the morning, the phone rang and and part of me thought, 'This is my sister-in-law telling me that he is gone.' The other part of me was saying, 'Remember, it doesn't really matter.' Well, the voice on the other end of the phone said, ... 'Hi. Do you get the newspaper?' I said, 'What?" This was not what I was expecting to hear.
But anyway, the point is that from that experience I realized that when you call on God, whether you call on the Holy Spirit or whether you call on God, however you do it, that you have to be willing to let go of the result. You can't say to God, 'I want this. I want You to help, but I want You to help this way. I only want You to do this thing.' You have to be willing to trust and that is a big thing, to trust God.
How many of you feel you really trust God to make all of your decisions and not think that He is going to mess it up royally? Did you even stop to think how we pray most of the time? When we pray, we ask God for something.
I learned a lesson about prayer that in a way is a simple lesson, but I can't say in truth for me that it was easy. I learned that a true prayer is without words. A true prayer comes from your heart and it isn't asking. It isn't asking like that.
A true prayer is just simply the awareness that you and God are not separate, that He is an integral part of you. The recognition of that presence in your life is the most profound prayer that you can have because it is like saying that everything you ever need, God knows and already answers. No prayer can be denied."
03/30/2025 Blog. Rev. Penny Donovan, EXPERIENCES WITH GOD, Pgs. 19-21. Copyright 2000 Springwell Metaphysical Studies. All rights reserved. To purchase this booklet, contact: sherry@sacredgardenfellowship.org
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