HE SPOKE MY NAME.
I looked to my left and then to my right on the night Jesus did not come through my front door, magically walk through the walls or come down the chimney like Santa.
I was sitting on my pink sofa, one of two pink sofas that I brought with me after my last divorce from the father of my precious son. I cannot explain how I instinctively knew it was Jesus, but if you have ever heard him speak your name, you understand. If not, you’ll think I had one too many drinks from the Baptist bar in my family room. But I hadn’t.
I have vices, but liquor is not one of them, even though I have seriously contemplated how helpful it would be if I could drown out my woes with a good bottle of wine.
Or two.
I had been in church off and on for two decades and I did not even know Jesus made house calls. Unless I was on my deathbed and I saw the light. Or I was living under a bridge and God was my only hope.
But, this was not the case.
I was healthy, reasonably wealthy, and thought of myself as one of the good guys on the planet. In other words, I was self-sufficient, on the ladder to success, and did not need God.
I cannot deny that I had abandoned my childhood faith in God, which did seem rather foolish. Choosing instead, I trusted in myself. But that didn’t mean I stopped believing in God. I believed in and had, for the most part, followed the traditional and conservative values found in the Bible, and chose to act upon them. As often as I could.
And when I couldn’t, I had my “get out of jail free card.” Hallelujah and praise Jesus!
Until I met Jesus, I wasn’t concerned about dying or eternity, no one persecuted me for claiming to be a Christian and I never had any intention of ever being one of those radical, obnoxious, “wear your faith on your sleeve”, Bible-thumping holy rollers.
I had adopted the politically correct attitude of keeping religion out of my affairs and I liked the idea of not being judged—live and let live—and besides that, I didn’t have time or reason or desire to sort out what I believed about my organized religion.
The truth is that anything about God would be on the bottom of my list of things to worry about. I had no place for God—until I got into a real bind—but even then I didn’t really want to wake a sleeping giant, who might as well zap me instead of coming through for me.
And if I did pray, I didn’t believe Jesus could do much to help me.
I did believe the stories in the Bible. Sort of. And I believed in miracles. Sort of. But I never expected Jesus to perform any for me.
The binds I got into didn’t need the parting of the Red Sea or bringing the walls of Jericho down. I didn’t have leprosy and if I ran out of drinks at a party, I didn’t pray that Jesus would turn the water into wine. I just sent someone to the store.
I was pretty quick on the up-take, and the chances of getting what I prayed about seemed to be slim and never more than a 50/50 proposition. Weren’t those my same odds if I didn’t pray?
So, in an effort to make my prayers count, I’d usually negotiate something. If you’ll do this for me, Lord, I’ll try to be a better person. On the rare occasion that I did pray, I didn’t really trust God to come through for me and I certainly didn’t thank him if things worked out because it always seemed to be my effort anyway.
The truth is that I was secretly indifferent to God.
I would stay out of his way and hope that he would stay out of mine. It was evident to me that he did little for me and I must have done something terribly offensive to him in my past because he, after all, did not save my daughter from death.
Which proved that he obviously didn’t love me.
Nonetheless, he held the keys to heaven so I still took my son to church. That’s what good people do. For a solid hour.
Every. Sunday. Morning.
Now you might think I could hardly call myself Christian since I was indifferent to God, but what else was I to call myself? I wasn’t Jewish or Buddhist and I hadn’t even heard of Muslims yet.
You might say I was a Christian only by default or because I happened to be taught to go to church and it was now a habit. If you said it was nothing more than a cheap public relations move that made me look like a responsible and honest person, I could not argue. We do everything in life out of more than one motive and I went to church for several reasons, the least of which was to worship God.
But, I also wasn’t willing to cross that line into atheism either, nor did the thought ever enter my mind.
I am eternally grateful that I was on Jesus’ mind that November evening in 1990. For in one encounter, my life changed, and a question I had in the deepest recesses of my being was answered. What is it really all about?
It is about love.
Some people work a twelve-step program to recover from the chains that hold them in bondage in the prison of their own design. Jesus has the condensed version.
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:36-40 (ESV)
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.--The Lord (Isaiah 43:1)
Ezekiel 36:26,Matthew 6:21, John 15: 9-17, Romans 12:2, Psalms 34:18, Galatians 2:20,1 Peter 1:22,1 John 4:7
As always, it is my intent and hope that my words may encourage you wherever you are in your journey.
If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.--Jesus (Mark 4:23)
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