A Long Hard-Learned Lesson
It doesn't have to be this way, but sometimes it is. We just don't get it, for multitudes of reasons personal to each of us.
The lesson started early December 2018, but I didn't get it. I had been agnostic since 2011 - 7 years by that time, agonizingly so. I didn't want to be agnostic. For me, if there truly was no God then there is no reason to be - all is completely and utterly futile. No comfort in that, just a sense of dread and impending doom. On the other hand, if there was a God, then I was in big trouble with Him because for those 7 years I had begun a rapid decline toward becoming His enemy. I almost completely lost touch with my conscience, until the heart problem started. God's calling card I believe. It happened November 25, 2018 on my long ride back home from work.
I found out I wasn't nearly as agnostic as I had feared, thank God. But I noticed that when I cried out to Jesus, His name felt unwelcome in my mouth. I cringed when I said His name. I had company. Bad company. But who else was there to call on?
I've posted about this before and if anyone wants to they can look back and get all the details I won't go on about here. By the way, I only write for myself, no one else. If the only one reading this is me, it's completely fine with me. All I intend to do is get this off my chest and my mind and onto a post. Whether anyone reads this or not is irrelevant to me.
ER said my heart was fine that night. Whatever had happened, it was just due to nerves. Not convinced. Continued to be worried. The same arrhythmia happened again about 4 more times that week. Only lasted about 5 seconds, maybe 6. I wasn't wearing a monitor of course so there was no proof what happened.
Then in early December - I think it was the 8th or 9th - the arrhythmia started to happen again. Early in the morning, in the dark on my way to work on a long country road, no cars around. This time I cried tears of desperation. I heard this loud voice in my head yelling at me as I anticipated praying "YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO PRAY!!!" I agreed. I brought nothing to the table except for my brokeness, my lostness, my complete and total unworthiness, and my black ugly sin against the God to Whom I was praying. I was morally bankrupt.
With head bowed, devoid of expectation or hope of any help from God, still I prayed with tears falling. Please give me peace.
And He did. That and so much more.
The peace of God that surpasses understanding filled my heart, my mind, and even my car. I noticed He renewed my faith in Him. Didn't expect that. (It took 10 more months to learn that the peace God gave me that morning was Romans 5:1 peace. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.)
Soaking up the peace of God with every fiber of my being while not understanding any of it, I heard a scripture which I had not heard in ages and did not know where it was located in the bible: May the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing... My hard heart still needed a lot of softening at that point. As I tried to take it all in and understand exactly what was happening, amazed at the goodness of God toward me, it began to hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn't deserve the goodness of God at all. I recalled every sin against Him and hung my head in shame. Like Peter I told the Lord to depart from me because I am too sinful. I don't recall when the second scripture came to me but it was some time after the first. I think it was right after I realized God's goodness to me in stark unbearable contrast to my badness toward Him. If your enemy is thirsty give him something to drink, for in so doing you will be heaping burning coals upon his head. God was not about to gloss over the fact that I had become His enemy.
It was then that my hard heart misinterpreted that second scripture. So God is just being good to me before He destroys me, to get even with me for all the bad I had done to Him. Then I lost that peace and I asked Him to leave me. I couldn't bear His goodness at that time. The only thing that did make sense was the lie that God only wanted to get even with me
Fast forward almost 6 years later, I mentioned this situation and that second verse to a few friends. One looked it up. It was only then that I learned the purpose of the hot coals on the head is to lead the sinner to repentance. I missed it. God wasn't trying to get revenge on me. He was trying to restore me. I missed it.
All this time He remained the same Good loving God He had always been, ever since I first met Him in January 1980, with nothing but His great great ocean of love towards me and I believed the lies of the devil, just like Eve had. Just like billions of others before me had and billions do now. The thought of how wrong I had been became unbearable again. I needed time to completely understand.
I still don't have adequate understanding or the right words to say at this point and it's been almost 6 months ago. I was wrong, so wrong about God. I hurt the very OneWho loved me and still (amazingly!) loves me so so so much. And there's so much deep emotion over being so wrong abou God that I haven't even begun to touch. It seems as if I could cry forever should I ever be able to reach that well deep inside of me. I had (and still have) a huge ship to turn around and point back in the right direction, in the direction of the truth of God's Word, in place of the lies I had believed. I needed His help, and still do to this day, to be able to absorb and assimilate the truth I so desperately need, the truth I learned that day. I'd been so immersed in lies for so long it will take some time to turn this ship around, only with His help.
Will have to come back some other time after much reflection and prayer to speak coherently of the endless mercy and grace of God through Jesus Christ.
Til then, the endless ocean of the love of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as demonstrated by God sending us His Son to live with us and die a brutal death for us, a sinless Man dying for sinful man, and rise again from the dead for us, are so much more than any of us could ever understand with our minds or our hearts.
The lesson started early December 2018, but I didn't get it. I had been agnostic since 2011 - 7 years by that time, agonizingly so. I didn't want to be agnostic. For me, if there truly was no God then there is no reason to be - all is completely and utterly futile. No comfort in that, just a sense of dread and impending doom. On the other hand, if there was a God, then I was in big trouble with Him because for those 7 years I had begun a rapid decline toward becoming His enemy. I almost completely lost touch with my conscience, until the heart problem started. God's calling card I believe. It happened November 25, 2018 on my long ride back home from work.
I found out I wasn't nearly as agnostic as I had feared, thank God. But I noticed that when I cried out to Jesus, His name felt unwelcome in my mouth. I cringed when I said His name. I had company. Bad company. But who else was there to call on?
I've posted about this before and if anyone wants to they can look back and get all the details I won't go on about here. By the way, I only write for myself, no one else. If the only one reading this is me, it's completely fine with me. All I intend to do is get this off my chest and my mind and onto a post. Whether anyone reads this or not is irrelevant to me.
ER said my heart was fine that night. Whatever had happened, it was just due to nerves. Not convinced. Continued to be worried. The same arrhythmia happened again about 4 more times that week. Only lasted about 5 seconds, maybe 6. I wasn't wearing a monitor of course so there was no proof what happened.
Then in early December - I think it was the 8th or 9th - the arrhythmia started to happen again. Early in the morning, in the dark on my way to work on a long country road, no cars around. This time I cried tears of desperation. I heard this loud voice in my head yelling at me as I anticipated praying "YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO PRAY!!!" I agreed. I brought nothing to the table except for my brokeness, my lostness, my complete and total unworthiness, and my black ugly sin against the God to Whom I was praying. I was morally bankrupt.
With head bowed, devoid of expectation or hope of any help from God, still I prayed with tears falling. Please give me peace.
And He did. That and so much more.
The peace of God that surpasses understanding filled my heart, my mind, and even my car. I noticed He renewed my faith in Him. Didn't expect that. (It took 10 more months to learn that the peace God gave me that morning was Romans 5:1 peace. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.)
Soaking up the peace of God with every fiber of my being while not understanding any of it, I heard a scripture which I had not heard in ages and did not know where it was located in the bible: May the God of hope fill you with joy and peace in believing... My hard heart still needed a lot of softening at that point. As I tried to take it all in and understand exactly what was happening, amazed at the goodness of God toward me, it began to hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn't deserve the goodness of God at all. I recalled every sin against Him and hung my head in shame. Like Peter I told the Lord to depart from me because I am too sinful. I don't recall when the second scripture came to me but it was some time after the first. I think it was right after I realized God's goodness to me in stark unbearable contrast to my badness toward Him. If your enemy is thirsty give him something to drink, for in so doing you will be heaping burning coals upon his head. God was not about to gloss over the fact that I had become His enemy.
It was then that my hard heart misinterpreted that second scripture. So God is just being good to me before He destroys me, to get even with me for all the bad I had done to Him. Then I lost that peace and I asked Him to leave me. I couldn't bear His goodness at that time. The only thing that did make sense was the lie that God only wanted to get even with me
Fast forward almost 6 years later, I mentioned this situation and that second verse to a few friends. One looked it up. It was only then that I learned the purpose of the hot coals on the head is to lead the sinner to repentance. I missed it. God wasn't trying to get revenge on me. He was trying to restore me. I missed it.
All this time He remained the same Good loving God He had always been, ever since I first met Him in January 1980, with nothing but His great great ocean of love towards me and I believed the lies of the devil, just like Eve had. Just like billions of others before me had and billions do now. The thought of how wrong I had been became unbearable again. I needed time to completely understand.
I still don't have adequate understanding or the right words to say at this point and it's been almost 6 months ago. I was wrong, so wrong about God. I hurt the very OneWho loved me and still (amazingly!) loves me so so so much. And there's so much deep emotion over being so wrong abou God that I haven't even begun to touch. It seems as if I could cry forever should I ever be able to reach that well deep inside of me. I had (and still have) a huge ship to turn around and point back in the right direction, in the direction of the truth of God's Word, in place of the lies I had believed. I needed His help, and still do to this day, to be able to absorb and assimilate the truth I so desperately need, the truth I learned that day. I'd been so immersed in lies for so long it will take some time to turn this ship around, only with His help.
Will have to come back some other time after much reflection and prayer to speak coherently of the endless mercy and grace of God through Jesus Christ.
Til then, the endless ocean of the love of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as demonstrated by God sending us His Son to live with us and die a brutal death for us, a sinless Man dying for sinful man, and rise again from the dead for us, are so much more than any of us could ever understand with our minds or our hearts.