(Editor’s note: Fair Trade Friday will be next week. I had high hopes of providing you with a comprehensive list of places around the web to shop, but two vomiting children derailed my plans today. Instead, I am sharing my testimony of surrender over at Faith and Testimony. Bits and pieces will be familiar to long time readers because I spill my guts here on the regular, but now it’s all in one place, and concise … for me. I’d love for you to read it.)
I can’t remember a day where I didn’t know who Jesus was.
I prayed “the prayer” kneeling down on the rock hearth of our fireplace when I was six years old, and I know the Lord honored that prayer, but let’s be real, here. The impetus was the argument I had with my older sister not thirty minutes prior about the status of Jesus occupying space in my heart. She said no, I said yes, and as all of us with siblings know, I would rather have died a thousand deaths than admit she was right. So I thought I better just make really sure she wasn’t right.
Up to the age of thirteen or thereabouts, I understood Christianity as a ticket to Heaven and church as the place where all my best friends were. I’m ashamed to say that our primary accomplishment was tormenting the adults who so graciously served us in the children’s ministry. There are a few out there who deserve some sort of medal. (Dr. J, I’m looking at you.)
Until one night, perched on the edge of my mother’s bed, in a moment where the Kingdom of Heaven opened up a door in the suburbs of Atlanta. In reading the Word, about the Word, the alchemy of Christ on the cross changed the composition of my heart. In that moment, I began to want more, to know more.
High school was rough….
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~M.