“My Spiritual Journey So Far” was written to my sister Ann in an email shortly after I was first diagnosed. She had asked me about my “spiritual journey” and this letter was my response to her. It seemed to me that this was a good starting point for the collection. I hope, Ann, that you don’t mind me sharing it.
My faith has changed my life. More specifically, I guess, my personal relationship with Jesus Christ has changed my life. Let me try to explain the path I followed to get to where I am today, and again, where I am today is only a few short steps along the journey. I will probably begin rambling a bit... I hope you can follow me....
I have routinely attended Sunday School... not so much because I wanted to, but rather I make Chris go to Sunday School and so I figured I better set the example. Last year the Sunday School class I attended was about the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament. Pretty interesting stuff but then again, how much can you believe... after all, the Old Testament is thousands of years old and how can what it has to say apply to me today? But something just sort of "clicked" one day and I began to accept that, in fact, the Bible is the word of God. I guess that my logic went something like this...... I have always accepted the virgin birth of Christ.... for whatever reason that was never up for debate, I simply accept it. Now if I can accept that part of the Bible without question it is not a great leap to accepting that the whole Bible is truly the word of God. And once I accepted that the Bible is the word of God you know darn well I started paying attention to it. After all... If the Creator of all things is trying to talk to me through the prophets and apostles it would be pretty stupid of me to ignore him.
So I guess the first real step for me was accepting that the Bible, in its entirety, is indeed the word of God.
Okay.... now what? I began searching for what God is trying to tell me but there is a lot of stuff in the Bible so where to begin? I do not believe it matters where you begin but for me it made a lot of sense to begin at the end.... in the New Testament in the book of Revelations..... Revelations is a very complicated book to understand and every bible scholar has a different exact interpretation of it. But they all agree that Revelations describes the end times and the second coming of Christ and the final battle with Satan. All the details about this second coming and the final battle with Satan are what is argued... but there is no doubt that Christ is coming, will defeat Satan, and Christ will reign on this earth for 1,000 years with his church of believers and then on to heaven for eternity. "With his church of believers" is the key phrase here... this is where you raise your hand, start jumping up and down, saying "Pick me, Pick me". Revelations has some pretty scary stuff in it and, if you believe that the bible is the word of God then you have to believe that the Book of Revelations describes what is to come. What I found in Revelations was the motivation to learn more about what God expects from me because I want my name in "The Book of Life"... I want to be picked.
The second step for me was motivation. I want to spend eternity with Christ.
The next part was pretty hard for me.... up to this point it was all pretty much academic and heady kind of stuff.... but now the rubber was about to hit the road. It is one thing to accept the Bible as the word of God and to be motivated to giving my life to God. But giving my life to God is an entirely different issue. This is where it starts getting hard. Just what does it mean to give your life to God and how do you go about doing it? I struggled with this for some time. I continued to struggle with it until I truly understood and completely accepted that the spiritual world truly exists and that there is an ongoing battle between good and evil (God and Satan). There are many versus in the Bible that refer to the spiritual world, how the angel Lucifer fell from grace because he wanted to be equal to God, and how Lucifer (Satan) reigns over the earth. Okay... this is where you either believe or you don't believe that the Bible is the word of God. If you don't believe it then this is where you can simply say that this is all fantasy, was written thousands of years ago and does not, cannot, apply to me today, and you can ignore the whole thing and go about living your life the way you always have. If you do believe that the Bible is the word of God then this is where you learn what it means to give your life to Christ. Here is my take on it based upon my studies.... Satan rules over the earth. For whatever reason, God gave him that authority... I think it was a bad idea but who am I to second guess God. God rules over the spiritual world and Satan is constantly trying to expand his control into the spiritual world. Satan's mission on earth is to pull man away from God and toward himself, to distract us from having a relationship with God... to force us to focus our lives on things not of God but rather on worldly things. There are "worldly" things and there are "Godly" things. Worldly things are all the stuff that we have or have had or want to have. Worldly things are things that dictate whether or not we have a good day. They dictate our mood and consequently how we feel about the people around us. We try to find happiness in worldly things only to discover that we really are not all that happy when we have them. We tend to keep searching for that worldly thing that will satisfy us and make us happy once and for all. We find something, it feels good for a while, but we feel something is missing. We are never really satisfied. Worldly things distract us from God. The bottom line is that God is not of this world. Satan is of this world. If you want to get closer to God, you have to get further away from the worldly things because these are controlled by Satan. Again, if you believe the Bible is the word of God you have no choice but to accept this. The good news is that we are assured an eternal life with God in the spiritual world that he reigns over if we give our worldly life to Him and accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. Okay... so what does it mean to give your worldly life to God? What does it mean to take on a spiritual life? To me it means not trying to find happiness in worldly things. Things are neat, but will not make you happy. It means turning to God to find the reason for your life. It means searching for what God's plan is for you. It means dedicating every day to God's work. I have my job at the hospital. I believe God placed me in that job to do his work. Every day as I do my job I do it knowing that I am doing it in the Glory of God. That this is the work he wants me to do (he put me there) and expects me to do. I will do the best job I can because He expects it. God gave Christopher to Pat and I. God expects me to raise Christopher in His glory. I am doing God's work by raising my son to become good Christian man. Everything I do I try to do because it is God's work, not because I want something of this world. God gave me life to do his work. I will do the best I can.
My third step... Accepting Christ as my Lord and savior and dedicating my life to doing God's work. Do what I do for God, not for worldly things.
Once I got to this point I became obsessed with learning more. I simply could not get enough. It is sort of strange. I never would have thought that I would hunger for knowledge about the word of God. But now that I am I can't imagine not wanting the knowledge and ignoring what is in the Bible. The Bible is a strange book. The first time I picked it up and read a verse or two at random it made little sense to me. If someone in Sunday School interpreted a verse for me then it seemed okay. But i just could not get it on my own. One day last fall I told myself that I was going to read the Bible, cover to cover. I was determined to to do it. I started with the New Testament and found that it does make sense. Each book of the New Testament either told me the story of Christ or told me how to build a relationship with Christ. As I read from book to book it all began to fall together. (Before I started reading the New Testament from the beginning I had already studied the last book, Revelations. I think that understanding how it all ends helped me to put the pieces together as I read through the entire New Testament.) Once I finished the New I moved on to the Old Testament. This, of course, is where you find all the old bible stories but more importantly begin to learn how God thinks. I know, sounds strange, but I can't think of a better way to state it. By reading the Old Testament (purposely from beginning to end rather than various versus at random) I am learning how God thinks and how he communicates with us. I can read the Bible and actually understand most of what I read. This was a huge breakthrough. By understanding how God "thinks" and knowing how he communicates with us I can build a personal relationship with Him. It's funny how it all starts coming together. Of course, the Internet has been a wonderful resource for me.
My fourth step... Study the word of God and build a personal relationship with God.
This sort of brings me to where I am now in my "Journey". I am trying to learn more and more and am consciously working on building my personal relationship with God. It's funny. I don't pray so much but I talk quite a bit with God. Sure, I say my prayers.... but that is just because that is what you are supposed to do. I accept that God is always next to me. All I have to do is whisper something to him and he hears it. All I have to do is whisper a "thank you" for something and he takes joy in my thanks. All I have to do is ask him for something and, if it fits his plan, he will gladly provide it. All I have to do is ask him for guidance on something and he shows me the way. I am constantly walking with and talking with God. What a warm and comforting feeling this is.
My fifth step... Walk and Talk with God
I don't know if the way I have gone about my journey is the most efficient but so far it has worked for me. I am happier than I have ever been in my life. Go figure, I have just been told I have a very rare form of cancer that does not respond well to treatment and I have never been happier in my life. Either I am a complete idiot or I have successfully established my relationship with God. Either way, I am happy... scared to death, but happy. I guess I am comforted in knowing that God has a reason for my cancer. I do not understand it but there is a reason. I will accept it and use it to do God's work. It makes no sense to ask God why I have cancer and how could He do this to me. He has a reason. He knows what is best. I accept it. I remind myself of something that happened several years ago. Chris got sick with something and we took him to the doctor. The doctor needed to give Chris a shot. Chris took one look at that needle and panicked. The doctor asked me to hold Chris down so he could give him the injection so I put my arms around Chris and by brute force made him be still. As I was doing that, just before the needle went in, Chris looked up at me with the most confused look in his eyes and I could read his thoughts.... "Why are you letting him do this to me??? Why are you not protecting me from him???" He didn't understand. And I could say nothing that would make him understand. I don't understand why I have cancer. God understands.
At any rate, that's the story of my journey so far. I have a long way to go but I am loving every minute of it.
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