I was 19 years old. I found myself sitting on an old couch in a beaten and battered farmhouse in Northeast Alabama, aged from many generations of somebody’s college memories. Holes in a wall from that time somebody got in a fight covered up by Grateful Dead posters, permanent stains on the faded paint on the walls from spilled drinks, picture frames with old faces to commemorate brothers who “paved the way” for the current boys in the house. Many lives lived there. And what a life they lived. They all went on to get married, buy houses elsewhere, start careers, have babies…but every once and a while they would come back together. And that’s where they would all come back to. Back to their humble beginnings.
I found myself there, with a boy that I met at a fraternity house, or possibly at a formal, or a social, or a history class, or who really knows. Most of us don’t remember how we met. The greek system at the University that I graduated from just seemed to flow as one giant current, one big movement of lost college kids, with nothing in common but being lost with each other.
It was there, in that house, on one night in the winter time, with a boy that became a dear friend of mine, that Jesus taught me that He is everywhere.
And that we all need Him.
Most of our friends were asleep, and it was probably around 2:00am or 3:00am. He had recently gone through some stuff and started telling me about it, which means, as all of you that know me well at all know, that in my world, ends up being a heartfelt conversation that goes on for hours. My favorite kind of quality time. The reason that I breathe and walk this earth.
He told me something that I will always remember…
“Some nights, I just lay in my bed and I feel so alone. I can be in a room full of people, and I look around and I feel like I’m the only one there. I can be out with a girl, and I look away and feel so distant. I can be in this house with my greatest friends and feel like I’m on a different planet than they are. I hate it. Don’t you ever feel like that? Aren’t you afraid of being alone?”
It was the first time that I had ever realized, in 19 years, that I had truly, honestly, boldly, and genuinely, NEVER
felt that way.
I had never felt alone. Because I had never been alone.
I realized in that moment that he was describing a whole in his heart, but not just any whole, THE whole.
The whole that God creates in us, for Himself.
In seconds, it took me back to every Sunday School lesson I had sat through or taught, every Vacation Bible School, every Mission Trip, every FCA officer meeting,
It suddenly hit me like a brick wall.
We, as Christians, spend hours of time, millions of dollars, we spend entire days of our short years, collecting data and researching and preaching about how to reach a lost world.
I can remember, as a 9 or 10 year old girl telling my friends at school about Jesus, so desperately worried about their eternal salvation. I stressed about my every move, every word that left my tongue, so frightful that I would lead people astray from the Lord’s Will, pressing, and pushing, and doing my best to get across how urgent of a matter it was.
And it is.
But, God, y’all.
I turned my back on the church the day that I graduated from high school. I don’t think I attended a church service more than once or twice my entire freshman year of college. I was done being a preacher’s daughter, living by rules that I had no value in following, with people that covered up their sins for the sake of saving face, and glorifying victories, but not ever once mentioning the valleys that they had to go through to get there to that self-righteous mountain top that they were on. I left the church without any intention of going back. (Don’t worry- I came back. That’s a different story for a different day.)
And there, on a winter night in a college town, sat a hollow and broken spirit sitting right in front of me, begging and pleading to hear about the healing hand of a God that is beyond our greatest fear.
I don’t know if he ever did anything with what I told him. I don’t even know if he believed me when I told him that I had never felt alone since the day I met Jesus Christ, and that He walks with me hand in hand each day, picking me up every single time I fall down, and how he brings me home every time I pack a bag and run away.
But my friends, and brothers and sisters, that part is not our job.
It is not our job
It is not our job
It is NOT. OUR. JOB.
And I have news for you.
If you think saving people on our own agenda is our job,
you are IN THE WAY of our Lord and Savior, and He is having to go around you to get His work done.
It IS our job, to be there, to be the human connection that lies between the whole in the heart of every man, and the Holy Spirit of our Father.
Be the connection, and let Jesus do the rest. That’s what I did for the first time that night at the farmhouse. And I’ve been ministering that way ever since.
That night, as a 19 year old, naive, rebellious Christian, that was just beginning to hear the whispers of a voice beckoning to a life and a calling beyond my greatest human imagination.
I’ll meet you at the farmhouse, and so will Jesus.
…
“To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.”
1st Corinthians 9:22
“…whoever captures souls is wise.”
Proverbs 11:30
I’ll leave on August 1st, 2018, to preach to the Nations and follow the calling that I have to leave America to spread the Gospel for 11 months. Please consider donating to my trip and praying for my journey. The link is at the top of my profile under the “DONATE” tab.
May the Lord Bless you and Keep You.
