Christian Experience

A friend and I have made an agreement to meet at the library on Wednesdays and Fridays at 1:00 to work on writing. It seemed to be a great impetus for me to be consistent in my blog and to write at least twice a week. As I am working on my goals for 2010 I am inserting a bit on my christian experience.
Our OAG (one another group, is the name of our small group weekly christian meetings) tonight will be delicious homemade pizza and the sharing of some of the members' christian experience. We are supposed to journal about our experience and then share it with the others in the group. As Fred and I are co-leaders and human nature is not to do homework, we may be the only ones sharing. Unfortunately I have lost the paper with the question prompts, so I will just recount my christian experience, as I remember it, with whatever important things I can think of now in there. (I'm not sure what it is in my nature that hates to prepare. I want to write in a chain of thought way without any outlining or mental exercise and then it feels like it is not work and is fun. As if what comes out should be good enough and I don't need to put thought into it. Maybe that is what has made me a medeocre writer and student and teacher.)

I became a christian at a very young age, so I don't feel that many of the new believer experiences I have sung about in hymns are true for me. I did not have a terrible life that I was delivered from. I was not overly sinful and miserable and then led to see the light and released from that sin. There are not multiple experiences that shame me that acted as chains about me and that God has set me free from. So, sometimes I feel like I have missed out on the "joy of my salvation" that a psalmist has asked God to "restore unto him".
My experience has always had God in it. As a 1 1/2 year old, who could barely talk, I would spend my time in the nursery with christian speaking filtered in through the speakers. In the grocery store I would say "Oh Lord Jesus" in a way that was me repeating, but sounded to passers by like I was swearing. They would give my mom angry looks and me looks of surprise.
As a young barely reader, I would sit next to my dad as the congregation was singing hymns and read them to myself, cherishing the experiences of the writers and thinking over what it means to be a christian. I would watch the bread and wine being passed and contemplate the fact that Jesus died for my sins and shed his blood and broke his body for me. Yet forgiveness didn't mean that much. As a 8 year old, what had I to be forgiven for? Shoplifting gum and candy with my friends, feeling angry with or talking back to or lying to my parents, procrastinating on homework. I am sure that I did confess for any of those things when they were brought to my attention by the Lord.
I read a book about that time called "Treasures of the Snow" about a few kids and their experience of salvation. The author had a small section devoted to a prayer that you could do if you didn't remember praying it before, asking Jesus for forgiveness of sins and devoting your life to Him. I thought in my head, lying on the couch, one leg thrown over the back, that I couldn't remember praying that exact same prayer, so I did. I felt cleaned inside and happy. Then I finished the book.
I don't think much changed in my life after that.
The Lord was always present to me. My dad would read bible stories to me from children's bibles or chapters in the big American Standard bible. He would teach me hymns and we would pray together before bed. The Lord would comfort me in the middle of the night if I awoke with bad dreams. He would answer my prayers. He was a constant friend for as long as I remember. He still is.
So my life has become a series of testimonies of God's work in my life. How he healed my bitterness towards my mom when I was praying on a bus in Chicago on my way home from work and I both cried and felt a big weight lift from my shoulders. How he answered my prayers for enough money to live on in college, as I faithfully followed him to church conferences that I could barely afford. He gave me other christian women to encourage me and help mature me in practical ways through my years of college roommate days. He comforted me when His gospel was rejected as I faithfully spoke to others. He comforted me when I was too afraid to speak and lost many opportunities. He gave me my husband-to-be far away in Ohio so that I could focus on God while in college in Chicago for 5 years. He was a constant companion as I shared with Him whatever that was in my life that I couldn't understand. He gave me great Christian leaders all though High School and College and after, full of wisdom, to help enrich my relationship with Him. He sustained me when I had cancer, giving me a comforting place to live, the wisdom of a cancer nurse for a mother-in-law, and family close by. He provided me with the most amazing hymn book, full of the wisdom and experience of christians over the generations. He provided me with His word and the consistent personality to read it faithfully. He has been present with me in the car driving to and from work, at school, praying for the strength and wisdom to be a good teacher, helping me speak to parents and principals and students with a wisdom that is His. He has never left me or forsaken me in any situation.
Over the years he has answered my prayers again and again and again, in such a way to leave me no doubt of his presence and love for me.
Even writing this my heart feels full and it is good to remind myself of this constant companion. Because it is so easy to get wrapped up in the now, on the earth, with the cares of the day and the anxiety of the times, and to miss out on who God is and how near He is. He is never pushy, yet is always faithful to sweetly remind me of Himself, to withdraw a little when I tell Him that I am not interested right now, and then to come close again whenever I even put a small thought in his direction.

Hymns

I really appreciate the hymns I have learned over the years in the Lord's Recovery. As I sing with the christian group that I am currently meeting with I get frustrated with the overall shallowness and lightness of the hymns we sing. I look at the kids standing with their families, some looking frequently at the clock and others singing with the same gusto as their parents. But most, showing the same lack of interest as most everyone around them. Church is more of a chore I think. It is what good Christians are supposed to do on Sunday. It makes them fulfill the spiritual duty to the family. It must add a little meaning. But I wonder what the kids will walk away with. How is a true relationship with God established?

As Fred and I look back on our being raised in the Recovery (I suppose I can go into all of that history at a later date.) we see how much stress was put on our inner life relationship with the Lord. Seeking Him daily on our own. Praying through Bible verses every day. Memorizing. Praying together, seeking the leading of the Lord as we pray and building on the prayers of others, and what I appreciate the most, Singing Hymns.

I would say the majority of the benefit came from being in the midwest and in the high school and college trainings with Tutus Chu. But not just Titus, there were many other brothers. Fred calls them our heroes. Brothers who have given their lives to serve the Lord, constantly seeking and trying to teach us how to seek as well. He can't see the heroes that the kids in our christian church have.

This morning we were singing a song about how things change and are never the same, which is true for the initial salvation experience, but for second generation kids, raised in Christianity, nothing ever changes, and this is the kind of song that makes it stick out to them how much things are really the same, whether or not they are interested in church, or attentive in their high school gatherings. The more you sing about things changing and never being the same, yet live out sameness, the less real God can be to you. They must grow up to think that they were just lied to and pursue christianity only to the level that will please their parents, or just leave.

I am concerned for my own kids, how Fred and I can give them what they need to have a relationship with Christ. One that is real and true and can last them through the happy as well as the frustrating times; without them being raised in the same unique Christian environment we were raised in. I can see that it won't come from what we are experiencing now. Can we be their heroes?

My dad was one of my heroes. I could tell that whenever he needed to say something to my sisters or me that he would pray about it first. His words came from God to us. I think that many times he was instructed not to speak at all, so he just kept praying.

Anyways, Fred and I are preparing to lead our OAG (One Another Group, basically small group meeting) this week and I am picking some hymns from my old hymnal that are on the topic of trusting God. No problem, since there is a whole section on comfort in trials and trusting in God. I hope that we can be the heroes to those in our group and that we can be proper heroes for our kids.