Pulled onto the path

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,

Ephesians 1:11

 

I don't know when or where the journey began but I’m sure I didn’t choose the path, that I didn’t choose to take the journey. Maybe it started when I was born. Maybe when I was six and I said that prayer...you know, the one most preachers claim is the way to salvation. Yes, I did say 'claim is the way to salvation.' I repeated that prayer at the age of six and was promptly assured by my mother that I had just been guaranteed a spot in Heaven. The preacher made a big deal of it the next time we went to church. I was baptized not long after at the age of 7. From that point on I believed I would go to Heaven. There was nothing else I needed to do. That single prayer, followed by baptism bought my spot in eternity.

I'd like to say I had an understanding of what being a Christian meant. I'd like to say I sought the Lord's will in my life. I'd like to say I put the Lord first in my life, read my Bible, and loved others more than myself. But I can't say any of those things. Because I didn't do them. For me being a Christian was very much like a bedtime ritual. I brushed my teeth, went to bed, said my prayers.

You know the 'Now I lay me down to sleep, if I should die before I wake...' kind of prayers. They weren't even personal. Just something I memorized because they were taught to me as part of that bedtime ritual. They meant very little to me. Honestly, I probably worried more over where my favorite blanket and dolls were than I did those prayers.

I remember as I grew older I added in a few prayers of my own from time to time. I prayed that I'd find my lunch pass so I could go home for lunch and not have to stay at school because I didn't like what they were serving that day. I prayed God would remove me from an uncomfortable situation. But I never prayed for anything other than the most superficial things.

Time passed and I grew up. I made life altering choices based only on my own desires. I never knew to seek the Lord's will. Never knew to stop and wonder if I was living for Him. Somewhere in there he started drawing me to him. I turned to Scripture to see what God thought about a very few things. I doubted my salvation to the point that when asked 'if you died today do you know you'd go to heaven', I answered 'I don't know.'

But I'd prayed the prayer. Not just as a child, but again as an adult because I’d come to the conclusion that something I’d said when I was six couldn’t possibly be good enough to save me as an adult. So I prayed the sinners prayer again. And again. And again. I believed in Jesus. Went to Church, at least sometimes. When the Lord gave me a child with heart problems I learned to cling to God. I clung to Him when I had nothing else to cling to.

And that is the point that I can look back and see where I was pulled onto a different path than the one I’d always been on. If someone had asked me before I started this journey if it was a trip I wanted to take I most likely would have said no.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I’m where I am now that I’m on this path. But back then…back when I was a professing ‘Christian’ content to watch what I wanted, read what I wanted, say and do what I wanted, living my life the way I wanted barely touching my Bible, barely understanding it…back then if someone had asked me ‘would you like to take a trip down a broad path with a narrow gate, a path that will cost you everything but Christ?’…I would have most likely said no. I would have chosen the broad path with a wide open gate that would have left me where I was. The path that let me love the many possessions I had, enjoy the country music I loved, the romance novels I devoured almost daily…that would have been the path I would have chosen.

Or so it seems to me now as I look at my life today and what it was then.

Thankfully no one asked me. No one cared what I wanted. Thankfully the only One that made that choice was the One that holds my life in His hands. And He took away the life I had and gave me a new one. One I wouldn’t have wanted then but am forever thankful for now.

As I was pulled onto that path without my knowledge, without my consent,  I began to change. I didn’t choose to change, I didn’t ask to change, it just happened. One step at a time. He changed me from the person I was to someone that is so different now that when I look back on my life it’s like looking at someone else.

Somewhere along the way I started watching the things I said, being more choosy in the movies I read. Gave up the romance novels I loved. All because something came into my life to make me see that God may not like it.

Then those things narrowed even more. Movies I had thought okay…weren’t…because I saw or heard something that I knew went against God. Things happened in my life that cost me material possessions, a lot of which I treasured, over and over again until I got to the point that I looked at my belongings and saw stuff…stuff that I might like, or more often saw as something I just hadn’t gotten rid of yet or hadn’t been forced to part with. I began reading the Bible.

They were all little steps. Single steps that each one alone didn’t seem to add up to anything. Until the day I realized that all the ‘Christians’ I knew weren’t like me. Rather, I wasn’t like them. Their faith seemed to be at surface level while mine had grown roots so deep they were buried in the ground under my feet.

And I was seeing things in Scripture that no one else I knew did.

I couldn’t talk to anyone about what I was seeing, what I was feeling, because when I tried it created confusion and strife. It started arguments. They saw Scripture and life different than I did.

I no longer wanted to read those books, watch those movies, I was more careful in the things I bought… And I couldn’t talk about Scripture the way other ‘Christians’ I knew did. So I learned to keep it all to myself except for a few surface level statements that I knew wouldn’t cause strife. And I started thinking I wasn’t a Christian because if what I was seeing in others was what being a Christian was, than I wasn’t one. I didn’t know what I was but I knew I wasn’t like them.

From that point on I wasn’t sure what about me, about my faith, was different but I started looking for it in others. And finding it in very few.

But by then I had been changed. I had been drawn to the Lord, placed on a path I didn’t choose, pulled to Him through one tiny baby step at a time.

And now…

I am completely His.