That Life Sentence.

I cannot recall from the days of my youth, a time where I was not among the mindset that the world was a terrible place full of dangerous things.
As a kid I was, as I would define it, cursed with the blessed sense of awareness. I took in a lot. I observed a lot of things that were very dysfunctional. I experienced things that were abuses. There were traumas, and there was death and abandonment. There were times of neglect.... and so much pain.

Looking back there from here.... where I am sitting now...
It honestly makes me cry a little.

When I think about how, by all rights, I wouldn't even be here now..
It is absolutely impossible to not see the Hand of God in my life, even in most of the the most painful things I've survived.

Survival, is an appropriate word.
I was alive and breathing from one wave of attack to another wave of attacks. The world was pouring out so much destruction  on my family, friends and I.
Naturally, when you spend years surviving.... you're going to have habits that carry over into a time of peace.


Even when I turned to God,
I lived from one thing to the next

Let me me tell you folks, you can read the word of God and you can know the word of God, you can recite the word of God but what worth is it if you don't believe?


I'm talking ALL the Word.

Sure I believed that Jesus saves and died for my sins and that he resurrected ...
Sure I believed that He's coming back...

...but did I really believe that He came so that I could have life more abundantly?

I remember looking up at God and asking Him, as reverently and respectfully as I could ...

"Is this what my life is going to be like for the rest of my days? If It is, and that is what you want from me, I'll follow and I'll live it, but God, is there more to living than just surviving?"


He didn't answer me in an audible voice. He didn't answer me thunder or lightning, nor did someone show up in the middle of the night and bang on the door and say "God told me to tell you that there is more for you!!!"


God just brought to my mind the verse,
John 10: 9 I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.


I said to God " I believe you can do this."

I am so grateful for the mercy that He has shown me, that he has allowed me to be where I am.

" By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise;  for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God."- Hebrews 11: 9-10