Is That You Lord?

I don't remember when I'd started to have conversations with the Lord. It might have been when I'd asked him to give me the strength to quit smoking because He did. I just quit.Then as time went by I told Him I wanted Him back in my life. I just didn't know how to go about it. I never fell on my knees or went to church to seek Him out. I just knew that He was right where I was at. Isn't it amazing that He can be there for us all? As a person I was very insecure of myself. Why else would I never accomplish or even try to accomplish what I really wanted to do in my life. I was always seeking to please others never putting in consideration that the risks I take could hurt me and those I loved. I don't want to go into all the sordid little details of my life of sin. I don't desire to give it any glory. Something had changed inside of me. My desire started to turn to Him. He was like a magnet to me. My thoughts were incessantly of Him. "Many are called, but few are chosen. "Mt.22:14. I heard Him call me so loudly. Do I take the call? Scriptures that I had read twenty years prior started coming back. "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is..." Heb.10:25. I told Him, "Lord, I know I need to find a church, but I don't want to go. You need to put a church practically on top of me if you want me to go." I had a bad experience one Christmas Eve at a candlelight service. It was the coldest church I'd ever attended. There were so many stony faces and not so much of a smile from anyone. I walked out saying that I would never ever go to church again. Imagine, one bad "Christian" experience turned me further away from Him. I suppose this happens a lot. What a lousy excuse though. Not all churches are like that.

It was September 1994 and my mother was diagnosed with a second bout of lung cancer. This time around she was given six months to a year to live. Paul asked me how I felt if he'd ask Pastor Harry Rogers to come over and pray for our mother. "Remember Harry Rogers?" he asked. I only knew Pastor Rogers from hearing about him and maybe even seeing him once during those Jesus freak days. I remember hearing stories about his preaching on the Encanto Park bandstand to all the hippies and how a dove miraculously landed on his hand as he was preaching about John the Baptist and his experience with baptizing Jesus. He had been preaching to a rowdy group of drunken bikers at the time and this dove thing blew everyone away. Many were saved that day. I pictured all these bikers sobering up and shedding huge tears of repentance. What a sight that must have been. I was curious about this man whom I'd heard so much about so I told Paul to go ahead and ask Pastor Rogers if he'd come. when he came to pray for my mother I knew that he knew Jesus. I never met a person that had God written all over him. When he spoke a person would just know that the Lord reigned in his life. I immediately knew he could be trusted. At the time my boyfriend and I were living at my mothers' house. She needed us there as she was widowed and was afraid to live by herself. I wanted to hide the fact that Pat and I were not married. So, I was prepared to skip sharing that part of my life with Pastor Harry. In fact I wanted to hide it so much that I was ashamed. I was not home when Pastor first came. Paul had brought him over and they waited for me to come. They were outside in the back yard. I walked out and said, "Do you remember me?"  It surprised me when he said "yes, I do." I then looked at him and said, "Pat and I are not married. Are we living in sin?" He smiled and said, "well, what does the Bible say?" No condemnation or hell fire judgment, just a simple answer to a simple question. I looked right into his eyes and said, "I think we are." There's so much Truth in this man that I couldn't even hide the lie that never was brought up in conversation. After that, Paul, our brother, Fred, his wife, Tina, Pastor Rogers, Pat and I all circled my mothers' bed. There Pastor Rogers prayed for her. I never had the experience of the Holy Spirit like I did that day at that time. It came on us like a flood. Oh God I knew that He touched us. I saw it in all our faces and felt it in my spirit. My mother's eyes looked so clear and bright. My mother who had been a Buddhist all of her eighty years came to know Jesus then. My brother, Fred who had been an agnostic all his life sat down and Pastor Harry expounded the scriptures to him. I found out later, from Pastor, that the experience had softened Freds' heart towards the Lord. That knowledge was comforting to me as Fred died in a freak accident at home nine months after my mothers' death leaving Tina in a semi-vegetative state for seven years before she died. I also found out much later that Tina had already accepted Christ. 

Two days after my mothers' bedside prayer Pastor again came over and shared with me that the Lord had showed him to open a church in our neighborhood. "Can I come too?" I asked. Pastor laughed and said, "of course you can."