I had not been raised with God in my life. (John 6:44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”) I had rarely seen the inside of a church and to think back on it now, as a young child, I really had nothing inside of me. I was numb and felt nothing. God could not have reached me because I was empty and void.
Some years passed and God called me. I went to see a preacher. He told me that you are not saved, so God won’t help you. His reasoning was because God cannot look upon sin, therefore he cannot look upon those not saved. His reasoning came from the Bible, (“Habakkuk 1:13 “Your eyes are too pure to look upon evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing”). For the longest time, I believed that. I had no knowledge of God. All I knew is that preachers knew God, so he must be right. I gave up on God, after all I was evil. I became content to live in my sin. Why should I not be? I was evil and God could not look upon me, so therefore, I would never be any greater than I am. I never forgot what that preacher told me. I gave up on God.
One day, I ran into my Uncle Dave as I was leaving the Circle K. I had not seen him in quite a few years. We spoke for a few minutes, he told me he had been chosen by God and invited me to church. I walked away thinking to myself; how could that man be chosen by God when he had spent most his life on heroin and thieving to get by? I am so evil that I cannot be chosen, but he could be? That kind of made me angry. I thought, who is this God so good that he can decide I am more evil than others and not good enough for him?
I gave it no more thought for a few weeks. Then, one day my uncle showed up at my door. I stepped out on the porch. He told me he had spent every day since our conversation trying to track me down. Then Uncle Dave asked me why my parents didn’t know where I was. I told him I was 43 years old and they don’t give a rat’s butt about me, so why should I tell them? My uncle said he had seen me leaving a known dealer’s house on his way to work. He added he turned right around and went to the man’s house and demanded to know where I lived. Then my uncle asked, “Why were you there?” I responded with, “Why do you think?” His question angered me because he was in my business. I told him he was nobody to be lecturing anybody about drugs. He agreed and apologized telling me that I was always a good person and smarter than most, adding that he didn’t understand why I had chosen this for myself. Then, the preaching started. This got me even more angry. I asked him why I would go to church for some God that didn’t want anything to do with me because I was so evil and I told him to leave. My uncle said ok, as he left, he stopped and told me that God had sent him to bring me to him. I shook my head and he left.
Arthritis has affected me from a very young age. I have a lot of deterioration in my back, which causes a lot of pain. I had been seeking help from a pain clinic, which had gotten shut down after a man overdosed from an excessive amount of pills that were prescribed to him. So, I had no place to get pills. I had become addicted to the meds I was taking.
That evening when my daughter came home from school, I told her she needed to clean her room, and all hell broke loose just as soon as those words came out of my mouth! She argued and yelled at me for the next two weeks. My beautiful 17 year old daughter, who had NEVER given me any problems was as mean to me as 10 baby rattle snakes. She was always loving, kind and caring and in just one moment had turned on me like a rabid dog! I didn’t know what to think. At the end of those two weeks, my daughter moved out.
The next day in the early morning, I lay on the couch crying. My front door opened. I sat up, it was my uncle. He said, “Come on.” I did not question, I just went. To this day, I can’t understand why I left with him. I didn’t even throw a fit when he came into my home without knocking. It just seemed like somebody was moving through me. He took me to church. After the preacher had finished his sermon, he came to us and the preacher said he was glad I was there and told me I was right where I belonged. I told him I did not belong there and I told him what that first preacher had said about me being evil. The pastor assured me that I was not evil, adding that no one is evil, that it is our actions that are evil. Then, apologized to me because a preacher twisted scripture into something it didn’t mean. He read to me from Habakkah and explained to me that it meant that people needed to trust God because he has a plan to deal with evil.
I did not go back to that church for a few weeks, but I thought a lot about it. I thought about the preacher and that church. I was so upset I couldn’t remember what he preached about, but I remembered the conversation he had with me.
I had been under so much stress for so long, then my daughter moving out, and everything came crashing down. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I cried all the time and took pills to numb my pain I felt emotionally. One day while washing my dishes, I became ill. I was weak and I physically did not feel good. I became light headed, I was shaking and sweating. Suddenly, everything started to get dark. I tried to get out of there and go to the couch, but I didn’t make it.
I was found and taken to the hospital. As I came back into it, I felt really far away. It was like I had to travel to get back here. I heard a voice speak as I traveled back into myself . It was a man who told me,”All you have to do is knock on the door.”
I ran into my uncle again after that. Uncle Dave told me he had heard I’d been in the hospital. I told him about the voice. He laughed and gave me a hug and told me, “That is wonderful!” Then he said to me, “God was speaking to you and recited, Ask and it will be given; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be open. Mathew 7: 7-8.”
I went to church on Sunday. I kept going after that. I was saved and baptized. I was saved by grace and made acceptable in the eyes of the Lord. I have never regretted knocking on that door.