The Presence by T. Davis Bunn

Author:T. Davis Bunn [Bunn, T. Davis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC026000
ISBN: 978-1-4412-3361-5
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2012-08-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

John Nakamishi was waiting for him in the hall after the Tuesday morning prayer meeting. “Did you see the 10 o’clock news last night?”

TJ shook his head, said, “I could scarcely keep my eyes open long enough to find my bed.”

“They showed your interview right at the beginning.”

“Did they?”

John nodded, his face as impassive as ever. “You really ate that girl alive.”

He smiled. “That’s not the way it felt at the time.”

“I taped it. You can see for yourself. When the camera zoomed in for that closing shot, you could see that you really got under her skin.”

“I was scared to death before it started,” TJ confessed.

“Were you really?” John was surprised. “It didn’t show at all.”

“Not while it was going on. Before. Once it started, well—” TJ wondered how he could explain it.

“The Spirit was upon you.” He nodded calmly. “Yes, that was clear too.”

TJ cast a startled glance at his assistant. Here he was, trying to find some way to describe what still embarrassed him tremendously, and John Nakamishi treated it like some everyday occurrence.

“Yes,” TJ agreed quietly, “I suppose it was.”

“What’s it like? I can see it on your face during the prayer meetings too. I feel it myself, of course, but I don’t think I’ve ever known it to happen so intensely.”

TJ struggled to find the words. “When the Presence is there, it is the most natural thing in the world. And the most real. The more powerful the inner impression, the more detached I seem from the world around me.”

“There isn’t room inside us for the Spirit and the world both. Not at the same time.”

What a remarkable young man, TJ thought. “Sometimes when it’s over I question the experience. It’s hard then for me to believe that it really happened. I try halfheartedly to convince myself that it was just my imagination.”

“I do the same thing,” John Nakamishi agreed, quiet and calm as ever. “The old self fights like anything to maintain control. I love that passage in Colossians, I don’t know how often I’ve read it. The trouble is, it’s not as easy to put off the old self as Paul makes it out to be.”

“He didn’t say it was easy,” TJ said. “He just said do it.”

“Maybe so,” John Nakamishi conceded. “But he didn’t tell us it was something we’d have to keep doing every single day for the rest of our lives.”

TJ paused at the door to their offices, asked, “John, how would you like to come home for dinner with me and meet my wife?”

“Call me Nak, please,” he replied. “I’d like that very much.”

“Fine. She’ll be coming in today, so I’ll see if she feels like having company tomorrow evening.”

TJ opened the door to their offices, heard Linda say, “Oh, just a moment, I think he’s coming in now.” She cradled the phone, said, “It’s a Mr. Roberts from ABC in New York. He saw a tape of your interview and wants you to appear on the Good Morning America show.

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