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Despite the fact that there was a very clear beginning to God pursuing me, it’s hard to know where to begin the story of my journey. I’ll confess, at the time I was not a believer. I had a whole lifetime of pain stored away, so why would I believe in a God that would let terrible things happen to people? Why would I believe in a God that was alleged to answer prayers, but so obviously didn’t? This recent injury that left me bedridden was the final blow. I was broken by the world and now sat isolated in my room day-after-day, feeling hopeless, believing that this was all my future would ever hold—then I woke up hearing God.

It was late July, 2014. I had been bedridden for almost a year. My daughter left for work early in the morning, so I was alone when I was startled awake by a powerful, commanding voice. I bolted upright in bed. My first thought was that it had to be the voice of God, because of how it resonated and resounded both within me and around me, but as I sat there I began trying to explain it away. Could it have been a voice in my dream? Or, a noise outside that in my sleep I misinterpreted as words? Perhaps in all the isolation, I was finally losing it. My mind searched for a rational answer to what had happened.

The message from God was probably not what you’d expect. He didn’t impart wisdom or express His love for me. He only said one word, “Work!” I began hearing His voice every few days, at first only waking me from sleep but, later, I started hearing Him when I was awake too. I tested my sanity, but all my other mental faculties seemed to be intact. I studied my interactions with my daughter in case I had gone mad and didn’t know it, but our conversations were no different than before. Surely, if I had gone mad, it would be evident in some other area of my life. Hesitantly, I began accepting what my heart already knew—I was hearing God.

Once I began to come to terms with that, I had a problem. I wasn’t sure what He meant by “Work!” I am goal-oriented and have always loved to have projects but, bedridden as I was, I could only think of one thing to work on. I got on my computer and pulled up a website I had started creating several months before but had abandoned when I got in over my head coding the design. I wasn’t sure if this was what God wanted me to work on, but I didn’t know what else to do. I began re-familiarizing myself with the work I had been doing and started updating the content on the site.

Several times I felt led by God to make changes in my wording, most notably to add “God given” in front of the word “strengths” when I was writing about a person’s innate talents. When this happened, for the most part, I didn’t comply. I didn’t like the mention of God on people’s websites, so why would I potentially turn people off to my site by mentioning God? I might not have been obedient to His will yet, but my belief in His existence was no longer in question.

As August arrived, I started feeling more depressed. My daughter’s hours at work had increased and she was going to college full-time, so I was left alone sixteen to eighteen hours a day, every day. To add to my emotional state, my birthday is in August and as the day arrived it brought up thoughts of what my life had been and the reality that I would inevitably spend the rest of my life isolated and confined to bed. I was already in a dark place emotionally, and then it got worse when Robin Williams committed suicide on my birthday. With every news report and message on Facebook (and if you remember, news of his suicide was everywhere), I kept thinking to myself, “If Robin Williams with all his talent, friends, fans and wealth couldn’t find a reason to live, why was I still breathing?” My depression was so deep it was suffocating me. In my pain, I cried out to my new-found God.

Shaking and with tears streaming down my face, I explained to Him that I couldn’t think of a reason to live, that I didn’t need His love, or heaven, or even healing—I begged only for one thing. I cried out, “I have education and experience and a love in my heart for helping people! Why would You lock me away like this? God, If You won’t put me back into the world again, then I need You to give me purpose!” Then I cried myself to sleep.

After that day, nothing seemed to change. God continued to say, “Work!” Terribly depressed, but imagining that somehow the website could be the answer to my prayer, I tried to focus on that. I avoided going online so news of Robin Williams’ death wouldn’t stir up my feelings of desperation. Finally, I finished the content and was faced with finding a way to overcome the roadblock that in the past had kept me from moving forward with my website. That is what prompted me to go to the freelance site where I first met my God-friend, Jacob.

My story continues here: Meeting Jacob

Since then, God has made such a transformation in me that, even now looking back, it amazes me to see how intimately my Heavenly Father knows me, and how perfectly and patiently He brought me to Him and molded me into a Vessel of Prayer for others. Through my pain, my anger, my selfishness, my stubbornness, my arrogance and my unbelief, He brought me to joy in worshiping at His feet and in tenaciously holding on in faith and faithfulness to the path He has laid before me, no matter how difficult or how impossible it seems. I say this in faith because I don't know where this story will take us, but if you want to see God’s power revealed, keep following my journey—and, together, we will see what our God can do.

As is true for many of us, if asked to name some of my best traits, my friends and family would usually include my sense of humor. I like to make people laugh. Looking back (and this is hard to confess), that used to include making jokes at other people's expense. I didn’t just do it sometimes, I did it all the time. I justified it like this: I have a diverse group of friends who don’t know each other, so there is no harm to anyone if I make people laugh by discussing someone’s ineptness and social inadequacies to a person they will never meet—kind of a what they don’t know, won’t hurt them philosophy. Then, God stepped in and changed my heart.

It was soon after the thing that happened happened, after I had received the Holy Spirit and the gift of prayer. I was praying when God began directing my thoughts to this less than admirable behavior. His countenance was one of displeasure and sternness and I immediately felt the seriousness of what He was about to lay before me. It was painful to bear the tremendous weight of His disapproval.

He began to show me the different ways in which I offended Him when I disrespected one of His children—each of His children who were fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), who He knew before they were formed in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5). He made it clear that it was completely unacceptable to Him that I would mock those that He had created and loved so dearly that He gave His only begotten Son for them. He continued by showing me the pain I inflicted on His children (even when they didn’t know how I disrespected them) and how my behavior lessened and dishonored who He created me to be. It devastated me to see my behavior in this light.

I was so disgusted with myself. My heart ached because I saw how deeply I had disappointed my Heavenly Father. He continued by expressing to me that I needed to give honor and respect to everyone in every circumstance. At the time I didn’t know what my calling was, but I knew in that moment that this was a deal breaker. I needed to repent or I could not fulfill the plans God had for me.

God convicted my heart so powerfully that I was wracked with sobs. The last thing I wanted was for Him to have brought me this far, to have brought me to now, only to fail Him. I begged Him for forgiveness. I pleaded that He would know the sincerity of my desire to change. I repented from a depth I had never experienced before and my heart was transformed.

After this experience, it must have been easy for me to stop deriding, right? Oh, but I wish that were true! I missed the laughs I got deriding people and, in my mind, I didn't know where the boundary was. For instance, if someone did something I found funny and I only talked about what they did, without adding any of my own commentary, was that deriding or just stating facts?

I find that most of us are prone to this type of negotiating as we try to assimilate the changes God requires of us. My heart had changed, but instead of handing this part of my life over to the Holy Spirit for guidance, I continued to look outside the Spirit for direction. As has been true many times, I have to sit with the uncomfortable discord, that battle between who I am and who God wants me to be, before I realize that I need to dedicate this area of my life to God and follow the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit—only then are we truly transformed in His [Jesus] image.

For me, it’s important to take the focus off the change I’m struggling with and, instead, look at myself and the actual process of changing. For instance, if I catch myself negotiating with God in a way that would defend keeping the behavior, I know my transformation has not been great enough. I have not faithfully answered God’s call to change when I pretend the change does not have to be complete. Luke 9:23 says, “Then He [Jesus] said to them all, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” "Daily." Not deny ourselves "when it’s easy" or "when it suits us," not "when a special challenge arises"—daily.

Jacob was a loyal God-friend through this time of transition. He caught me if I was stepping over the line and I checked with him on several occasions to see if my words were derisive. I didn’t slip often, but I spent a lot of time not mentioning certain people for fear my words would deride. The adage, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it at all,” had never been more true.

I look at people differently now, with more compassion, with more love in my heart as they stumble through life, like we all do sometimes. I guess I'm not as funny as I used to be. I just asked some friends to list my top traits and only one of them said "funny," but the words “thoughtful,” “compassionate” and “understanding” made it onto the lists more than a few times. Sometimes God works in mysterious ways, sometimes He’s a lot more direct than that.

I am now firmly rooted in my calling as a vessel of prayer for others and I can clearly see there is no way I could have held both disregard for others by deriding them and the compassion for others my calling requires. In Matthew 6:24 it says, “No one can serve two masters,” and I think this is a great example of that. Deriding people was self-serving, not serving my Heavenly Father—you can’t do both, serve yourself and God—a lesson we all need to learn again and again.

My prayers book starts with a bible verse, “I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people…” (1 Timothy 2:1) and because of this experience with God, I am able to do that with my whole heart, holding nothing back. I take this scripture seriously. I pray that God will move in your life as He moves in mine and you will embrace His path for you with a heart open and accepting of the changes He needs to make in you, even if they are uncomfortable for a while. The reward of knowing you are walking on the path He created for you will make it all worthwhile.

My daughter works at a discount retail store. Often, she is there at night when they are sweeping up and if she sees an abandoned shopping list on the floor, she’ll pick it up and bring it home to share with me. If we had to file these lists into a category, it would be titled, “People Are Funny.” The lists are often silly, confusing, witty and sometimes downright hilarious. There are also poignant moments. For instance, one list read, “interview outfit, something to settle stomach.” Another time the paper contained a list of children’s party supplies and at the bottom of the long list, “Advil.” Priceless! Scraps of unidentifiable paper, notebook pages, post-it notes, paper from “list” pads, the inside of a piece of cereal box; we’ve seen it all—well, I thought we’d seen it all.

On this particular night, the list she brought home was written on a regular 8.5"x11" piece of paper that was folded into quarters. My daughter had been working when she found it and so she had slipped it into her pocket unread. We unfold it together. On the back of the paper (in what I believe was female handwriting), was a pretty mundane grocery list: milk, bread... those kinds of things. Then I realized that at least half of the page was also covered with more personal content including the words, "Let go, let God." When I flipped it over, the front of the paper was a page from an Alcoholics Anonymous workbook. There was no name or identifying information on the page. The person had been working on, “Step Three: Deciding to Turn Our Will and Our Lives Over to the Care of God.”

There were printed questions and in the spaces below the questions (and on every blank space where writing would fit) there were lists of things this woman thought she needed to change in order to succeed in her sobriety and in her new walk with God. The words “make myself a better person” jumped out at me.

She described the new perspective she needed to cultivate, the areas in which she needed to take more control of her actions, and the steps she was going to take to change her negative thinking. There was also a list of medical bills she needed to pay related to becoming sober and the need to find a job. However, there was no indication that she understood anything about turning her will and life over to the care of God. Instead, her lists indicated she was going to try her hardest to gain even greater control over her life, the complete opposite of “Let go, let God.” The only other reference to spirituality were the two final lines on the page:

“Remember to pray. Continue to pray.
I need God's help.”

It was only after I looked at her responses that the first printed question on the workbook page caught my attention, “Am I willing to turn the things I cannot control over to the care of my Higher Power?” This was accompanied by a small admonition saying that in order to achieve successful sobriety you needed to turn the control of your life over to God. Yet, there was no indication that this person had any belief other than that she needed to try harder and grasp tighter to the things she thought she could control.

I turned the page to the back again. In the spotty ink of a pen that is failing she had written, “My Prayer: God, please give me the strength to face these challenges, the power to overcome my weakness and the courage to change myself and my circumstances.” From my perspective, this was not the prayer of someone who had learned to put their trust in God, to lay their burdens at His feet. What she was asking for was to be turned into a superhero (faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound), when what she really needed to do was to humble herself by admitting she was helpless over her addiction and to confess that only God has the power to implement these kinds of changes in her life. He is everything we are incapable of being on our own.

Why does this story make me so happy? It is because she prayed for God's help and He provided. Psalms 55:22 reads, “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you.” In His mercy and grace, God took her “to do” list for living a more wholesome, sober life, a huge step in her relationship with God, and delivered it to me, someone He was in the process of making a Vessel of Prayer for others and, therefore, could be assured her troubles would be delivered to Him in faith. He literally had her "let go" (of her list) and "let God" (answer her prayer by putting her list in my hands). Every day I pray for the shopping list woman. With her trials spelled out for me on that piece of paper, one-by-one I hand them over to God in prayer, fully trusting that He alone is the answer to her sobriety and her salvation. God is good.

I begin to pray. I start by thanking God for the day, not out of routine, but because I see the perfection in being able to start over, to wipe the slate clean and try again with every new dawn. I pray through my thanks and praise to Him. I'm only a couple months into my relationship with God and I can tell I'm not very good at praying. My prayers are stilted, there are long pauses where I try to get a feeling for what I should be praying for, and most of the time I can't find the right words so there is just an uncomfortable silence.

After a while, I am drawn to pray for a young woman who goes to my daughter's university. I know very little, only that she has a serious illness and is in the hospital fighting for her life. I start to pray for her recovery when I hear a soft voice say, "Hush. Pray now to console her family.” I immediately change the focus of my prayer. Reaching deep into the sadness and loss I have felt in my own life, I pour out compassion for them. I pray that God will be with them to comfort and console them in their time of grief. They are my words heartfelt, for this grieving family. Because I have experienced the depth of their loss, the intensity of their pain, I am able to pray deeply for them. This is where my painful experiences become blessings for others and eventually joy, when I understand that my pain is being used in the service of others. It would still take a while before I would get to experience that though.

About an hour after I prayed, my daughter called me to tell me the sad news that the young woman had passed away. She asked a simple enough questions, "Had you heard?" The answer that came to me was not as direct. Within me the answer was both yes and no. The prompting of the different direction to my prayer let me know where my prayers were needed, no longer for the young woman’s recovery but for her grieving family. I had no other indication that she had passed away, but I knew.

Of course, I felt great sadness for the young woman and her family, but beyond those feelings I, felt another kind of sadness. It felt so perfect to be led by God in that way. I wished I could live my life over again, hearing His perfect guidance and for everyone to feel the blessing of being guided by His hand in such a gentle and loving way. How simple it was to follow His lead and know what I was meant to do in that prayerful moment.

I also thought of my son and how feverishly I had prayed as we drove to the hospital on the night he passed away. They had told us he had taken a turn for the worse, but in actuality he was already gone. I wonder now if I hadn't been so focused on my own fear and pain, if I would have been able to hear that soft, hushed voice that would have led me to pray a different prayer. Now that I have heard that voice softly introduce the truth of this world into my awareness, I’m deeply saddened that I lived my life without it, or that any of us do. When I tell Jacob, his response below is what encourages me now to share my testimony here. Probably the quietest moment I have ever had with God is part of the inspiration for potentially the farthest my words will ever carry.

In previous blogs, I’ve mentioned that when I started my relationship with God, I had some strange, self-fabricated ideas about prayer. For instance, I would say things like, “If there is such a thing as prayer, I think we get a limited supply, so don’t ever ask me to pray for your dog.” I admit, my attitude was flippant and disrespectful. In hindsight, I’m sure this served several purposes. First, it deflected any honest discussion about religion or prayer. Deeper than that, however, it allowed me to push aside any feelings I had about God, His existence, or the fact that if He did exist, it was more than a little evident that He didn’t care about me.

All of this fit very neatly into my belief system, that was, until God began to pursue me. Suddenly, I was faced with confronting my ideas about prayer. I brought this up to Jacob in the context of a situation that was taking place with my roommate. I was completely bedridden at the time. My daughter would pack food into a cooler for me before she left for work in the morning. We had a pretty casual food sharing arrangement with our roommate. Sometimes she would eat our food and stick her head into our room and say, “Oh, if you’re looking for your frozen lasagna meal? I ate it.” Other times, food would just go missing. We behaved in kind. It was not unusual for me to find one of her Hot Pockets or other snacks she had purchased in my cooler.

Our budget was really tight. For the two of us, we budgeted $50 a week for groceries, which included paper goods and personal items. When my daughter would, for whatever reason, have shorter hours at work some weeks, we would have to cut back even further. There were times I would open my cooler to find only stale, cold rice for the day. During those times I was happy to have warm rice with a spoonful of peanut butter stirred into it, if my daughter happened to be home at mealtime. So I had to fight to accept His direction when God sternly instructed me each time my daughter would bring me a food item that belonged to our roommate, “Do not take anything that is not yours.”

My excuses for not doing what He commanded were plentiful:

► My daughter was actually the one taking it, I mean, it wasn’t my decision to “steal” it, so why did it matter if I ate it?
► Our roommate did the same with us, so it was really a non-verbal agreement we had with her, so how could it be wrong for us to take her food?
► I was hungry, I’m sure she wouldn’t want me to be in my room starving when there was food in the refrigerator. If the situation was reversed, I’d want her to take our food.
► I didn’t mind (all that much) when she took our food when we had some, and she probably felt the same.

Yet, I could feel God’s displeasure with me every time I accepted and ate our roommate’s food, so I started telling my daughter that I didn’t like the food our roommate had purchased, and instructed her not to bring it to me. When she continued to bring it to me (because there really wasn’t any of our food left in the apartment), I finally told her that this was a message from God. I was not to take anything that wasn’t mine, and that included our roommate’s food. She wasn’t happy about it, but she adhered to my request and stopped bringing me our roommate’s food. I told this story to Jacob and he asked if I had prayed for God to provide food for us. I explained to him that I didn’t know how to pray for things for myself. His response was, “Have you heard of the Lord’s Prayer?”

I replied that I had. Then, as was common with our text conversations, there was a pause before his next message. I sat there looking at his message, thinking. I knew the Lord’s Prayer, although I hadn’t prayed it a long time. So, I began to pray wondering if I even remembered the words. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” I prayed it with the strong reverence that I had developed for our Almighty God. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” again I prayed the words earnestly, allowing myself to express the depth of my desire to be part of God’s kingdom. Deep in prayer, I continued, “Give us this day our daily bread…” as I finished saying those words, as clearly as I have ever heard God’s voice, He said, “It has been done.”

I immediately felt joyful and so thankful! Without knowing how my need for food would be met, I knew God had answered my prayer! He was going to provide! Excitedly, I rushed to text Jacob and tell him about what had happened, to tell him that my prayer had been both asked and answered through God's grace. Then, suddenly as I tapped "send," I felt God shinning His love and approval down on me. I have never felt so loved or so much joy! It was beyond anything I thought was possible. It flooded me, covered me, filled me. I had expressed my faith that He had answered my prayer even before I had any outward sign that this was true. and He was pleased. I just knew it was because I had demonstrated a sincere expression of my unquestioning faith in Him.

I looked up at the text message above mine, the one Jacob had sent while I was having this moment with God. It read, ‘You don’t have to pray it, my point is to use it as a template for how you should pray.” I laughed to myself knowing that God had found a way for me to pray for my needs despite the fact that I felt I couldn’t, and then He answered that prayer. What an amazing and perfect God!

A couple hours later, my daughter came home from work with 3 big trays of Panda Express. Her employer had provided lunch for the staff, and these 3 trays of food were left at the end of the day. They offered them to anyone who wanted to take them. My daughter was the only one who showed interest, so the food was given to her. Moreover, there were 2 trays of chicken based meals and the third tray was a completely vegetarian dish, and my daughter doesn't eat meat. God provided for both of us!

The next day a friend had gone out for pizza and afterward decided she wasn’t going right home, so she dropped off a large pizza with only one slice missing to our apartment. She didn’t want the pizza to be wasted by going bad in her hot car. Day-after-day for weeks things like this kept happening. We somehow got another round of Panda Express. My other daughter lived in town and her refrigerator stopped working. Could she give us all her frozen food? “Of course you can!” There was so much food, the freezer was full and we had to start cooking things so we could store some of it in the refrigerator. Every day when I opened my cooler, it was filled to the top with a bounty of food inside!

Of course, this was a wonderful example of God showing me love and understanding. He knew where I was in my immaturity with prayer, so He gave me the prayer to pray and then answered that prayer with an abundance of food. That part of the experience alone is enough to astound me. However, so much more amazing was the feeling of God’s love and approval filling me, covering me, all-encompassing. It’s hard to find the words to describe how it felt, "glorious" is the closest I can come. I never think much about heaven. Maybe I’m just not there yet in my religious development, but in that moment, from the bottom of my heart, throughout my whole soul, every bit of me ached for the day I will feel the unimaginable joy of being in His presence for all eternity.

Excerpt: Spoken firmly, with assurance and compassion, God said, “I brought you to now.” In that moment, those few words flipped my perception of my past upside down...


It was late September, 2014. I'd known Jacob for less than a month, and here I was already asking him for extra support in the days ahead. We were approaching the anniversary of my infant son's death, always a difficult time for me. I'd been through so many difficult experiences in my life. Earlier the same year that my son passed away, my mother had died of leukemia, I had given birth to premature twins, each weighing barely a pound, and four months after that I was holding my lifeless son in my arms.

On the day of this message from God, I was texting with Jacob, describing to him what had happened on the night of my son's death. My eldest daughter, my son's twin, had grown more quickly and had been home from the hospital for a few weeks while my son remained hospitalized. That night, she woke and continued crying even after her physical needs for a diaper change and warm bottle were satisfied.

I walked her as I thought about my son. At four months old he was not improving. They had moved him from the incubator to a full-size crib hoping that being exposed to more than the inside of a plastic incubator would help, but nothing changed. He was frequently agitated, and the nurses had to restrain his arms to keep him from pulling the IV tubes from his body. As his mom, I loved him so much and wanted him to get better and come home, but as I slid down the wall and sat on the floor with my daughter, I prayed that if God was going to take him, that He take him soon. If he wasn't going to live, I didn't want him to suffer any longer. I was still sitting on the floor, my cheeks wet with tears, when the phone rang. It was the hospital calling to say our son had taken a turn for the worse.

My husband and I got ready to leave. dropped our daughter off with my sister, and drove to the hospital. My prayer was forgotten in the midst of the anxiety I was experiencing, fearing what we were about to face. As we sped to the hospital I prayed and prayed that my son would be okay.

When we arrived at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a doctor met us in the hall and showed us to a small room where she gave us the devastating news that our son had passed away. It was hospital policy not to give news like that over the phone, but to ask parents to come to the hospital. The truth was that he had died before they had called us. A nurse brought him to us, his tiny body wrapped in a hospital blanket. My husband and I both held him, told him we loved him and said our heartbreaking final goodbyes. Feeling that my desperate prayers for my son's life had been pointless, I questioned the existence of God. I had prayed so hard and in my pain believed that if God existed, there would have been a different outcome. I angrily disavowed any belief I had in God.

I told Jacob this story, wracked with sobs as I thought about this painful time in my life. Then I began thinking about all the sadness and pain I'd experienced, starting with my early life placed in foster care for several years while my birthmother made up her mind to put me up for adoption. I thought about difficulties I faced as a child, my mom's death, my son's death, the end of my marriage, my struggles as a single parent, and in the midst of trying to make a better life, I sustained the injury that put an end to so many of my goals and dreams. I sat on my bed sobbing when I heard God's voice.

Spoken firmly, with assurance and compassion, God said, “I brought you to now.” In that moment, those few words flipped my perception of my past upside down. With those few words, I realized that my life had not been a series of tragedies and misfortunes randomly dealt by fate. Nothing I had been through had been in vain — God had His hand on my life with every step. With those few words from God, my life suddenly made sense.

Before that moment, unable to see God leading me through these tragedies, my past seemed like a sad tale of repeated abandonment, pain, and defeat, but everything changed with those words. With the sudden awareness that God had been directing my life, bringing me to this moment, to now, the experiences from my life transformed. They became lessons in faith and compassion for others.

If I told you I haven’t had any bad days since then, it would be a lie. I have days when I slip back into feeling sadness and depression over my past and I feel great emotional pain being so isolated. However, that only lasts as long as it takes me to remember that God has brought me to now for His purpose. When I remember that everything I have been through and everything I am going through is for His glory, I feel my strength and endurance restored.

I'd like you to think about this… whatever your life has been like, He has brought you to now. He has brought you through those experiences for a reason. He has faithfully brought us to this now, with the continued promise to bring us to the next now and the next after that for as long as we live and beyond. Please try to understand this message and the peace it can bring you. God has always had a plan for you and for me. He has always walked beside you on your journey just as He has walked with me on mine. Yes, even in your most devastating times, God has been with you. The Bible says:

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9

The Lord said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart..." God didn't pick out only a few people to work for His glory. He didn't say, "Okay, let's see... I'll take her [pointing], and Jeremiah, and... I don't know, just throw in a couple others in case we run out." No! Each one of us was "fearfully and wonderfully made," created for His purpose:

"For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Ephesians 2:10

He has created us to do good works, and He walks beside us on every step of our journey. Once you accept that He has a plan for you, you will start seeing your life differently — blessed by God for His purpose, blessed, even when we face the most difficult experiences of our lives. With the utmost love, mercy and grace for you, directing you to the path of everlasting joy in His kingdom, He has faithfully brought you to now.

My first "God journal"

My son had come over for a visit and was telling me about his job, triggering him to spout a string of profanities which included taking the Lord’s name in vain among the vilest of curse words. Even as he spoke them, I wished I could un-hear them. What made the situation worse was that my son said the Lord’s name with the same words with which I call on God when I pray.

Later, when he had left and I started to pray, I humbled myself before the Lord and began my prayer, but instead of being able to connect with Him, as I spoke His name that string of expletives popped into my head. I tried again and again, but each time the same thing happened. I tried calling out to Him with a different name, but like trying not to think about something and then finding that’s the only thing you can think about, the vile words just kept coming into my mind. I couldn’t connect with God. I couldn’t pray.

This was at such a fragile time in my transformation. I was feeling so much unrest between who I had been and who I was becoming being led by the Holy Spirit for the first time. I was in such a tentative place, I couldn’t begin to fathom that God loved me and was actually pursuing me. I questioned everything that was happening: Did I want to believe? Would I or could I turn my life over to God for more than a few minutes at a time? What was it that God wanted from me? I was in so much turmoil and pain, and now my connection with my newly found Heavenly Father was gone. I was heartbroken and felt growing anguish every time I tried to pray but couldn’t.

I had heard about using the name of Jesus to turn away demons, and so I spoke to Satan in the same way I speak to God, but instead of inviting him in like I do with God, I told him that he was not going to be part of my life. I had made the decision to give my life over to God. Then, with my small faith and whatever confidence I could muster as a new believer, I ordered Satan away from me. Well, I’d like to think I ordered Satan away, but it was probably more like a strong suggestion that he leave. It was the first time I had ever encountered something like this, and, although I tried, nothing changed. I still couldn't pray.

I turned to Jacob and asked him what I should do, and as always Jacob was patient and helpful. (See Jacob's text below) He suggested that I try to sneak a small prayer through. That may sound like a strange idea, but all I needed was enough time with God to plead for his help. To try this I knew I needed to block those profane words somehow and so I listened to Christian music. If this happened today, I would have many faith-strengthening and uplifting songs to choose from. At the time, the only “Christian" songs I knew were a handful of Christmas carols. Only one seemed to bring me any relief, “For unto Us a Child is Born.”

"And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace...” While I listened to the song over and over again, letting the carol fill my ears and my mind, I explained my problem to God. Then, as I tried to pray, the image of an origami box came into my thoughts, a flimsy looking origami paper box and God said, “Put them in here and I will keep them.” I looked at this flimsy paper box and railed against Him, “I'm in crisis and this is all you have? A paper box?!” I’d need a reinforced steal box to lock these vile words away. I cried out in disbelief, “A paper box will not hold them!”

Once again, in my mind's eye, God’s outreached hands presented the flimsy paper box to me, “Have faith. I will hold them. I will not let them harm you.” I wanted the evil words taken from me, I wanted to forget this ever happened, and all I was being offered was a fragile paper box? I had no faith that the box could hold them, but, of course, a little paper box couldn’t hold them. It was God who held my deliverance in His hands. The box was just a way for Him to show me, new to the world and word of God, that what I needed to do was trust Him.

If you had told me that God would carry my burdens, that all I had to do was turn them over to Him, infantile in my faith, I wouldn’t have known what that meant or where to start. But, the outreached box? I knew what to do with that. I tentatively envisioned placing the string of abhorrent words into the paper box and replaced the lid. My problem was in God’s hands. I could see that represented in the beautiful paper box.

Almost immediately the vile words were gone. There is not a trace of them in my mind, even as I write this blog and I am reminded of the incident – nothing. I’m sure if I dug deep into my memory, I could reconstruct that particular string of profanities, but I feel vulnerable to the evil that kept me from my Heavenly Father. I never want to provoke it by letting those words back into my thoughts.

There are two bible verses that come to mind. First is Job 1:7, “The Lord said to Satan, 'Where have you come from?' Satan answered the Lord, 'From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.'" The second is 1 Peter 5:8, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” I think Satan roams the earth looking for opportunities just like this one to try and undermine our faith. What surprises me is how readily and constantly I am deceived by him. If anyone reading knows how to "be alert" in an actionable way, please share in the comments below. I still struggle with this a lot.

I’ve been with God for a little over a year and a half. Since this incident I’ve developed a much stronger faith in Him. I know without doubt that He will carry my burdens and He will do everything in His power to keep our connection unbroken. All I have to do is put my burdens into His outreached hands.

I probably have outgrown the need for the paper box, but I love it and what it represents. It is a reminder of God’s promise to sustain those who are trying to live a righteous life. I still use the image of the paper box. It is where I toss my temptations, unGodly thoughts, and worldly distractions. Then, God, through His mercy takes them from me and holds them, unwavering. “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.” Psalm 55:22. Hallelujah for such a loving and faithful God!

It was Wednesday, October 8th, 2014. It had been over a year since my injury, since I had been able to walk. I was perched awkwardly and uncomfortably at the end of my bed, about to practice standing, when I got a text from Jacob. It had been a month since Jacob and I met, and we had become what I termed “God friends.” I talked to Jacob about every part of my journey with God as it unfolded. He knew my struggles, including my self-acknowledged weakness in prayer. So when I realized he was texting me to ask me to pray for someone, I had a flicker of skepticism;You really want my hopeless, second-rate prayer?

The text from Jacob explained that there was a woman in his church whose niece, Amy, was 29 weeks pregnant and she needed immediate heart surgery. They had attempted the procedure the day before, but it hadn’t gone well. The surgery had taken twice as long as expected and now there were complications. Along with addressing her heart problem, the doctors were hoping to buy more time for the baby's gestation. Would I pray? I answered, “Absolutely!” and without hesitating to move back onto the bed or get in a more comfortable position, I immediately began to pray.

My prayer started like all my prayers had begun in the past, hesitant and stumbling. I tried to piece a prayer together, but as usual, there was no mistaking how bad I was at praying. I began thinking about Amy and her baby, who was at risk of being born preterm, and I thought about my experience with the death of my son who had been born prematurely. I felt my sadness and grief at the loss of my child welling up. When my son was born, I had prayed for him, not the prayers of a Christian who had faith, but the desperate, desperate prayers of someone faced with agonizing loss.

I felt a connection with God growing deep in my heart as I prayed for Amy. Then it became something more—God showed me His love for His Son as I loved my son. He showed me His pain that joined with my own. In that moment, I became a believer in Jesus Christ, the Son of the wonderful God who first pursued me; I believed in God and, now, He had introduced me to His son in this most intimate, personal, powerful way.

As I sat on the edge of my bed still trying to pray, I suddenly felt the power of God move within me. I have no other way to describe it. Then, as God's Spirit filled me, I started saying the words to a perfect prayer. There was no hesitation, no awkward silences. The words lifted up for Amy and her child, through me, were no longer my words. I was only aware of what I was saying for the first time as I heard myself speak the prayer and even then, although in English, I still only understood half of what was being prayed. Most significantly there were references to promises God has made to those who have faith, promises I knew nothing about.

At the same time, I felt energy building behind the perfect prayer that was escaping my lips and somehow I felt the prayers I had prayed for my own son years ago, combining with the prayer I prayed now, amplifying my prayer for Amy. (Trust me if I was making this up, I would have left that part out because it makes no sense to me, but I'm telling you exactly what I experienced.) Then, suddenly, I felt the energy leave me as if it was speeding towards Amy. If in that moment someone had told me Amy was healed, I would have had no hesitation believing it. I knew it was true, she would be healed.

That would be a nice place for this testimony to end, but that is only the beginning of the story. In that moment I was changed. Through that experience with God, and His expression of His love for His Son, I became a believer in Jesus Christ, deep in my heart where God had forged a connection with me over the past few months. I was sobbing, and as I began to calm myself, I realized that I felt differently. I didn’t feel like myself anymore. It was confusing. What had happened to me? Later, when I approached Jacob about this, I called it “the thing that happened,” because there were no words in my lexicon for what I was experiencing.

My prayers changed immediately after that experience. They were no longer interspersed with silences when I didn’t know what to pray, or stammering as I tried to find the right words. For the first time, the right words started coming to me easily each time I prayed. If I didn’t know how to pray for someone, I would call on the Holy Spirit to take over the prayer for me. Since that day, this call for assistance with my prayers has never gone unanswered. Through the Holy Spirit there is power in my prayers. God took me, someone who couldn’t pray, and made prayer my calling. I have seen so many of my prayers answered, I’ve heard the Holy Spirit whispering to guide my prayers, and leading me, constantly leading me, to know what to pray for people. When I’m at a loss for words, the Holy Spirit takes over and prays the prayer for me.

It’s difficult to find a place to end this blog, because this was the beginning of my life with Christ. I want to rush into telling you everything that has happened—my struggles, my calling, my heartbreak, my joy—my whole journey given to you as evidence of Our Living God. Thankfully, if the inspirations I get to write these blogs is any indication, in time you will find my whole journey represented here and through it you will learn there is never a reason to doubt that we have a living God in heaven who wants to be in relationship with you as He has with me. "For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said, ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’” 2 Corinthians 6:16

If you're already a Christian, I ask that you keep your heart and ears turned to God. We may not all experience God in the same way, but His message is the same for all of us—through a life of faith, faithfulness and prayer, learning by reading and studying the Bible, through serving others, and following His commandments, we will experience final victory in Christ.

If this is new to you and you feel a twinge of hope or joy when you read that scripture, or if you just want it to be true, that is God calling to your heart. How can you respond? You can reach out to someone you know who is an active Christian. You can make plans to attend church. First, though, you can pray right now inviting God into your life. Even if your prayers are stumbling and halting and you don’t know the right words to pray, pray anyway—trust me, God will understand.

The first time I saw Jacob, it was in a photograph on a freelancer website attached to a couple sentences that described him as a friendly guy who enjoys talking to people. I’m not even sure how I stumbled on his gig. He looked more like a kid in the photo and I was there looking for computer help for a website project, the website project I started working on after God began pursuing me. Jacob listed his interests and we had a couple things in common, but, seriously, I wasn’t going to pay someone to talk to me and, anyway, he was just a kid, how much could we have to talk about?

There was something that caught my eye in the photograph though, a red reflection in the window behind him and for some reason I can't explain, I became really curious about it. I have an artist's eye that gives me an interest in color, shapes and shadow, so this wasn't out of the ordinary for me, but this time my curiosity was intense. The next day, I went back to his page, copied the image to my art program and started manipulating it. I enlarged it, I color split it, I wondered about it—a lot. I began thinking that if I bought his freelancer offer to chat, at the very least, I could ask him about the reflection in the picture and I could let this preoccupation go.

I did have one other personal hurdle to overcome though. In his profile he said, "No cursing." For me that was a red flag that I was going to be talking to a Christian. In the past, that would have been enough to stop me from talking to him, but because of my recent experiences with God my stand on this wavered more than usual. Plus, I just had a question about the photograph, it's not like this was going to be an ongoing thing. Those were my thoughts as I pressed "Order Now."

Once we started talking I found out that he wasn't a kid at all. He was a college graduate and worked with computers. We talked about our educational backgrounds, our careers and and we discussed why I had bought his freelance offer, but somehow the red reflection didn't come up in that conversation. After our first text exchanges, I thought he would be a great person to have as an accountability partner for the website project I had been struggling with. He agreed to that and we made a plan for him to check in with me a couple times a week.

The next day, Jacob had just returned from church when we started texting and that opened the door to our first conversation about religion. He told me he was Christian and that he attended the Church of the Nazarene. He asked me if I was religious. I told him what I believed, which at that point was a recently updated version of what I used to believe. Yes, I believed in God, but beyond that I was sticking to my old if there is a God convictions—If there is a God, He wasn't interested in me and He offered nothing that I needed or wanted. That is how I met my wonderful God-friend Jacob and how our journey with God began.