My Hazardous Faith Story...When I Left All

It all started when I heard Nicky Cruz (The Cross and the Switchblade) speak at my high school. His testimony drew me in…I sat riveted in my set and before he had finished, tears where streaming down my cheeks. Cheeks that rarely felt this salty wetness.  The next thing I knew, I was sobbing… feeling a force stronger than me compelling me forward. Going forward, a seed was planted…a seed that would take years to break through the hard soil of my heart.  After that night, I felt an “invisible magnet” drawing me …pulling me away from all that was familiar…toward an unknown destination.

I headed off to college at 17…the whole world ahead of me.  I carried with me my questions and my first Bible…a Bible my friend, now husband, “borrowed” from his church library. I was going to dig for answers…so I signed up for an inquiry class of the denomination in which I was raised.  Meanwhile, for the first time in my life, I started to read the Bible.  Through my first years of college, this “invisible magnet” continued to pull me…pull me toward Himself.  Ultimately, in my junior year I found my destination…my new home…right in the heart of God’s love.

Little did I know at this time…my new home would cost me everything…

Filled with virgin Love, I returned home brimming with enthusiasm about my new Love.  My parents were fine in the beginning. I continued to attend the church of my youth…the only church my family and all generations before us had attended. The tension started mounting when I shared that I would like to attend a different church.  This was allowed with the condition I continued to attend my family’s church.  So I did…two services every weekend.  We all seemed to settle into a more peaceful place until that day I proclaimed I wanted to be baptized.  I was forbidden as long as I lived under their roof…and we were now on a collision course that was inevitable.

Tension in the air became a chokehold…one I feared would choke the life right out of my father.

In a desperate attempt to find out what God was asking of me, I grabbed my Bible, turned to the concordance, and looked up the word “parents”.  I did not happen upon, children obey your parents…no…it was Matthew 10:37-39

 “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

God knew what I would need to bear the cost…me, a child who had not been a rebellious daughter…me, a child that up until this point had done everything my parents had asked of me …me, who never stood toe-to-toe with my Dad.   

I did not push to be baptized, but by this time the strain was at the boiling point. This house, so full of tension, could no longer contain the pressure and an explosion occurred.  I was told to leave.  My soon-to-be husband rented a truck, we packed my room, and I left all to follow God.  I lost my home, my family, and the provision of my education.

God promises in Mark10: 29 there is no one who has left house or mother or father, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake but that he shall receive a hundred times as much now, in the present age, and the age to come…

My college education was restored to me quickly…the rest took years.  But I can say that I am living the “hundred times” with my parents…my father and I meet weekly for lunch…we now share together in reading a daily devotional he gave me…we now can share our love for Jesus ….forgetting and forgiving the past…

                                       We are finishing strong together.

 God truly can do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us. Ephesians 3:20

I’m sharing My Hazardous Faith Story as part of a synchroblog connected with the release of Ed Cyzewski and Derek Cooper’s new book Hazardous: Committing to the Cost of Following Jesus.”

Telling this story fills my heart with such humble gratitude for His loving kindness to me~

~His saving faith
~A God who watches over the smallest acts of faith
~A God who is the Master Gardener...tends gentle to seeds of faith
~The Holy Spirit
~God’s faithfulness
~The power of forgiveness
~Grace to walk in forgiveness
~my parents home...the place where the family gathers for every holiday
~happy, happy news

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