Why I believe

Someone asked me why I believe in God? I realized that it isn't a short answer--it's an answer that is rooted in a lot of little stories. I'd like to share them and answer that question, if that's okay.

I grew up going to a liberal Quaker Church. I didn't know it was liberal at the time (as opposed to evangelical), but I liked my church. I went there for 13 years until I was 16 years old. I learned a lot about God and Quaker history, but I don't remember learning a lot about a personal relationship with Jesus. You see, Quakers believe in that of God in every man, and spiritual communion with God. In high school, I went to a camp at Hume Lake where the speaker said that if you didn't take communion, you weren't a Christian. I almost walked out. I believed in God. I had lots of doubts, but I was afraid of asking them and being judged.

But, there's something else that was going on while I was in high school and that was the way my dad was raising me--to hold grudges. I had a lot of bitterness and anger that was beginning to brew in my heart. I could feel it and I tried and tried to get rid of it, but I couldn't.

So, I went to college. New hurts, new wounds, new grudges. I worked at an evangelical Quaker camp the summer after my freshman year and then a second time after the summer of my junior year. The second time someone came and shared his testimony at the camp one week. Basically, he'd always gone to church and knew all the right answers (just like me) to the questions, but didn't have a personal relationship with the Lord. And then he came to know the Lord. I was in the kitchen working during his talk, but I heard about it through the grapevine. I talked to him just as he was leaving camp. He wrote me a letter a week later and said that God had laid me on his heart to pray for--that he was afraid for me because he knew I had all the right answers just as he had. I was amazed that God would bring me to someone's mind to pray for. That was one thing I always felt--that I just wasn't important enough to God for him to send someone for me to talk to--that my doubts didn't matter, and that essentially I didn't matter that much. I really thought everyone else mattered a lot more to him than me.

God brought Aaron back up to camp 2 weeks later and we talked every morning for a week. By the 3rd morning, he explained to me that God's heart hurt with me every time I was hurt, and that He wanted me to surrender to Him. I knew I had a choice to make and a morning later, I sat on my favorite big rock looking out over the big Sequoias and surrendered my life to the Lord. In that moment, He washed all of the anger and bitterness from my heart. I had been trying for years to do that and I'd never been able to.

For me, that was the first memory marker in my life--my first altar--that rock. I realized that I had been trying to fix myself and I couldn't. But, God could. There's more to the story, but that's the beginning. At the time when I surrendered, God gave Aaron this song...

Tear Down these walls

O Lord, I come to you with empty hands
My heart is broken and I have no strength left to stand
My face is left tear stained by things I don’t understand O Lord
and yet I will trust you for my name is written on your blood stained hands

And I will let down these walls I’ve built up for so many years
And I’ll pour out my heart will you wipe away my tears?
In your presence Lord I will surrender I will submit to your almighty hand
And I’ll boast in my weakness saved by the strength of Christ’s blood I will stand.

O Lord, Lord I’ll sit here in this secret place O Lord
In the stillness underneath your wings wrapped in my Fathers tight embrace
Destruction has come against my soul O Lord
in your presence will you heal my heart make it strong and make me whole?

And child I’ll tear down those walls you’ve built up for so many years.
And if you’ll pour out your heart I’ll surely wipe away your tears.
In My presence child if you will surrender, if you’ll submit to my all loving hand
I’ll be the strength in your weakness and by my sons blood you will stand
I’ll be the strength in your weakness and by my sons blood; my child you will stand
You will stand…..if you’ll but trust me my child you will stand.

I still struggle with anger and bitterness. God washed me clean that day, but I continue to struggle and to feel God's grace. It has given me compassion and a sensitivity to that in others in my life. Bitterness truly will eat away at you and destroy you from the inside out. It did for me. I tried to hide it from others, but I knew I couldn't. After I surrendered, I remember a friend who told me she had never been able to put her finger on what was wrong, but after I surrendered, she could feel the peace in my heart.

So, the first part of my answer to "Why do I believe?" Is that God did something that I couldn't do and had been trying to for years--He took away my anger and bitterness.

To be continued...