Fully Forward --

Some 35 years or so ago, I began on a journey that continues still today.

I was sitting on a hillside overlooking a beautiful valley town in the Rocky Mountains. There was a party about to begin at the home where the rock I was sitting on. While sitting there and drinking my favorite Colorado beer, I began to talk to myself. It was in the form of, what I can now say was, a prayer. I said something like, "I do not even know if you exist, but if there is a God I would like you to come and make some changes in my life. Things are not going so well for me at this time. I am a fairly new father and my wife isn't so happy with my continual smoking pot and drinking." I had smoked marijuana at least once a day since I'd been discharged from the military, and that was at least five years before. I had quit spending my money on pot. Instead I'd become quite successful at growing my own. I can honestly say it was 'pretty darn good stuff'. "But I need and I want some changes in my life. And I don't even know if you exist - God."

That about summed up my conversation with myself. 

For the next 6 months there was nothing much different. But then we went to a move with a neighbor couple. The movie was called "A Thief in the Night". It's was a 1970's movie dramatizing what it might be like when Christ returns for his people. One spouse will be laying in bed and the other will be taken up (by the Lord). And the movie presented what Luke 17:34 might look like.

After the movie, we were standing out front of the theater and the wife of the other couple said "I can't believe God would leave one behind on earth and take the other spouse with him". I responded with "Why wouldn't God do this? It's not like this is a surprise attack. He has warned us about that happening from the very beginning." Well this conversation ended up in me getting a bible and I began to read the gospel of John "In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God." It was almost like light bulbs went off inside of my mind. I began to see that it was Jesus who was all that I had looked for in all of the wrong places.

That was how I began on this journey that still carries me fully forward. Do any of you have a story to tell of how you began on your journey? And are you still going fully forward?