I am because YOU ARE
It had always been my intention, despite my inability to do so, to make GOD real to people in a way they could relate to by sharing my own experiences after having been born again. Unlike this particular narrative, I always prayed before sitting down to set about testifying of what the Lord had done in my life the previous year which I knew was absolutely HIM. This time, I’ve had some things on my mind which I want to “put out there”, and this is only place I know of to do it. I sincerely hope it will be the last time I ever post to this site.
There were two distinct reasons I stopped posting a Christmas letter on the tread. One of the reasons was because I was wrong about what the Holy Spirit had spoken to me a couple of months prior to submitting it to the site. I sincerely believed there was going to be a catastrophic event which was going to take place in the Northwest part of the United States before April first of 2015. Part of me wanted to speak what I had heard the Holy Spirit say because I wanted to warn people of what I believed was going to happen, but another part of me (the bad part) wanted some recognition by others that I was in fact hearing the voice of the Lord and not just making a bunch of stuff up for the sake of attention. As it so happened, it wasn’t the Northwest part of the country, it was the Northwest part of Arkansas. On March 26th of 2015, we got eight inches of rain in a three hour period which caused some major damage to an area of the Great Passion Play grounds about a month before we opened for the season. I also made mention of something happening in June. In the first part of the month a coworker gave me a set of tires for my truck, AND the supreme court ruled on marriage equality. Never saw that coming.
While my misinterpretation of what I heard the Lord say to me was embarrassing (I didn’t say it to others, just on the site), the biggest reason I stopped writing and posting the Christmas letter was because it just didn’t seem to matter. No matter how much I wanted unsaved people to know how good, wonderful, and awesome GOD is, I just wasn’t seeing the kind of results I had hoped for regardless of where or to whom I made the letter available. It was as if the only people who cared were the people who already knew.
For the past thirteen years, I’ve made it a point to pray for several people for whom I really want GOD to intervene in their lives in such a way that HE will wipe out any doubts about the realness of HIS Being. To this day, I don’t know if HE has, having yet to see any proof of it in the lives of those for whom I pray (none of which are on the site). Some of the people I don’t particularly like, but I still don’t want them to go to hell. GOD is not going to make an exception for anybody.
I have to admit, I’ve never seen so many agnostics and atheists gathered together in one place like I’ve seen on this site. I know I can’t possibly be the only person on this site who has had an encounter with GOD. It may not have been anything like my own, but one would think they would at least want others to know by testifying about it. And yet, they’re silent. So I’m not going tell others anymore, convinced that they don’t want to know.
And, while I not rich by any stretch of the imagination, GOD does bless me from time to time even in the hardest times of my life. And HE is still talking to me. However, unless HE impresses upon me to tell, I’m just going keep my mouth shut. Why tell people who don’t want to know to begin with.
I came to this site in 1996 hoping to turn in little into a lot only to lose everything and then some. By doing so, it helped place me in a position whereby I was confronted with just how much I had missed what life was truly about. It was only because of a series of events which took place from 2001 to 2004 that GOD worked out a way for me to receive the very thing HE had wanted for me since the moment of my conception, to know HE had made a way for me to be with HIM forever. While I admit I’d rather be rich and saved, I’d rather die poor than unsaved (the sooner the better because being poor sucks).
I’ve got some time to go before reaching the age of eighty, but thirty is a long way back in my rear view mirror. I can’t help but wonder if older age is simply reserved for some for the sole purpose of answering some of the “whys”. I realized a couple of years ago it isn’t youth which is wasted on the young, it is wisdom. Most recently, it occurred to me that mankind has never created anything. It has either been a series of discoveries or a manipulation of discoveries, but man has never created anything out of absolute nothingness. Nor will mankind, of or by his or her freewill ever make the world as we know it a better place than it was in the original state because the majority of people cannot overcome pride, selfishness, lust, and greed. Even in those who are saved these shortcomings are prevalent. Lastly, the overwhelming majority of people simply do not understand the ramifications of eternal justice. They just don’t get that what believer’s generally call “sin” does in fact have eternal consequences. Unfortunately, too many people are going to figure that out after they die, but by then it will be too late.
Jesus is the answer to the sin question. I really hope there will be some people on the site that figure that out even if I never have anything to do with their coming to that conclusion.
Thank you Lord for saving my life. |
