I was finished with God!

 

 "I was finished with God.

 He truly found me at a time when I was not looking for him..."

   I was only six years old the day I decided I wanted to belong to Jesus. I feeling a sense of euphoric joy at what had happened that morning. 

   A sense of joy that was not to last....

  I don't remember the pastor's sermon. I was too young for theology to interest me. I only knew that when he gave the invitation to "join the church," I wanted to. 

  And as he counseled and prayed with me, my six-year-old faith connected with God through belief in his resurrected Son, and I knew that something special had happened.

   I would like to say I was faithful to God after that, but I wasn't always.

   My mother made sure we were at church almost every Sunday, and I said my prayers at night. But I never made Jesus a real part of my life. I had no idea how to do that.

   As an adolescent, I went my own way and stopped going to church altogether.

   A fear of dying and going to hell descended on me and stayed there for the next thirteen years. The only thing I knew about being a Christian was that you were supposed to go to church and live a certain way, and I didn't want to do that. 

   Church bored me.

  As a young adult, I began living a lifestyle that I could not reconcile with my conscience.

   Eventually, I couldn't bear the guilt and fear any longer, and I decided I wasn't going to believe in hell anymore. The only logical way to accomplish that, ... was to stop believing in God.

   I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was serious about it. 

   I reasoned with myself that if the scriptures were true and there was really a God, then there surely was a hell, and despite my profession of faith as a child, I was certain I was going there.

   I could not think of a single reason why I should be granted eternal life when I died. 

   I will never forget the first time I said it out loud--to another person--that I did not think I believed in God. The words shocked us both. I literally paused and waited for the lightning bolt to strike me. But it didn't. And I was encouraged to pursue my goal of becoming a full-fledged atheist.

   Between 1979 and 1981 I worked very hard at it. 

   Sometimes, during the day with all its distractions, I was somewhat successful. But at night, when the silence descended, I could not squelch the conviction of the Holy Spirit that the scriptures were true and that God was real.

   In 1981 I was invited to go to church with some friends and family, and I went. I did not go to worship God that morning. My goal was to discount everything the preacher said and prove that Christianity was a myth and a crutch for weak-minded people to lean on.

   I successfully (to my own satisfaction) shredded everything the preacher said. I sat through the songs, prayers, preaching, and alter call completely untouched--emotionally or spiritually. I walked out of church that morning almost unchanged. I said almost, because I was changed, ... for the worst. I was more convinced than ever that God did not exist, and I was very satisfied with myself.

   I went back again the next week. I knew if I could sit through one more church service unmoved, that would be the end of it. I would be free. I would walk away from God and never look back.

   I sat down on the back pew, the one closest to the exit, and waited for the service to begin. The congregation stood up, said a few prayers, sung a few hymns, then sat back down.

   I felt nothing. So far so good.

  Then, the preacher (who did not know me) raised his arm and pointed his finger directly at me and thundered the first words of his sermon.

   "And God gave them up!"

   When he uttered the last word of that sentence, something seemed to come out of the end of his finger and slam straight into my heart. In that moment, every atheistic idea I ever had was shattered. And in my heart, I cried out to God, "Please don't give me up!" 

  In that moment, I was acutely aware of the presence of my God and my Savior, Jesus Christ.

  I don't remember anything else the preacher said that morning, but I do remember I was the first one to reach the alter when he finished preaching.

   I picked up my Bible that very afternoon and haven't put it down since. I read my Bible every day always picking up where I left off yesterday. 

   The Word of God fed my hungry heart and changed my life.

   It took me almost twenty years to pick up where I left off when I was six, but I know that God allowed a little child to come to him, and held on to her, mercifully revealing his awesome presence, even as she tried with all her might to throw him away.