So beautifully stated, Stunnedbygrace, I especially liked this line:
But it pleased Him to show His son to me.
I went to see a movie many years ago on the life of Christ, it was around Easter/Resurrection Sunday, I was by no means a believer, but I was curious about Jesus, maybe felt drawn, and it was at that time that I experienced an infilling of God's love for me, accompanied by an impartation of His complete knowledge of who I was and how I had come to the broken place in life I was, and His forgiveness for me, for all the mistakes and wrong turns I had taken, and the mess I had made of my life. I have made reference to this several times since joining here It is part of my testimony #279
I have a slightly different understanding because of the way I have experienced God, even while I was still running from Him in disobedience, rebellion, and defiance. I consider myself to have been lost at that time from my present perspective, but God knew exactly where I was. This was quite a few years ago, twenty seven to be more exact. My marriage had broken down following two first-trimester miscarriages, and a still birth that occurred less than two weeks before the nuptials. I also had a lot of baggage from my past that I had been unable to deal with/put "closure" on. It was around Passover in 1988, and a neighborhood evangelical Christian church was showing a movie on the life of Christ based on the Gospel of Luke. I had been brought up in a fairly strict religious environment but did not know Jesus, and was curious, and living in a world of unremitting emotional pain, so I went. As I sat in that church after seeing the first or second part of that movie, I am not sure at what point the following happened: my whole body was filled with the Light of God's unconditional love and forgiveness for me and all I had done, all the ways I had messed up my life, all my failures and mistakes, all of it bathed in the Light of His absolute understanding of how and why I had become the person I was, all of it bathed in the Light of His unconditional love and total forgiveness. I tell you, I wept. I felt so broken and so lost and so unredeemable, but most of all I felt unworthy. And of course I am unworthy.
Even after that, oh yes, it was a cherished experience, but even after that I did not believe in "that" God. I had begun a spiritual seeking phase, and carried on in that for another fifteen years until God clearly called me out of what I was doing. And yes, even after that, even after that clear calling out, my stiff-necked stubbornness was so set against Him it took another year following the calling out for me to surrender my life to Him.
But it pleased Him to show His son to me.
I went to see a movie many years ago on the life of Christ, it was around Easter/Resurrection Sunday, I was by no means a believer, but I was curious about Jesus, maybe felt drawn, and it was at that time that I experienced an infilling of God's love for me, accompanied by an impartation of His complete knowledge of who I was and how I had come to the broken place in life I was, and His forgiveness for me, for all the mistakes and wrong turns I had taken, and the mess I had made of my life. I have made reference to this several times since joining here It is part of my testimony #279
I have a slightly different understanding because of the way I have experienced God, even while I was still running from Him in disobedience, rebellion, and defiance. I consider myself to have been lost at that time from my present perspective, but God knew exactly where I was. This was quite a few years ago, twenty seven to be more exact. My marriage had broken down following two first-trimester miscarriages, and a still birth that occurred less than two weeks before the nuptials. I also had a lot of baggage from my past that I had been unable to deal with/put "closure" on. It was around Passover in 1988, and a neighborhood evangelical Christian church was showing a movie on the life of Christ based on the Gospel of Luke. I had been brought up in a fairly strict religious environment but did not know Jesus, and was curious, and living in a world of unremitting emotional pain, so I went. As I sat in that church after seeing the first or second part of that movie, I am not sure at what point the following happened: my whole body was filled with the Light of God's unconditional love and forgiveness for me and all I had done, all the ways I had messed up my life, all my failures and mistakes, all of it bathed in the Light of His absolute understanding of how and why I had become the person I was, all of it bathed in the Light of His unconditional love and total forgiveness. I tell you, I wept. I felt so broken and so lost and so unredeemable, but most of all I felt unworthy. And of course I am unworthy.
Even after that, oh yes, it was a cherished experience, but even after that I did not believe in "that" God. I had begun a spiritual seeking phase, and carried on in that for another fifteen years until God clearly called me out of what I was doing. And yes, even after that, even after that clear calling out, my stiff-necked stubbornness was so set against Him it took another year following the calling out for me to surrender my life to Him.