“If you knew what it would mean to follow God when you first made the decision for Him, would you still have chosen to follow Him?”
I’ve been pondering this question since this morning when it was asked by my pastor in his sermon.
If at the age of thirteen I would have known that I would get deeply wounded by the church two years later, would I have invited Jesus into my heart then? I don’t think so. That wound changed so much of my life trajectory. I wandered in a wilderness of confusion about my relationship with God for years afterwards.
If in my early twenties I would have known that a mission trip would cause me to experience tragedy so devastating that my heart and mind couldn’t process it well, would I have made the decision to follow my desire to be active in the work of expanding God’s kingdom? I don’t think so. I think I would have stayed at home in the comfort of my own four walls, safe and protected from the ugliness of the world. But I didn’t. And so this unprocessed experience caused me to slip into a spiral of dark suicidal depression for so long it nearly took my sanity.
Those were a dark and confusing fifteen years of my life. I struggled hard with my faith. What I was reading about God in the Bible, wasn’t what I experienced in the darkness of my depression. And for a good part of a year I completely gave up on looking for hope.
But now…
Now I look back and no longer scorn God for what He took me through. Instead I am deeply thankful for the things I had to live through since I made my decision to follow God.
Because these things brought me into the deep relationship with God my heart always hungered for.
God has so fully turned my difficult experiences into a story of the depth of His grace that the life I have now is incomparable with the life I was living five years ago.
I still can't fathom the depth of the power of God.
I am not a special person that God would choose to do this for me. Much less, I so often feel like I'm the weakest of the weak. Still, because I chose Him, He chose me to experience His goodness in deeply personal ways.
These lyrics express it well:
Who am I that the highest King would welcome me?
I was lost but He brought me in
Oh, His love for me
Oh, His love for me
Who the Son sets free
Ooh, is free indeed
I'm a child of God
Yes, I am
In my Father's house
There's a place for me
I'm a child of God
Yes, I am!!
I am forever grateful!!
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