I Love You

I could write the book, "The Idiot's Guide for Coming To Christ". No choir singing, "Just As I Am" and no counselors waiting with plastic smiles and clever gospel tracts in hand. No heads were bowed, no eyes were closed, no seeker sensitive "bait and switch" set-up to lure me in. I hated church, I hated Christians and I hated their thinly veiled attempts to witness to me. I hated my mom and dad's new "faith". I hated life and I especially hated me. Hate; pure, raw, real.

Just as I was? I was just between drinking binges at 16. Too cowardly to shoot myself or slice my wrists. But not too cowardly to drive my dad's Cadillac up a hill at 100 miles an hour on the wrong side of the road just to hear my car load of friends scream for mercy and curse me. I will always wonder who it was I almost killed at the top of that hill. I took the left hand ditch at the last moment.

The beginning of the end came one night when, in the grey cloud of my misery, I was running my head into the walls of my bedroom. Not in the figurative manner of speaking; literally ramming my skull as hard as I could into the walls hoping to cause an injury bad enough to kill me. (People close to me now say that explains some things about me 37 years later). My insanity was based in the lie I believed and was speaking out between thumps on the wall, "Nobody loves me". I fell asleep, or to be more accurate, slipped into unconsciousness that night, sobbing those words into my pillow.

I think it was the next day, an old German man from a church my parents were attending came to the house. He parked his old Volvo a block away (because he knew I knew his car and would not come home if I saw it parked in our driveway). He sat and waited patiently for me to come home that night because he told my mother he had a dream about me the night before. He didn't tell her what it was. When I walked in the door and saw him sitting in my house, I cursed under my breath....

With a thick German accent he said, "Sit down." Honestly, my knees buckled and I sat. He choked with emotion and continued, "I had a dream about you last night. I saw you crying and saying, 'Nobody loves me'. And God told me to come here tonight and tell you that He loves you and I love you."

I have spent my life from that moment till this running toward and leaping into the Arms of that God. The rest of the events of that night belong to another blog at another time, but all of the above was written to lead to this moment for everyone reading this right now. Gather yourself for a moment of clarity and focus and drink these last words into your soul.....

God says to you right now, in this crease of eternity; "My child, I love you." He told me to tell you that. Yes He did. Whoever you are. Whenever you read this. God is looking back at you through this computer monitor and speaking those Words into your reality. A century ago the words, "born again" were not used to describe being "saved". In his book, "The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus", Brennan Manning says, "A century ago...in the deep south.... the words used to describe the breakthrough into a personal relationship with Jesus were, 'I was seized by the power of a great affection.'"

I am being obedient to a heavenly vision to use this venue to say we all need to be seized again and again for the restoration of an authentic life and faith. In too many ways, Christianity today has become a system, a "thing" and it does not seize lives as it could and should. That could change, even in this very moment.......there it is..........can you hear it? His Voice..........