In The Beginning ...

I was raised in a wonderful home, with parents who loved me and provided the best for me and my older brother. I have only fond memories of my childhood.

When I met my future wife, it was love at first sight. She brought two wonderful sons to the marriage, and we had a little girl.

Our daughter was in trouble from the beginning, with a near fatal condition that required emergency surgery when she was only six days old. My whole world was up in the air and I thought it would crash all around me into millions of little pieces. Nothing I had ever wanted in life mattered any more, only one thing - that she could live and not die.

I prayed for the first time in my life the night before the surgery. There wasn't anything we wanted more than the life of that little girl. Actually, I didn't know how to pray - I just sat before God with the desperation of my heart lifted up to Him. Pat knew the Lord's prayer, and said that.

Our daughter was miraculously healed; when the doctor opened her up the next day, he found that the situation had dramatically changed overnight and radical surgery was not required. He called it a miracle and wrote it up in medical journals. She was born November 11 and we finally brought her home on New Year's Day.

We knew then that God answered desperate prayer and intervened in human affairs. We began to follow Him as best we knew how, which wasn't very good, but God knew our hearts. We didn't equate Jesus with God; we had heard a Gospel invitation at a concert, but rejected it as being too - I don't know, it was too much of something and not enough of something else. I guess it wasn't intellectual enough, it seemed more like an emotional appeal. The music at the concert was very much to my liking, and the preaching by the host pastor was about how God had healed his child. I'm sure a seed was planted that night, even against my best efforts to reject it. God's Word did not return to Him void.

A year and a half later, after getting in bed for the night, I heard the name of Jesus spoken in my ear three times. When I woke up, I was living in the midst of a seeming cloud of light, love and peace. I didn't know what it was, although I felt sure that if Jesus were real, this is what He'd be like.

Sitting at my desk at work later that morning, I heard Him speak again saying "I am Jesus." The Lord had sovereignly invaded my life. I wasn' looking for that, I didn't ask for that, but I'm so glad that God knew what I really needed and wanted.

That night I told my wife "Let me tell you what happened to me today." She answered "No honey, let me tell you what happened to me. Jesus came into my heart today."

We were both touched by the Good Sheperd's hand that night as we slept. We were both born again the same night, in the same way.

Ever since that day we have been vitally aware that Christianity is more than ceremonies and forms but that God is a person with whom we can have a relationship. The driving force in our lives has been our firm belief that God wants to bring that relationship to full fruition this side of heaven and not leave us in the initial stages or any other stage in between. This is a life of going on, going on, and going on. We have often been tempted to lay the quest aside and settle down on this side of Jordan, but the stirrings in our hearts for better things bade us keep moving.

Always ahead of us was the vision of the fullness of Christ in our hearts by the Spirit. We knew disappointments and failures but kept going on, because the promise of the prize outweighed the pain and frustrations of the journey.

How many have settled by the wayside instead of pressing on to be the Lord's Zion, His habitation in the earth? (Psalm 132:15). Material success eluded us, but no matter, for that's not where our hearts were. They were seeking that Zion, that city not made with hands.

More to come ...