Encounters With God

By Margaret Lubbock

A personal story that only brings glory to God, a story of great encouragement to those who long to see God breaking into our world more often with His power and demonstrations of the miraculous.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447655916

Book preview

Encounters With God

ENCOUNTERS

WITH GOD

by

Margaret Lubbock

Foreword by

Rev. Paddy Beresford BA, Dip. CPC

Former Minister at Walton Baptist Church

Copyright © 2009, Margaret Lubbock

ISBN: 978-1-4476-5591-6

All Scripture references are taken from

The New King James’ Bible published by Nelson

To the late Reverend Stanley Voke, my spiritual counselor and friend, without whose perseverance in prayer I would not be here today;

To my husband, Bill, whose hard work and encouragement enabled me to finish this book;

And to my editor, Rebecca Morgan; my eternal thanks for each of them.

FOREWORD

BY

Reverend Paddy Beresford, BA, Dip CPC

Former Minister at Walton Baptist Church

This book, in potential form, has been around a long time. I know that Margaret has been encouraged to publish her story from the time that these marvellous events first happened.Yet the waiting has been worthwhile; time makes certain reflections more powerful and profound. I know that what Margaret has learnt from God’s word and prompting since then builds on that foundation and this book is invaluable for those insights.

Personal stories can be quite egoistical – but there’s nothing of that here. This is a personal story that only brings glory to God. The account of how God brought physical healing to Margaret and the way in which God multiplied the blessings in birthing faith in others is a story of great encouragement to those who long to see God breaking into our twisted world more often with His power and demonstrations of the miraculous.

I look back on those days with delight, for we were part of something special that God’s Spirit was accomplishing amongst us at Walton-on-Thames. I have often tussled with the question of why God doesn’t do these things more often and remain convinced that the issues are with us rather than Him. We receive nothing from God without a genuine desperateness as we hunger and thirst for it. Jesus pointed to the comparative success rate of prostitutes and drunkards entering into the Kingdom of God over and against those who thought by their religious observance they could sail through. The defining difference is simply one of desperateness. Desperateness is hard work. Perhaps we are guilty of sitting back too often and expecting God to do His work, rather than the hard graft of pleading and being intimately caught up in the warfare that sends the destroyer packing.

Margaret isn’t just telling stories in this book – though the stories are good – but they go hand in hand with how she has learnt to be effective in prayer, the mistakes as well as the breakthroughs.

You will gain much from this book because of both its descriptions of how God interacts miraculously with us, and its encouragement for us all to expect this and to pray it into being in our own lives.

Paddy Beresford

July 2008

ENCOUNTERS WITH GOD

Without faith it is impossible to please God, for he who comes to God  must believe that He exists, and that He is  a rewarder of those who will diligently seek Him’. Hebrews 11 v 6.

Your discs look fairly good for a lady of 60, particularly the bottom two, the surgeon said.

‘That’s because they are only 18 years old,’ I replied.  I went on to explain that God had healed my back in 1977, and obviously had renewed the two lower discs. The surgeon looked at me as if I were mad.

‘Well, do they look like the discs of a 60 year old?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he answered.

‘Do they rather appear to be like the discs of an 18 year old?’ I went on.

‘Well, I can’t really say that, but they are different from all the others.’

That conversation was 15 years ago.  This year, 2009, I had a torn muscle in my groin and had another MRI (this takes very accurate pictures of the body using a magnetic field.)  I asked the doctor about my healing in 1977 and said, ‘Please check on my lower two discs.’

He came back with the results. ‘All discs are OK, no problem there, and you have two very pretty bottom discs!’

Let’s start at the beginning. This is a story about encountering God.  Many of my experiences have entailed miracles ─ events which could not possibly be explained by natural forces as we know them.

I have witnessed many miracles, but the very first one that set the pattern for many that followed was my healing. Such a miracle had been hoped for and prayed for by many others, but when it happened it took me and my pastor completely by surprise. But the groundwork and the basis for it ─ a belief in Jesus ─ had been laid a few months before and it would be helpful to the reader to give some idea of the background and the context of the first of those miraculous happenings. A few miracles followed as I first recounted my story to small groups and prayed for other people, but later the events were separate, divorced from what had happened to me, and stood by themselves as testimonies to the existence of God who loves us, cares about us and intervenes in our lives for our good. My experience also bears witness to the power of prayer in hopeless situations.

If you are a Christian reading this, my prayer is that you would be blessed, encouraged, and emboldened to go out and pray for others.

If you are not a believer in Jesus, I ask you to read the book with an open mind. A wise leader in the Chinese church, Watchman Nee, advocated this prayer for unbelievers:

‘God, I don’t believe you exist, but if you do, please reveal yourself to me.’

He says that God always answers that honest prayer. Try it!

You need a degree of faith to bring about a miracle, faith that God in the person of Jesus can do it. This is a gift of God. ‘By grace you have been saved, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.’ Ephesians 2 v 8.

I didn’t deserve to be forgiven and used in God’s service. All that happened was by God’s grace and to His glory. But should I ever be likely to lose that faith, or doubt that Jesus is who He says He is, or that God does care about us, I have only to reflect on what happened to me.

FALLING SICK AND BEING HEALED

I was brought up in a loving middle-class home. At the age of five, war broke out, and I was sent with my mother on a trek around relations in Wales and the West Country to avoid the bombs in London. My father still worked in London and fought fires at night.. We saw him occasionally, but I effectually had no father from the age of five till twelve.

In 1942 we settled in a village near Dorking where my sister was born, and father went off to the war. My prep school in Gomshall, and later a private boarding school in Sussex, were Christian-based, and I was confirmed in our high Anglican church at age 15.

After university I married in church, and later we had our two children christened, but never went to church except at Christmas. God was out there somewhere, but not involved with me. Things changed when a good friend, Diana, became a Christian. She had always been very happy-go-lucky, though rather unsettled, and now she seemed so calm and serious. I found it hard to understand, but recognised she had found a peace and joy I had never seen in her before.

We spent a holiday with them in 1976 and they took us to their Anglican church in Plymouth. I was bowled over by the love and purpose in that church, and the service with guitars, a band, and modern choruses, was great fun, but also very emotional. When they all started singing together in an inimitable song and unknown words I was moved to tears, but I wasn’t aware of the reason ─  when Diana became a Christian the Lord had laid me on her heart. She had begun praying for me and her faithful prayers were releasing me to the moving of the Holy Spirit.

Later that year my world folded in on me. During that hot summer of 1976, when there was a hose ban, I had been watering the garden using two watering cans at a time.  My back, which had always been a problem to me, suddenly became so painful that there was nothing I could do but lie in bed, legs bent over a pillow. I was told by the doctor to stay there for a fortnight, and my whole life came to a grinding halt. By then I had a full-time job as a Careers Officer, with a full social calendar and two teenage children to look after. I couldn’t function on any level at all, and it was devastating. Apart from the pain in my lower back, and down the outside sciatic nerve in my left leg, I was stiffening up everywhere else and getting very depressed. I was in such pain that the doctor said I had to stay in bed. I could only crawl to the toilet on hands and knees, and take lots of time over it. After a week I was no better, and was advised to continue bed rest.

After six weeks of this, my friend Diana, came to see me. She told me that she had called Pastor Stanley Voke, a local Baptist Minister, and asked him to visit me. I was only interested in one thing – healing. ‘Do they have healing services?’ I asked. She didn’t know, but said, ‘If you ask for help from God you’ll get far more than you’ve asked for.’ This stuck in my mind and I remembered the experience in their church at Plymouth.

When Pastor Voke arrived he wasn’t a bit like the usual vicar. He didn’t wear a dog collar, nor did he say a few kind words and then never return. I had never been to his church, but he said that two ladies from the church were coming to see me, and if I would like him to, he would come as well. He read some Scripture and I cried, which I did all the time; self-pity is a miserable bedfellow. However, I felt after he had gone that somewhere there was a gleam of hope.

For the next four-and-a-half months while I had to remain in bed these three people were almost my only visitors. People can be sympathetic for a week or two, but six months is too long, and my non-Christian friends gave me up. Only one friend with a young frail baby was faithful in continuing to visit me, and took me in later months to appointments with physiotherapy and acupuncture, but the Christians kept coming. I know they had full lives, but still they found time to see me and talk about their walk with God. How I bless God for their steadfastness and patience, for I was not a rewarding person to visit.

I had one crisis point after about two months of this enforced bed rest. I know now that Satan had targeted me. I felt so low and despairing that he convinced me that my family would be better off without me. I determined one day to take all the pills in the bathroom cabinet when the family had left the house.

As my husband was dressing that morning, I was quietly crying as usual. Suddenly he turned and said, ‘I’m fed up with seeing you like this. I’m not going to work today. I’m going to see the doctor myself and get something done.’ My husband had never taken a day off work because of my illnesses, and hasn’t since. ‘Oh, all right,’ I said, and the suicidal thoughts vanished, never to return.

During these months I tried many avenues of healing, conventional and alternative. I had a manipulation under anaesthetic, investigation by myelogram, acupuncture, and faith healing. Nothing worked or pointed to a solution.

Spiritually, the real turning point for me was when Reverend Voke, talking about how God sees us, said, ‘What do you think God meant by sin?’

‘Well, it is a rather biblical word isn’t it,’ I said feeling a little uncomfortable and wondering where this conversation was going. ‘I suppose it means breaking the Ten Commandments.’

‘Yes?’ he prompted.

‘Well, like thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal or covet, or commit adultery’ I replied, now feeling very anxious. What was he going to ask me next?

‘Yes’, he said ‘But what about the first commandment?’

‘Oh yes, I know that. Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy mind’ I replied.

‘And Him only shall you serve,’ he finished. ‘Do you love God like that, have you ever for one day loved God in that way?’

‘No’, I said, shamefaced, ‘Not ever.’

‘Well, you’ve been breaking the first, and Jesus said the greatest, commandment, every day of your life. What do you think that makes you in God’s eyes?’

‘A sinner,’ I wept.

I don’t think I have ever felt so desolate. The words cut through to the very core of my being, and I realised with horror that all I deserved from God was condemnation and to be sent to hell.

‘But I’ve good news for you,’ he said with a smile. ‘Jesus came to save sinners, (1 Timothy 1, v 15) and you are exactly in the category of people He came to save. Think about that.’ With that he left.

Have you ever been, or are you now, ‘in a pit’ as the Psalms describe it? (Ps. 28 v 21)   I felt as if I was at the bottom of a dark slimy well and there was no way I could get out. I couldn’t even reach out to God, I didn’t know Him. Two days later Stanley Voke came round again. He said later that this time he had come with my Christian friends to pray for my healing, but he saw that I was ready to give my life to Jesus and instead he led me in a prayer of repentance and commitment. I have never felt so in need of help, desperate to reach out to this God that I didn’t know, but not at all sure that He would hear. I just knew I had to change, but how?

After the prayer, they left me. I felt exhausted, but no different. So even that hadn’t worked, I thought. Another avenue had closed. Some days later I had an appointment to see a faith healer for the second time. He was a friend of someone in my husband’s office.

Yes, I know now that I shouldn’t have been to see him, but when you are in great pain you try anything. It had been a very painful journey and I had to be virtually carried into his house. I lay