To be honest, I sometimes don’t like God much. He can be heavy handed at times.
But there was one particular occasion when He gave me a real lift.
I became a Christian in the “real” sense in late 1982. I was 28 at that time. It was also pretty close to the lowest point of my life - no job, going through a divorce, losing the house, very little money, depressed, and not long before I’d been so itchy from stress that i suppose it was almost like shingles, confidence at rock bottom and so on.
But things picked up.
Hoiwever about a year later I was at what we call a “beach mission” at Christmas 1983 run by a group called Scripture Union. Link refers.
suqld.org.au/camps
It’s a Protestant outfit, and not Catholic, but I was Protestant back then (Presbyterian).
Actually we weren’t at a beach, but at a place called Forest Glen Caravan Park just south of Nambour, some miles inland from the beach, although it had a swimming pool.
I was not in a good mood though. I was still a new Christian, had recently been chewed out by the boss, and was feeling quite out of my depth in this SU outfit. I’d had very little experience relating to kids, didn’t have much confidence, and felt rather strange. I was also a bit older than most of the other young people there, most of them university students or similar. With hindsight I was probably trying to please too many people, and wear too many hats I had no experience in wearing.
So I was in a frustrated and cranky frame of mind. The house had been sold, the divorce finalised, and I was wondering what the hell had gone so wrong since I left school a decade or so before?
And I was also thinking “How do I know all this (Christian) stuff is real, and not just a psychological prop?”
It was the custom of the camp to have a Bible study meeting each afternoon at around 3pm. This was for the leaders only, of whom I was supposed to be one.
We did this under a large marquis, with the sides rolled up, as it was quite hot, being the middle of summer here, and it gets very humid in our sub-tropical climate. It was rather soporific, and I found it a bit difficult to maintain attention, as we sat around the main camp leader in a circle of chairs and bench seats.
But as he read from one of the OT books, he quoted God’s words to Samuel about King David “… a man after my own heart…”.
Precisely as he said this, this “double whammy” hit me - it was like a breath going right through you in waves from head to foot, very pronounced, very clear and most certainly not from me. It went on for a good fifteen to twenty seconds.
I nearly jumped out of my seat. I realised I’d just been contacted, loud and clear! My next reaction was to look at everyone else to see what they were making of it, but they weren’t taking the least bit of notice, but simply continuing to listen to the speaker, for the simple reason it hadn’t happened to them.
So … from that time on, I knew God existed, and that I was on the right track, and it was not just a psychological prop. And my mood lightened considerably.
I mentioned this to my own pastor when the camp was over, and his comment was “I think the Lord just wanted to encourage you. He knew you’d been through a difficult time, and He decided to give you a bit of a boost.”
As it turned out, I had two more of these “double whammies” over the next few months, and each occasion they highlighted a specific phrase being spoken by my pastor in two of his sermons. And they haven’t happened since.
But the point is, that God “answered your (cranky) prayer in a way that was far above (my) expectations.” And since then, I’ve never been able to disbelieve in God.
Even if I don’t always like Him. He’s there all right, and hard-line atheists are so far from the truth its not funny.
