in the beginning I was living 110% in the world. I lived with a drug dealer. When I became pregnant I still used drugs without a care for anything or anyone but myself. When I was 6 mos. pregnant, still in street clothes, I didn’t know why, but found myself walking with only the clothes on my back to Teen Challenge. I had nowhere else to go. Knowing Teen Challenge was only for males, I was hoping they knew of a place I could go to. They referred me to a newly-opened women’s christian home. I was taken in and literally forced to go to see a doctor. I don’t recall ever being so scared. The doctor, after hearing my history, sent me for an emergency ultra sound. I recall him saying - this baby will never be normal! The ultra sound was ok. I was put on prenatal vitamins and sent home, having to see the doctor once a week. Three days after I got to this home a woman visited from an African missionary. She talked with me for hours. She prayed over my unborn child. It was an amazing experience. I knew my child would be ok. I felt something take place inside of me (spiritually and physically). Each week thereafter my baby grew to the exact cemtimeter. The doctor was amazed. I was amazed. I gave birth to a healthy baby boy. This happened as a direct intervention by my Lord, Jesus. He healed me from drug addiction. He healed my son from the addiction and harm I passed onto him in utero. This is one of many experiences I have had and this is why I believe in God.
Why do I believe? It’s an interesting question for me to reflect on, because I don’t feel like I necessarily made a choice to believe. It feels more accurate to say that belief chose me (if that makes any sense). For the first 18 years of my life, I believed there was a God much in the same way that I believed there was a moon - sure it was there, somewhere up in the sky, but as far as I knew it had no bearing on my life. I never really thought about it, nor did it make a difference to me. I considered myself a pretty good person, but it wasn’t because I believed in God. I was a kid whose life always seemed to go the way I wanted it to go, and I rarely had reason to think about God.
The summer after I graduated high school, I was invited to a church youth group that three college kids had decided to run, just for that summer. I honestly can’t remember much that was taught at that group, but I do remember recognizing that there was something real there, something that was unexplainable and different than anything else I had ever experienced. I was beginning to realize that it was possible to actually know God, that somehow there was more to God than my concept of some distant, unknowable being.
Near the end of that summer, I had an experience which shook me enough to make me realize that my confidence in life was simply due to the fact that everything always went my way, and I was hardly as together as I thought I was. When I went off to college that fall, I went around to all the parties the first week of school, but for some reason they all seemed fake to me now. It was as if I had experienced something real that summer at that youth group, and now the party scene just seemed fake and lifeless. I went back to my dorm room that second day of college, got on my knees, and told God, “I know where I belong, and it’s with you.” Nothing miraculous, no fireworks or angels singing or anything. I just climbed into bed and went to sleep.
A couple weeks later, as I was reading the Bible, I found Matthew 7:24-27, the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In that passage, Jesus explains that anyone who hears his words and lives his life by them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock, so that when the storm comes, the house still stands, while anyone who hears his words and does not live his life by them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand, so that when the storm comes, the house collapses. As I read that passage, I understood what had happened to me that summer. I believe God had shown me, in the gentlest way possible, that my life was built on sand. As long as everything went well for me, I had no need for God. But when the “storm” came, I collapsed. I was beginning to realize that the only secure place to build my life would be on God.
That was fourteen years ago. Like I said in the beginning, I don’t really feel I like I chose to believe. Even though I never really thought about God or even knew there was more to life than what I could see, God graciously pursued me, showed me that He was real, and that nothing else in life could compare to knowing and following Him. And, having experienced the reality of God, there is no possible way I could ever go back. Following Jesus these past fourteen years has been in many ways much harder than the alternative. I’m constantly being challenged to be selfless, to be generous, to forgive, to live fearlessly, and to trust in what I can not see (but then again, I’m following someone who was executed on a cross and experienced the punishment we deserved for our sin, so I really can’t complain). But I’m fortunate enough to see the before and after, to know what my life was like before Jesus and what it is like now, to know that this Jesus thing is real and has transformed me to the very core of who I am. In many ways, it has been like waking up to reality as it truly is, understanding who I am and what I was created to do.
This belief in Jesus thing, this living in the way of Jesus, is not an easy thing to get across to those who have never experienced it for themselves - I mean, how do you explain that reality as you are living it is not really reality, that there is a quality of life that is infinitely more ALIVE? I know the Matrix analogy is sometimes worn out, but it may be the best there is - you can choose the “blue pill” and believe whatever you want to believe, or you can “take the red pill” and experience true reality for yourself.
