Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 24-25)
Our Jesus, making everything beautiful in its time (Eccl. 3:10), has saved and saved me from things most terribly ugly throughout my life. In a dark environment, desensitized from a young age, He allowed my little eyes and ears and hands to know evils much too big for my little heart to endure without the grace and mercies of a loving Father much bigger than this world that gives us so much trouble. And so my story is of the Great Lover's call in the midst of the storm that only exists to glorify Him in the grand scheme of things...
A memory stands out from when i was growing up: i stole a cigarette from my ten year old brother's room with the intent of learning how to smoke it. i was seven. Too scared to follow through, the cigarette sat at the back of my bottom dresser drawer and grew stale before i ever tried to smoke it. Much of my childhood can be categorized as the endeavor of things growing stale. Ecclesiastes has it right; this life is fleeting apart from our Jesus. And He made it a point to show me from an early age.
My parents were distant and complicated and didn't know Jesus. i was emotionally and physically and sexually abused from the time i was 4 until i was almost 12. i don't usually share this part of my story... Suffering loss, and hurt, and pain can so often be associated with evil. Hear me out, abuse is evil. It spoils and deadens parts of the human soul in its ability to twist so strongly the intent of the Good Lord and violating with sin what He is so very jealous for. But the suffering, the result of such sin, is always so ripe for Hope. And Hope is quite the opposite of evil. :) So, i invite you to bear these things with me in your reading, but bear them with the notion that what satan meant for evil, God is using for good. (Gen. 50:20)
Growing up so removed from my emotions and heart (due to the abuse), and not knowing the Savior, made it hard for me to know my identity. Part of my story is that i was a social chameleon, a people pleaser, a know it all, an over achiever, and simultaneously an introverted, too scared to try too hard, follower of the world. i did drugs if they were popular, drank if it was popular; sang, danced, or played sports when it was popular. i was committed to doing whatever would gain me the acceptance of the most people at once.
i'm convinced Jesus is using this as well, for great good... helping me to have Paul's ability to become all things to all people, that by all means i might save some. (1 Cor. 9:22) :)
More alluring than the approval of others though, is the love of our Savior. And He met me between my breaking when i was 16 and i moved to St. Louis. Surrounding me with believers, He led my acceptance hungry heart to start to live for conforming to something other than the world... the american church. i went from doing everything i could to please people outside of the church walls, to trying to please those on the inside. i'd grown up in the bible belt, but i'd never really met young people who loved Jesus until i moved to St. Louis and was invited into their circle of friends.
God busted in on my pride though and ripped my heart away from its sinful desire to achieve holiness apart from Christ. i went to visit old friends in Arkansas and lost all the "holy" i'd worked so hard for, falling back into the partying and boys and overt sin i'd been in before. The summer ended and so did most of my old friendships. i had an encounter with Jesus when i got back to St.Louis in which i laid face down in the empty parking lot of a church with great humility, begging Jesus to be my real Lover and confessed that i treated Him as my trophy that i'd earned after living part of my hard life and repenting of some of it... He forgave me. :)
My identity: Christ.
He gives and He takes and i can't say following this martyr, this missionary, King Jesus is something i enjoy all the time in my heart. But my soul is rested in Him and yearns for His adventure to be my Life.
And so i say, "no turning back".
"i have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back."
