Sometimes I feel led to share parts of my journey from a sinner dying in my sin to a child of God. Here is one of those revelations. I wrote this back about five or six yrs ago and just came across it in my notes.
Promise keepers. In a Christian’s life, it’s amazing when we get glimpses of just how far the East is from the West. It’s like God tapping us on the shoulder and saying “Hey, I’m real and Jesus is real and this journey is real. Keep going. “
When you begin to see the work that God has done in your life and in the lives of those around you as a result of salvation, then you begin to understand the depth of the price that was paid for your soul.
My life is a continual series of little micro journeys toward the likeness of Christ and this little journey started with an email that was titled “Promise Keepers”. It talked about a conference that was to take place in the Dallas Cowboys arena in Dallas. Given it was a conference for men, it didn’t really have much to do with me – except it did. For 15 years I lived in Cypress Texas and for the majority of those years I lived in immorality. I had no concept of Christ as a Leader or as my God and I loathed what I considered the unloving and intolerant Christian judgement of gays and lesbians – and the hate I just knew they had in their hearts manifested by their continual rejection of our lifestyle and our love for our same sex partners. I mean after all – love came from God. God is love. We felt love for each other – therefore our relationship must have come from Him. The deceipt covering us was a beautiful tapestry of some truth and a lot of lies meant to trick us into alienation from God – and it did.
Right down the street from my home during that season was a little daycare called “Little Promise Keepers”. I passed that little building every day on my way home from work and believe you me not a day went by that I didn’t momentarily fume on how sad it was that those little children were being infected by the hypocrisy of Christian hatred. I was totally convinced that the Promise Keepers were some kind of cult – hateful, judgmental, hypocritical and unable to except the love that God made between two people regardless of their sex. I just knew I was right and would defend it to the death.
Now Fast Forward years later – when I opened that email and the title caught my eye, that little building was suddenly there in my mind. I went on to read the healing words that encouraged all men – fathers, brothers, and husbands to step up and act like a man in this dark age – to lead their families, lead their wives, lead their sisters, lead their mothers toward Christ; to be the spiritual leaders of their home that God intended them to be, to be Promise Keepers, and my own heart was just crushed. Crushed at the awareness of just how far I had come from where I had been. The old is gone and behold the new has genuinely come. Suddenly, I saw Jesus on that cross bearing my sin. A man loving me enough to die for me. No man in this world has ever loved me that much. Jesus opened my eyes to see the world through His Father’s eyes and behold my heart stood amazed at the miracle of rebirth that God has done not only in my life, but in my son’s life and continues to do in my family’s lives and my friend’s lives until he comes back or takes us home. And So it is. Once more, He let me know just how far the East is from the West and just how deeply He is pleased by the hearts and motives of his Promise Keepers. Keep going. The journey is real.
Is God speaking to you today? Is there a small voice calling you out of everything you have built your life around and what you were convinced was your destiny and calling? Listen closer. You need only to look for God to find him.
Seek me and you will find me, when you seek me with all of your heart. Jeremiah 29:13
React Softly 