I was raised in a family that was religious.  We would attend church on Sundays, and follow certain rituals throughout the year.  But the idea of God that I got from all of this was that He was a distant God that was just sitting back and judging us when we died. Heaven was only for those that were good enough, but if you weren’t some really evil guy you would probably be good enough.

So when I left home to go off to college, I pretty much dropped this whole religion thing.  After all, other than spending 45 minutes in church each Sunday, the non-churchgoing folks I met in college seemed pretty much the same as the church goers that I had known.  Since God never really took a direct interest in our lives, other than determining whether we would be in heaven or not some day, I pretty much started living my life as though he didn’t exist.  I never had the guts to say He didn’t exist, but I certainly lived my life that way.

This mindset carried on through college and beyond.  I was working at a good job, making good money, but I was generally feeling dissatisfied with where my life was going.  I enjoyed the day to day activity, but I didn’t see much promise anymore for the future.  I started seeing myself as being cynical, being arrogant, and in many ways bitter.

Then one day I needed to interview a person for a computer programming position that we needed to fill. The woman’s resumé was very carefully written, but it was clear that this person was NOT a computer programmer.  But my boss had arranged the interview so I had to go through with it.  As I headed to the conference room to conduct the interview, I was angry that I was going to be wasting my time – why should I interview someone who is obviously not qualified?

I walked up to her and introduced myself, and reached out to shake her hand.  As my hand touched her's I suddenly felt this “charge” like a mild electrical shock race from my hand up my arm and into my chest.  At that exact same moment two thoughts came into my head as clearly as if someone had spoken them.  The first was the statement “This is God”, and the second was “This woman is going to be your wife”.  From that point on the interview became very much a blur – I was able to compose myself to continue the interview, but my mind was no longer on it.  A debate was going on in my head.  One thought would enter in saying “you just imagined all of that, it never really happened”, but then my rational mind would respond “but my arm is still tingling”.  No matter how the thoughts attempted to talk me out of it, God had introduced Himself so clearly and so directly that I was forced to accept that it was Him.

Getting back to the interview: I was able to confirm that this woman (whose name was Karen) was not qualified to be a computer programmer, but I also realized that I wanted to hire her.  As my boss still needed to interview her, I spent that time trying to figure out how to convince my boss to hire her.  After all, my boss would also see that Karen was not a computer programmer.  As my boss came back from the interview, there was a strange excitement in her face as she asked me “So, should we hire her?”  I could see that she wanted to hire Karen, so I took a totally different approach than what I had rehearsed.  I started giving my boss all of the reasons that we shouldn’t hire her, pointing out that although Karen had a lot of good experience, she was not a computer programmer.  My boss agreed with everything I said and repeated – “So, should we hire her?”  This time I said yes, and we hired Karen.

After a month passed, I was out with some friends having a pretty miserable time.  As I sat there suddenly another one of these “devine conversations” started up in my mind.  The thought came “you’re feeling pretty miserable aren’t you?”  Well, I couldn’t deny that, as it was true.  The next thought came “you know you shouldn’t be in this type of establishment, right?” I also had to agree with that, as we were in an entertainment establishment that I would be embarrassed to admit to today.  But the next thought totally threw me – “I want you to ask Karen out”.  I responded “but I can’t – she’s a Christian and she would obviously want nothing to do with me”.  But the next thought was more insistent – “I want you to ask her out.”  This time I agreed.  But the response that came next just showed me how well God knew me – He asked “when?”  I knew that although I had agreed, I would probably have kept putting it off until I had forgotten all about it.  Procrastination was my favorite way of not dealing with things I wanted to avoid.  But when God pushed me to commit to a time, I knew I had to follow through, so I said “Monday or Tuesday after work”.  Then God replied “OK”, and a complete and total sense of peace came over me.

So, Tuesday I did ask Karen out, and to my surprise she actually agreed.  Over the next nine months we would periodically get together after work or on weekends.  I also started to read the Bible, mostly because I was intending to point out why her beliefs were “extreme” and that the Bible couldn’t really be totally true as she asserted.  But the more I read it, the more I couldn’t see anything wrong with it – I started recognizing that the characters and stories portrayed in the Bible were very much like the various people I came across in my daily life. Over time I started to attend her church, and that is where I found myself one Sunday morning when with tears in my eyes I finally said to that voice in my head “OK God, I accept all that you are showing me.  I give up trying to do this my own way, and I will follow everything you show me through the Bible and through this church.”  Although I still didn’t understand the phrase of being “born again”, that is the moment that I was.

From that moment on, I suddenly found myself with a whole new outlook.  Whereas before that I was living a self centered existence, with not much to look forward to, now I had a God that DID want to be directly involved in my life.  Looking back I’m a little embarrassed that it took me nine months from the time God introduced Himself so directly before I yielded myself to Him, but I have to conclude that God knew how much to give me to keep me moving in His direction without overwhelming me.  God knows us so well it still blows my mind.

God was so directly involved from that point on. For example, I wanted to start tithing, but I was already overly committed with a mortgage, a car payment, and so many other fixed obligations that 10% was not humanly possible.  So God arranged for me an early above average raise (it came two months earlier than regularly scheduled), and he also took care of removing the car payment.  Within three weeks of being born again, 10% was easily within my budget.  Examples such as this continued, and continue to this day as long as I am yielding to his direction.

And yes, as you have probably figured out by now, I did marry Karen about two years after God introduced us.  We now have two wonderful children that are growing in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  And God is continuing to show and teach us new things as we go through this life.  There have been ups and there have been downs, but God has always been faithful to keep us, even during those times when we have been less than faithful to Him.  God has transformed me by directly showing me that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.