“I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps.” (Psalm 40:1-2 NKJV)
“Do not quench the Spirit.” (1 Thessalonians 5:19 NKJV)
“If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he will rejoice over it more then over the ninety-nine that didn’t wander away! In the same way, it is not my heavenly Father’s will that even one of these little ones should perish.” (Matthew 18:12-14 NLT)
…Where did we leave off? Oh yes, I had been spared the consequences of the worst decision of my life, and was kept alive in order to run from the danger of my life back to the safety of my home. Once there I was able to find a job and begin again. The next couple of years were fairly uneventful, other than a 30 day encounter with the Marine Corp (I will save that story for another day). I had not yet dealt with my inner pain, but I had learned how to hide it from those around me. During the work week I substituted the more socially acceptable vise of overeating for alcohol as my means of “self medicating.” I also increased my daily intake of tobacco to about 2 packs a day. I was still living as a “weekend warrior” hitting the bars on Friday and Saturday nights. As my brother once told me, “This is a way to take a vacation without leaving home.” My weekly “vacations” would always leave me with feelings of guilt and shame so I compensated by going back to Church on Sundays. My life had settled into what appeared to be a “manageable routine” that I was convincing myself I could live long term (quenching the Spirit every time He tried to remind me that there was more). This brings us to the summer of 1983.
I was living in my parent’s home and working in a Heat Treat Company in Chelsea Michigan (hating every minute of it) when the Lord sent me a lifeline (actually 2). Enter 2 young Bible College students hired in as summer help. I will call them Tom and Bob. Tom and Bob “adopted” me on their first day on the job. Every day for the next 2 months they would reach out to me in love and challenge me to change my life. Looking back it is clear that the Lord sent these guys into my life to rescue me (I was the “one” the Lord had left the “ninety-nine” for) which explains how they could confront me directly and I actually wanted them to do it. By the end of the summer I knew that I needed to take a step back toward God and His initial “call” for my life. A day or so after Tom and Bob left the job to go back to school I knew in my heart that I was to do the same. Therefore, I enrolled in the Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music and moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I am going to keep this short and sweet today. We will pick this back up tomorrow.