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Saturday, January 25, 1993 I walked into the Free Methodist Church of
Bloomington, Indiana already weeping. I entered the sanctuary and sat down
in my favorite padded pew and just waited for what the Lord wanted to show me
that day. Only a handful of us came, ten or so, ready to begin to offer up
to Him our broken lives because we had no other place to go.
Scott Infante began the seminar (Healing Life's Hurts), by giving his personal testimony. As I listened, crying just being in the Lord's presence, I heard Scott say something I will never forget, and that has forever changed my life. He said he had a daughter who was two years old, and he loved to hold her on his lap, just sitting with her, touching her hair, neither of them saying anything...He was just letting her BE in his presence. As he was speaking I was given in my mind a picture of myself sitting in the Lord's lap, a little girl, in the presence of God being allowed to just sit and Be with Him...and I was touched. Dramatically, gently, I was touched for the first time by the experience of God's affection, and His love for me. I've never felt like I was acceptable, like it was OK to be who I was without trying to please someone, especially God. I had to be doing something; I had to be good; I had to do everything right, and I was a complete failure at it. But, on that day, I began to realize that in the presence of the Lord, I can just sit and BE Jennifer. And I am acceptable. And He is pleased. And He loves me. The difference that day was not that I had for the first time accepted Jesus as my savior. I have been a Christian for half of my life. The difference that day was not even that I had heard for the first time that God loved me, or that I was pleasing in His eyes. I knew it all. God so loved the world...God so loved me...this is how we know what love is...I knew it. I had memorized it. All this knowledge was in my head, not in my heart- that is the difference. It is the difference between knowing, and really KNOWING in the place that governs my actions, and holds the truth of what I believe, not only about myself, but about everything, especially God. He accessed my heart and I allowed Him in. I allowed Him to touch me, and I allowed myself to respond to His love and believe that it was true, that I could trust Him in this moment to love me for real. It's possible. It really is possible to experience the Father's love. It is possible that He really loves you. It is truth that He is pleased with you, His child, whom He made. It is possible to believe for real. Allow Him in. Ask Him to experience His love, to break down the walls of your heart that keep you from trusting Him, and that say, "Don't get too close because I don't know what you will do to me if I let you in." Ask and He will do it. The freedom, the joy, the peace...it's all real! "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses all knowledge- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:17-19) }Jen Sheldon |