My dad sent this to me this morning. He’s had it written on the inside cover of his Bible forever. I think he got it from one of Charles Stanley’s sermons a long time ago.
Every once in a while, he brings it out and e-mails it to my brother and me. It’s incredibly powerful. I hope I live my life every day just like this.
Jesus is Lord of my life when...
- I obey the initial promptings of the Holy Spirit without argument.
- I’m committed to do His will and I don’t even know His will.
- I’m available to serve Him without regard to time, place, or requirements.
- Pleasing Him takes priority over pleasing others and myself.
- I acknowledge and recognize Him as the source for all my needs and desires.
- I submit to His ownership and sovereign possession of all I am and all that I have.
- I turn my failures and difficulties into times of opportunities for spiritual growth.
- To know Him intimately becomes the ultimate obsession of my life.
I’ve decided to break up the story of my journey in search of God into a few parts. Being a writer, it seems like the right thing to do since my life has worked itself into some semblance of a novel—broken up chapter-by-chapter.
Hopefully, mine will inspire you to seek God and know that not all stories are perfect—but are pieced together like a patchwork quilt with various God experiences, wrong moves, right moves, hits and misses, and incredible blessings spotted all along the way.
I grew up in a solid Christian home, the daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher, but I often think my religious perception was a little one-sided as I began my spiritual journey. I was sheltered from much of the world’s evils yet fully aware that I lived under a magnifying glass—under the watchful eagle eye of church congregants 24/7 just waiting for me to make a wrong move so they could snatch me up and swallow me whole.
Because I developed this perception growing up, I viewed the church that way as a whole. And because I viewed the church that way, I viewed God that way for a long time.
Back then, in my heart and head, God had two personalities: 1) He was a caring, loving Father some of the time who wanted to forgive, protect, and love me unconditionally, and 2) the rest of the time he was an old grandfather-looking man sitting in his heavenly rocking chair with a wooden paddle in his right hand (with my name stamped on one side) who constantly gave me “the look” and was ready to punish me when I even neared the appearance of sin.
You know “the look”—the one your mother gave you when you started to act up in church. My mother would look me square in the eyes like she was giving me the spanking of my life in her mind. And when “the look” didn’t work, she would either grab the tender flesh on the back of my arm and pinch it until I cried out or growl at me through gritted teeth, “Stop. It. Right. Now.”
From the time I came into a personal relationship with God when I was six years old to the time I entered high school, seeking God was a difficult task for me. I wrongly misjudged him for many years because of my skewed perception.
Still, I knew that I could find the Father that I loved in people, the Bible, and through prayer—even if it was full of too many “thees” and “thous.”
There were the moments when I saw him in my parents love for me and each other and through the biblical lessons they taught me, in the small ways He comforted me amidst friends who were ruthless in their mockery against my faith, and the few church members who surrounded my family and supported them faithfully.
My spiritual journey during childhood and adolescence was rocky and full of discovery, but let's not stop here. It continued after this point down a different path.
The post above and others to follow are a part of a collective piece written for JosiahRoad.com.
