"…but what about you. Who do you say I am?"
~ Matthew 16:15
Deciding to become a follower of Jesus Christ was undeniably the scariest decision of my life. I was terrified of what my family and friends would think. If I announced to them that I accepted Christ and decided to follow Him from this day forward, what would they think? Would they look at me differently? Would they become uncomfortable around me? Would they view this proclamation as a prison sentence on my life? And would my husband think he was no longer married to the same free spirited girl he fell in love with, or would he dread taking me out to parties in fear that I might start reciting scripture to his friends, or drop to my knees and begin praying for the people of Turkey? After all, that is what Jesus freaks do, right?
Prior to becoming a Christian, those were the perceptions I had. And now I was deciding to become one? Why? Surely, I thought, no one must know. I hoped it was possible to be a closet Christian, and still follow Christ authentically, but common sense, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible told me no. As I sat in my favorite, overstuffed chair in my living room one nippy October evening, all my concerns, anxieties and fears were swallowed up in the eye of a tornado that went swirling through my mind, and all I could see was the path of its destruction and the damage it would cause.
And after it lost momentum, what then? It would have been easier to not make the decision except for one very important truth: Jesus Christ is the One and only unique Son of God, a truth I discovered when I made the conscious decision to seek Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). The Bible teaches that if we earnestly seek God, we will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13). Well, I found Him. Continuing on with my life as it was before, living my life apart from God was no longer an option, and I was terrified.
I will never forget the day God began pursuing me. After not having stepped foot in a church for over a decade, one morning I felt an overwhelming yearning to go to church. The fact that the city I was living in at the time was experiencing a white out was irrelevant. For some reason, I had to get my body into a church and it had to be that morning. It felt as though my life depended on it. This was odd because this desire went contrary to my normal desires. But the desire was strong, so I turned to the yellow pages, located the nearest Lutheran church, jotted down the address on a scrap of paper, grabbed my car keys and headed out the door.
I turned to the Lutheran church because the Lutheran church is where my spiritual heritage lies. Because I was baptized and confirmed in the Lutheran church, I believed I would feel most comfortable there. However, comfortable was not what I felt. Very quickly into the service, I felt as though I was in the land of misfits. I had severe technical difficulties with the service. No matter how hard I tried, I could never quite figure out when I should sit, stand or kneel. And despite my desperate attempts to read the bodily cues from the pastor, I was perpetually out of sync with the rest of the congregation.
I sat in the pew as beads of sweat dripped down my face as I looked out the window and watched the puffy, cotton candy like snowflakes swirl through the air wondering how in the world I was going to escape without anybody noticing me any more than they already had. Sadly, the only plan my mind could conjure was run, so as soon as the service was over, I ran out the front door as fast as my scrawny legs could carry me, and I did not allow them to carry me back into another church until many years later.
Shortly after that experience, I felt like my soul hungered for something. At the time, I did not know for what it hungered. All I knew was that something profound was missing from my life. Nothing seemed to satisfy me. My feelings at that time used to frustrate my boyfriend (now husband), because he could not understand why I was not content with my life. To him, I had the life every young woman desired. I had family, friends, a boyfriend who genuinely loved me, my health, a great education, a good job and a bright and promising future. My discontent was incomprehensible to him. I could not articulate what I was feeling because I did not quite understand it myself. What I did understand, however, was that what was wrong was somehow located on a spiritual dimension. Thus, in an attempt to fill the empty void I felt in my aching soul, I made a conscious decision to find the Creator of life.
I concluded from the onset that Christianity was not a faith I wanted to explore. Early on in my search I learned that other world religions, religions such as Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism, were much more alluring than Christianity because they came with none of what I thought were the harsh restrictions placed on the Christian by the Bible. And since I liked a little of what all of them had to offer, I decided to take only what was appealing from each. For a source of spiritual nourishment, I read things like Siddhartha, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Autobiography of a Yogi to name only a few. I read what I liked, discarded the rest and called myself a spiritual eclectic.
After I got married, my husband and I moved across the country. Even though I was excited to begin our new life together, I left everything behind. I left my family, friends, and job. In short, I left my security. When we arrived, I had nothing to call my own. I was lost. I was lonely. I was frightened. I knew something profound had to change if I was going to survive, and the eastern religions I was pursuing were not feeding my soul as I had hoped, so I decided to give Christianity a try.
But to be honest, I was reluctant to do this. Prior to becoming a Christian, I thought Christianity was the most hypocritical faith on earth. Everyone I knew who professed to be a Christian lived no differently than I. Indeed, the only difference between a professing Christian and I was that I did not pretend to know God. Of course, I ran into a few whose lives were dramatically different, but I instantly dismissed them because they seemed to be totally out of touch with reality. To say exploring the Christian faith did not appeal to me is to put the sentiment politely, but I was desperate.
Once again, I headed to the yellow pages in search of a Lutheran church. Why do we stay where we are comfortable no matter how unpleasant the experience? I found another one, but this time I stumbled across something I was not expecting. The service I accidentally attended was a contemporary service. I was astonished that instead of having my senses wholly assaulted by the Fifteenth Century hymns that typically blasted throughout the churches I attended in the past, contemporary Christian music serenaded my soul awakening dormant emotions I was not aware existed. Furthermore, I was stunned that the sermon was relevant to my life. I became so accustomed to staring off into galaxies unknown as incomprehensible messages spewed forth from the pulpit that I never entertained the notion that a sermon could be otherwise. Enamored with the experience, I decided to become a Christian as well as a member of the church.
During those years, I considered myself to be a Christian, because my exterior behaviors exhibited all those of a Christian. I attended church, read the Bible and prayed. I even volunteered in a prayer ministry for three years. Nevertheless, even though I was doing everything I thought I was supposed to be doing, something profound was still missing. My soul was still famished and my spiritual life was as dead as ever. You see, there was one very important truth I did not understand during those years I attended church. As the great evangelist Billy Sunday once said, “Going to church does not make you a Christian anymore than going into a garage makes you an automobile.” If anybody would have told me I was not a Christian during those years, I would have been highly offended. But today I know without a doubt I was not.
Several years later, conservative Christians began to intrigue me. I stumbled across a few in the literature I was reading. Never before had I encountered Christians quite like the authors I was reading. They seemed to know God in a way that I did not, in a way that the Christians I knew did not. It was as if they had access into an invisible world I could not see, and I found myself desperately wanting to look through the special lens that would allow me see into that hidden place.
They also did something no Christian I knew had done. They did not pretend to be perfect. They were transparent and real with their audiences, and I found myself actually having respect for Christians for the first time in my life. Indeed, they candidly spoke about their weaknesses and struggles and their successes and failures. And they genuinely wanted to discover and live out God’s will for their lives. They also talked about a concept I never understood. They talked about their personal relationship with Christ. I thought, “How in the world can someone have a relationship with an invisible being?” My mind wanted to dismiss them as crazy on this one account, but I found that I could not. They were rational people with great minds. What if this personal relationship with Jesus was what was missing from my dead spiritual life? It was this thought that prompted me to take a deeper look into my actual beliefs.
When I examined my beliefs about God and Jesus with an adult’s critical mind, I realized that while I always believed there was some type of God out there because of an experience I had when I almost drowned as a child, I did not believe that Jesus was God’s Son. Jesus Christ, God incarnate? Come on. My heart wanted to believe this fantasy, but my mind, my very skeptical mind, simply could not. I found my heart and mind greatly at odds with one other, and nothing I did reconciled the dissonance I experienced between the two, so I decided to turn to God for help. On one sweltering summer afternoon, I prayed a simple little prayer. I prayed, “Jesus, I don’t know who you are, but I am determined to figure it out. God, help me find the truth. Amen.”
Shortly thereafter, I immersed myself in the world of Christian Apologetics which is the rational defense or justification for the truth claims of the Christian faith. After what I had been through with the eastern religions, I needed to know if Christianity’s audacious claims were true because I did not want to waste any more time on another false religious system. To determine this, I read everything I could get my hands on and I made this pursuit a priority in my life.
I quickly realized, however, that before I could even begin to examine the personhood of Jesus Christ, I first needed to determine the credibility and validity of the only source that spoke about Jesus in any depth. I realized that I needed to find out if the Bible was indeed historically accurate, and if it really was the Word of God. To determine the former, I drank in the objective, historical perspective of people like the ancient, Jewish historian, Josephus, as well as examined the archaeological evidence that supported the claims in the Bible. To determine the latter, I examined the Old Testament prophecies that spoke about the Jewish Messiah and studied how Jesus systematically fulfilled them which gave strong indications that the Bible was what it claimed to be—the supernatural Word of God.
To gain a better understanding of who Jesus was, and what He had done, I read everything I could get my hands on that was written about Him, and I used two criteria to determine what I read. First, did the author honestly investigate the claims made about Jesus with an open mind? Second, did the author examine these claims from every angle? After all, experience has taught me that there are always two sides to every story. And it was not enough for me to accept theories or claims written by just anybody. I needed to carefully scrutinize the credentials of every author making any sort of claim, and I only selected work from scholars whose credentials I deemed acceptable.
You have to understand. I am married to a professor. Knowing who the top players are in any given field, and understanding the quality and ranking of the academic institution with which one is affiliated is the reality of my life. I made it my business to find out who the important players were, and I voraciously read everything they wrote. I devoured books like a woman devours chocolate. For a time I simply could not fill my mind with enough evidence. But finally, after years of frantically chasing the truth about Jesus Christ, my mind finally reached a point where I genuinely believed that Jesus is exactly who He claims to be—the Son of God who was resurrected from the dead and the only One through whom true Salvation comes.
Still, I was not ready to hand my life over to Him just yet. After all, it was my life we were talking about, and although it may be insignificant to other people, it was important to me. I was not willing to hand it over so easily because I had a frightening thought. If I chose to accept Christ, what impact would that decision have on my life? Surely there must be profound implications of such a decision. To find the answer, I needed to go directly to Jesus this time. I was well versed in what others had to say about Him. Now I wanted to hear what Jesus had to say. I wanted to hear His voice. So on one chilly Friday evening, I curled up with my favorite wool blanket, an oversized mug of steaming, spiced Chai, my box fresh Bible and consumed the New Testament in its entirety by Sunday morning. And as I read, every word spoke to my ravenous soul and they punctured the very existence I was living.
Jesus told me exactly what He wanted from me and He told it to me in no uncertain terms. He wanted my life, and He wanted all of it. And He wanted me to drastically change the way I was living so that He could change me from the inside out. He wanted me to imitate Him, to take up my cross and follow Him (Mark 8:34). And to follow Him meant radical obedience. On this He was very clear. I could either take His offer or leave it. The decision was mine. But it was a decision I had to make. Nobody could make it for me. Alone I will stand in judgment and alone I am accountable to God for my life.
As I was reading and weighing the costs of following Christ, Jesus’ words gently warned me of an important truth that spoke directly to my heart. In Luke 12:48b Jesus says, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” As I read those words, I knew that God entrusted me with much and therefore would demand much from me. Thus, I knew that if I denied Him at this juncture in my search, I would be deliberately and willfully rejecting the true God of the universe and for me, that was not an option. But then again, is that really a viable option for anyone?
At the time I felt backed up against a wall and cried out, “Where is the free will in this choice?” In my mind there was no choice. I knew I had a decision to make. There was no point trying to hide from that reality any longer. I could no longer remain on the fence. Therefore, on one crisp October night, I closed my eyes, bowed my head, genuinely repented of my sins and gave my life to Christ. And for the first time in my life, I clearly understood what that decision meant and all its implications. I gave it to Him anyway.
But up until this point, my decision to give my life to Christ was only an intellectual decision. I accepted Christ because my mind was satisfied that the claims of Christianity were true. That is to say, I intellectually believed with as much certainty as was possible that the Triune God of the Bible is the One and only true God of the universe who created the universe out of nothing and that He revealed Himself to mankind through creation, the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ. I also intellectually believed that the Bible in its entirety is not a man-made book wrought with errors, but rather is the inspired and infallible Word of God and therefore is accurate in all matters of faith, history and science. In addition, I intellectually believed that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and proved Himself to be exactly who He claimed to be. That is to say, that Jesus is the Son of God and second person of the Godhead in the Trinity who emptied Himself of His deity so God could become flesh and go to the cross Himself to die for man’s sins to satisfy the payment of death justice demands to restore the broken relationship between God and man. I also understood that Jesus rose from the dead so man can have life just as He has life. Furthermore, I also understood that what Jesus the God/Man did was the ultimate act and expression of love on earth paralleled by no other. And I intellectually believed these things because Christianity is the only world religion that has objective, verifiable, historical and archeological evidence to support many of its truth claims.
I also clearly understood God’s message of Salvation to mankind. I clearly understood that I was a sinner, and that this sin separated me from God for all of eternity. I also understood that the only way to restore my broken relationship with God is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. The basics to Salvation I clearly understood. However, what I did not understand was how much I needed a Savior. This was a powerful truth I would soon discover.
Shortly after that night in October, one unsuspecting morning I flippantly told God He could have my life—all of it. However, when I said those words, I never in my wildest dreams imagined the extent to which He would take me up on them. One morning, I woke up at my usual 5:00 a.m., grabbed myself a hot cup of tea and went to my favorite chair to spend some “quality time” with my new Lord and Savior. I sat in my chair, bowed my head and began praying when suddenly I heard a tender voice tell me to stop talking. Not audibly mind you, but the message was clear. I was taken aback by it because I was on a roll praying for all those in my life I thought were greatly in need of prayer. Their lives seemed to be in such shambles and I felt so very proud of myself for praying for them. So I continued on. But I heard it again. “Stop talking.” I wondered why I should quit talking. I was putting my selfish needs aside and was praying for other people. That was what I was supposed to be doing, right? But something inside me told me I should stop talking, so I did. At first the silence was unnerving, but after a while I was able to sit and be still. What God did next was inconceivable to me.
Like the ghost of Christmas past taking Ebenezer Scrooge back to various poignant times in his life, the God of the universe took me on a journey back to some of the most significant events in my life. And when He did, memories I deliberately locked safely behind the iron doors of my soul never to be unleashed into my consciousness again began to emerge. Memory after memory flooded my mind and try as I might, I could not close the floodgates to stop more from spilling in. You see, God removed the scales from my eyes so that I could take a look at myself and my life through His eyes for a change, and He made me see what I had been too afraid to see.
The intense pain I experienced that morning and in the months that followed was unbearable. At times I could hardly catch my breath. But this type of pain was not foreign to me. When I was a little girl, I made a vow that I would never allow myself to feel that kind of pain again. What kind of pain? I am talking about the kind of pain that comes from living in a broken world. Like many who are unable to cope with the reality of living in this wonderful, but sinful world, I deliberately hardened my heart and closed off my ability to feel so totally and completely that I eventually lost the ability to feel anything at all. And I convinced myself that I did not need anyone in this life to survive. I did not need family. I did not need friends. And I certainly did not need God.
But that morning I hurt like I never hurt before, and as I looked up towards the heavens with tears streaming down my face, I cried out, “Why are you doing this to me?” I begged God to stop. I pleaded with Him, but He only continued on. “It’s too painful,” I whimpered through my tears, “It’s just too painful.” As I sat in my chair weeping, a gentle voice said to me, “Patty, my dear child, I have to break you, so that I can use you, and I can’t use you, until I heal you.” “Heal me. Heal me from what?” I protested. I did not need to be healed. I was fine. There was nothing the matter with me. I woke up every morning and took care of my husband, son and home. I was a good wife and mother. I had a respectable job and outside interests I was pursuing. I was a fairly happy and decent human being. I was not one of those miserable women who suffered from clinical depression who could not get out of bed in the morning because she could not live beyond her past. No, I was different. I was strong. I was independent. I was self-reliant. I was a survivor. I did not need to be healed. What was He talking about, I needed to be healed. Ridiculous!
But after hours of desperately pleading my case with intensity and fervor before the powerful Almighty God of the universe, my rebellious spirit and feral will finally bowed down. Much like a racehorse trainer breaks an untamed colt, God broke my rebellious and prideful spirit, and after He did, He gave me a new heart and spirit by removing my heart of stone and giving me a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). And He gave me the ability to feel again. And what I felt hurt. I was not fine. Not even close. God was right. I did need to be healed. And while it is true I needed to be broken so God could get me to the place of humility I needed to be at in order for Him to heal me, the truth was, I was already broken. I just did not know it. After it happened, I sat slumped over in my chair and cried uncontrollably. The truth is, I felt like I could not go on. But then I heard that gentle and loving voice say to me, “Patty, you can go on because you are not alone. I am with you. Hold on to me and let me be your Guide. I will show you the way.”
In that moment I was suddenly enveloped with an overwhelming feeling of love that is simply indescribable. And as this supernatural feeling of love flooded over me and seeped deeply into what felt like every cell in my body, all of the guilt, pain and shame that had weighed me down and crushed me throughout my life was instantly gone. I felt such an intense sense of joy that I almost could not contain myself. The feeling was so powerful that I thought that I must be glowing. So this is what God meant when He promised we could have freedom in Christ? I was set free from the emotional prison in which I had lived. I never felt such freedom before. I wondered how such a thing was possible. But then I remembered the words Jesus spoke to the people in His hometown, Nazareth, in the book of Luke. He quoted from Isaiah 61 which is a prophecy written about Him. Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:16-21). In short, He came to set the captives free! This was good news. This was very good news! In that moment, I made a conscious decision to grab onto God as tightly as I could and make Him the center of my life.
Slowly over time, God began putting me back together again by taking the lies I spent a lifetime believing, and replacing them with His truth. The first lie God replaced was the lie that told me that I could fill the empty void in my soul with things like alcohol, drugs, sex, shopping, eating, work, food, money, relationships, and all the other things the world falsely claims can satisfy us. The truth is, only God can fill the empty void in our souls because we were created by God to crave and need only Him.
The second lie He replaced was the lie that told me that my identity, value and worth comes from my achievements, accomplishments, status, and position in life. The truth is my identity, value, and worth comes from who I am in Christ. I am inherently valuable and infinitely worthy because I am made in God’s image and simply because I am His. The truth is, I am an adopted child of God along with my other brothers and sisters in Christ and as such am a member of God’s special family and have my true inheritance in His kingdom both here on earth and in eternity.
The third lie God replaced was the lie that told me that no one, including God, would love me if they really knew me. The truth is, God knows everything there is to know about me and always has and loves me just the way I am. And He loves me unconditionally. And the people He placed in my life, the people who truly know, love and honor Him in their thoughts, words and deeds, the people with whom He gave me to genuinely and authentically share my life, do too. Because they are human they are not capable of loving me unconditionally as God does, but they accept the bad in me as well as the good and come alongside of me and care for and support me with their deeds as well as their words celebrating the joys in life with me as well as mourn the sorrows.
The fourth lie God replaced was the lie that told me that as a woman living in a hyper sexualized world, I am nothing more than my sexuality and that what matters is staying young and beautiful. The truth is, my sexuality was given to me as a special gift from God and therefore is to be cherished and protected. And it is to be given only to the man whom God has given to me in His perfect design of marriage (Genesis 2:24). In addition, what matters is not how I look, but rather how I act. What matters is that I am good, honest, moral, kind, gentle, patient, faithful, loyal, gentle, loving, others centered, and self-controlled (Galatians 5:22). In short, what matters is the condition of my heart and not my looks for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7b).
And He replaced all the other popular lies the world tells us such as the lie that the goal of life is our personal satisfaction and happiness when the truth is, knowing, loving, serving and glorifying God is the true purpose of our lives. Such as the lie that the God of the Bible is not really good and loving because He gives His children guidelines and boundaries by which to live their lives, when the truth is, these guidelines and boundaries do not restrict His children, but rather give them the abundant life everybody desires because obeying them leads to a long and healthy life. Such as the lie that it is a woman’s “right” to abort a fetus if she so desires, or the lie that it is our “right” to live anyway we want irrespective of the emotional pain it causes our family and friends when the truth is, the only One who truly holds “rights” to anything at all is God, the One to whom we must bow. Such as the lie that our sin is not really sin, or that what we have done is not as bad relative to what others have done and therefore is excusable when the truth is, all sin is considered sin in the eyes of God and all sin separates us from God for all of eternity without a genuine, saving relationship in Christ.
The next thing God began to do is work on my character. The first thing He changed was my destructive, external behavior. For instance, He cleaned up my filthy language and the kinds of things I put into my mind and body. Then He went to work on the internal defects that drove my many destructive, external behaviors. For example, He exposed and addressed my selfishness, pride, insecurities, fears, bitterness, resentments and anger that all greatly affected the spiritual condition of my heart. Indeed, through other genuine followers of Christ who had once walked the destructive path I had, an assortment of good Christian counselors and substance abuse counselors and too many books to count, God helped me do the hard work of dealing with all my issues so true and lasting healing could occur. And He taught me that this is to be an ongoing process that will not be perfected until the day I die.
He also changed my values, beliefs and worldview. For instance, things I used to think were important like appearing to have it all together, having an immaculate house, buying things I did not need and looking good no longer mattered. What mattered was developing my relationship with God and my family and friends. What mattered was how I treated people. What mattered was who I was on the inside, not what I or my life looked like on the outside. What mattered was becoming a new creation in Christ. As the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
And to my utter astonishment, while God was healing me, He called me to proclaim and defend His truth to a lost and unbelieving world so that those lost could also find life in Christ. When He initially placed this calling on my life, I remembered thinking, “How in the world can my empty words possibly reach out to others and touch their hearts for God?” But then the answer became obvious. My words cannot, but God’s words can. God’s words can do anything. God’s words are powerful and mighty. God’s Word can move mountains. So here I am today speaking His words to you. They are not mine and this is not my story. This is His story. This is a story about what God can do to a life through Jesus Christ. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and I now realize that I not only have a Savior, but also desperately need a Savior. Jesus Christ is my lifeline, and I cannot get through a single day without Him. I cannot even imagine trying.
So what is it like to follow Christ? Incredibly different from everything I originally feared. I thought to follow Christ meant to lose my life (Mark 8:35). Instead, I found the opposite to be true. To follow Christ means to gain life, a new life, a very different life, but an infinitely better life. Since that night in October, God has taken me on the most exhilarating ride I have ever been on. It seems that He absolutely delights in taking me out of my comfort zone and placing me on journeys that afford me experiences I never imagined having in this lifetime. Like what?
Like going to the land of milk and honey where Moses led God’s chosen people, the Israelites, to the land where He came down and walked the earth as the person of Jesus Christ, so that I could experience and see with my own eyes the things my mind only before read about. You see, God wanted me to feel the cool sensation of the cracked, red stones of that Roman road with my own two bare feet. And He wanted me to stand where Jesus stood the day Pontius Pilate hung the cross on His back and marched Him to Calvary, and He wanted me to feel every raw emotion my heart was feeling, and unleash them all inside the Roman Praetorium.
Like going to the dry and arid continent of Africa to reach out to its top leaders in the Church to help them better understand what it means to be made in God’s image so they can preach God’s truth to their fellow Africans that all men, women and children have equal worth and value in God’s eye and as such are to be treated with equal dignity and respect.
Like walking alongside of other women who are also lost in the world of drug and alcohol addictions and other destructive behaviors that are robbing them of the abundant life God so desires for their lives.
Like equipping women how to share and defend their Christian faith in a culture that is hostile to Christianity. Yes, who I am becoming in Christ has far surpassed anything I ever imagined becoming on my own.
Did my husband, family and friends react according to my fears? Yes, some of them. Did the decision to follow Christ make my life easier? Absolutely not! But Christ never made the offer to make my life easier. His offer for me and for everyone out there is an offer of Salvation and eternal life which starts now, not after death. It is important to understand that the decision to follow Jesus comes with a cost. But know this: God empowers His children with His Spirit, and gives them the courage and strength they need to face the many challenges that come as a result. Indeed, God faithfully stands beside them through the good times as well as the bad, and carries them during the times when they cannot carry themselves. Am I still terrified? You bet, but for entirely different reasons.
After a long and arduous search, by God’s grace and God’s grace alone, I too possess the key that opens up the special world I so desired to find. You see, before I had Jesus Christ in my life, God simply was not present. But this makes sense. In John 14:6, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the father except through me.” Jesus Christ is the Way. He is the only Way, and for most of my life, I somehow missed that. What about you? Who do you say He is?
Soli Deo Gloria,
Patty