BRENDA COBB MURPHY

Check out my journey in pictures 

I’ve always said that I was born a Christian. While I never remember a time that I didn’t believe in God, I made my “profession of faith” around age nine. I was born in Bangkok, and Thailand was “home.” My parents taught me to love God passionately, and I grew up seeing and sharing their compassion for others.

I got involved in a Charismatic group at Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky, where I met my husband Terry, who was one of the leaders in the group. We spent the next twenty years trying to find a church where we fit, but even though Terry was often the worship leader or on the worship team, and we were a part of the “inner circle,” we still never really fit. Out of our desperation for more of God we asked questions that pastors found uncomfortable. We would dream of worshipping in a church where most of the people were passionate about God, did that exist, and what would it be like?

During a small Bible study I started in 1992, a neighbor challenged everything I believed, causing me to go home determined to find every reference in the Bible that answered her challenges. Maybe because it was the first time I’d ever had to defend what I believed, or just that Holy Spirit switched something on in me, but from that night on I became passionate about God. In my quest to learn more about prayer, I bought the book Conversation With God by Lloyd J. Ogilvie, and that book was the catalyst for everything that has come after. The book talked about different aspects of prayer, but the one that was new to me was silence. He said to sit in silence before God.

I decided to start out with twenty minutes a day “quiet time” (our youngest was four so I couldn’t leave them for long) and during that time, besides worshipping and praying, I would try silence. With nowhere to go in our small apartment I would sit on the washing machine in our tiny laundry room. Occasionally the children would wander in and out asking questions or just seeing what mom was doing, but God isn’t easily scared off and it didn’t matter. At first, I spent my time before the throne, worshipping an awesome God who was huge and powerful, and holy. I was overwhelmed by such an almighty God.

But one day, after a few months of spending time with God, I suddenly realized that instead of worshipping before the throne, I was hanging out with Jesus. Instead of worshipping a holy Father-God I was laughing and enjoying a close relationship with my Bridegroom. It took me by surprise. I hadn’t thought much, if anything, about the Bridegroom relationship, but just realized one day that my God-time had changed. Jesus had come and wooed me without my realizing it. Where I had been writing prose about an awesome God, I was now writing about dancing with Jesus. Now, instead of being on-my-face worshipping, I was sitting and hugging Jesus’ presence to myself wherever I was.

Here’s something I wrote that shows where my heart was, and it was one of the first signs that my writing and perspective had changed. I wrote this on a napkin I found in my coat pocket, standing in the hallway outside my son’s first grade class as I waited to take him home.

I walk around with my head in the clouds.

I walk around with my head in the clouds.

I feel protected in a cocoon of love.

These people who see me have no idea

that I am Your beloved.

I am Your chosen bride

and You have set Your seal on me.

My heart glows in response.

I feel Your love radiating over me,

warming me to the depths of my being.

I walk in a world apart from others.

Sheltered, protected and secure in this knowledge,

It was a few years later that I first experienced “doing” something with Jesus, as in, he was really there. Not his omnipresence, but his manifest presence. God is omnipresent, everywhere all the time. But when he chooses, his manifest presence comes, and you can physically know his presence. I was sitting on my washing machine having silent time with God as usual and I became overwhelmed with the thought of being his bride, and what it will be like to dance with Jesus at our wedding. I began to imagine dancing with Jesus, and then it was real. I felt his presence with me, and it wasn’t like my imagination anymore.

With my eyes closed, sitting on my washing machine, I danced in the Spirit (meaning not physically) and cried. It was as if I were really dancing with Jesus, and I felt his presence strongly, and later it kind of freaked me out, like, Is this wrong? I’ve never heard of something like this, is it allowed?

That was in Columbus, Ohio, in 1995. Growing in intimacy with Jesus has been a process. It took me a long time to really start experiencing his reality, as I didn’t have the knowledge of what he wanted or what was possible. I was still limited by my traditional Sunday school upbringing and by my fear of being “in the flesh” or making it up. It was hard to drop man’s teachings and let Jesus show me the relationship he wants, what is possible in him.

For example, I had believed the lie that we should never imagine God or have pictures of him, doing so was to limit him to our human perceptions. So for a long time I was crippled by that, until I understood the beautiful truth in the Bible where Jesus repeatedly tells us to use our spiritual senses to “see” and “hear.” Where for 33 years people saw Jesus, and they didn’t drop dead.

I have grown into an intimate relationship with Jesus as my Bridegroom that has changed everything I believed and everything I thought being a Christian was. Check out more of my journey in my book The Wild Romancer.

Besides writing and sharing with women how they too can know Jesus intimately, I serve alongside my husband Terry as we travel and teach Kings Boot Camp in various groups, minister in our weekly meeting Ginmay (God Is Not Mad At You), and record our podcasts on living the Adam Walk in "real life." I am passionate about writing, and have to be pried away from my laptop to do anything else. I love brainteaser puzzles (I didn’t say I could solve them, I just love them) and I collect old keys.

Now that all three of our kids have moved out I have my own office, a sanctuary that brings me pure pleasure, and whenever I’m not occupied with “normal” life you’ll find me in there, writing and hanging out with Jesus. My goal is to flow through life dancing across the waters with Jesus as I touch the world around me with His supernatural love.

I’ll close with this excerpt from Chapter Ten of my book: