Tonight was a huge night for me, spiritually.  Our Life Group meeting (small groups from church that meet outside of regular church times and settings) lasted all of 5 1/2 hours and only felt like about 2 1/2.  This is especially shocking because I came off of about 2 combined hours of sleep the previous night, waking up at about 4 to play drums at church.

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I was in the middle of a brief period in which I missed many consecutive Life group meetings, church functions, etc.  and basically was staying out of that community, and focusing only inward on myself.  Right in the middle of that, while I was drivingand focusing my thoughts elsewhere, I suddenly heard Jesus's voice clear as a bell say to me: "You are not meant to be an inward person.  You are an outward person."  I wrestled with that some, but didn't really know what to do with it.  I eventually brought all the inwardness that I had been putting myself into to Christ and had to come to terms with all the time I had pretty much wasted in that month/month and a half of time.

Last Sunday, Jesus gave me some pretty clear vision at church.  The message was "Choosing Who You'll Be," part of our "Getting This Christmas Right" series.  It was about making the most of family reunions and get-togethers over the holidays, as many people find themselves just gritting their teeth trying to get through seeing family without too many casualties.  I caught the vision when Pastor Pete challenged us, instead of gritting our teeth, to be the voice of grace and truth to our families, and to specifically make each person's experience a little better, and to add to each person's life who decided to come.  This brought some direction to what I had heard a few weeks before, as I am expecting get-togethers with both sides of Katie's family in the coming week.  I made absolutely sure to attend small group that night, and gave witness to the vision I received.  I also decided, in preparation for this and in practice of spiritual "dieting" to start a fast from that Sunday until December 26th, giving up all video and computer games, so that I can instead focus on preparing myself spiritually.

This fast, of course, has worked to varying degrees, but my most fruitful night of it was last Friday night, when I asked God for the the strength to run forward with the vision I had caught.

Tonight we had the opportunity to ask Jesus for specific people that we want to lead to Christ, and in the same prayer we also had the opportunity to ask for the gift of evangelism.  I offered up a few names, but did not initially ask for the gift of evangelism.  I felt led to do it, but I hesitated.  After our meeting was finished, I went to Justin, our Life Group leader and told him that I really wanted to ask for this gift, and so I prayed and he and Chris Anderson (nuther leader) witnessed it for me.  I prayed that Jesus would grant me the gift of evangelism and that he would give me eyes to see all of the hurting and lost people that he has placed in my life for me to impact.  I also prayed that the Holy Spirit would give me the strength and the power to fulfill all of the responsibilities that come along with this gift.

This, the vision I recieved, and the voice of Jesus I heard, have given this up and coming Christmas week a meaning like no other time in my life has ever had.

On the way home, I didn't realize that my right hand was making a hollow fist, as though holding something.  Jesus gave me a pretty clear picture that I now have a specific mission:  I suddenly had a picture of myself decked out in a suit of armor and most notably holding a sword, and I looked over and saw my right fist was in the perfect position to be grasping a sword.  Woah.  But I wasn't battling people.  Rather, I was fighting to help free people.

The responsibilities of what I've just asked for are not in any way light, but with what I've asked for and what he's already shown me, I have no reason, desire, or intention to turn back, and it is my hope that my life will be forever reclkessly marked by this decision, not for me, but for God's glory, and for every unconvinced, hurting, and lost person that He wants to use me for.  I am so excited right now, similar to how I felt on March 23rd of this last year, but still like nothing I've ever felt before.

The only real development I have at this point is that unfortunately in an emotional fit, I sent my dad a very short and probably hurtful message via e-mail.  I was totally wracked with anxiety over it all day, but fortunately, I was scheduled to play drums at Quest tonight, and the opportunity to be there really helped to slow things down, as my mind has been moving a thousand thoughts a minute since I found out.  I also met with my life group sub-group leader and we talked through the situation.  He helped me see ways to convey love to my father without falsely showing approval of his decisions.  I sent my father another e-mail asking for his forgiveness and underscoring the fact that I still love him and he's still my father, no matter what.  I haven't heard back from him yet, but I will make a new post when I do.

Yay for the White Sox!!! 4-0 2005 World Series sweep!

Today was a rather emotional day for me in that I've been feeling a thousand different things at once, not knowing exactly how to respond to the situation, so I'm pretty dry right now.

Katie delivered the message to me that I needed to call my mom, urgently.  I called her this afternoon, and she told me that yesterday, monday, the 25th, she came home, found a bunch of things missing from the house, and a divorce note saying "don't try to contact me."  I had no idea that that was coming, and, at this point, my emotions are totally dry.  I'm trying to lean into my relationship with Christ in all this, but the full impact of it hasn't really hit me yet.  Please pray especially for my mother, as she is basically stranded in Albuquerque now, with only her other son there, while most of the rest of her family is east of the Mississippi.

I'll post more once things develop.

Wow, I'm now baptized!  Yay!  Here's a transcript of what I said to the audience before I was actually dunked.  It's edited for clarity - I took out all the er's, um's, and the occasional stutters.  4 people came to Christ tonight as a result of hearing my story, which I am just totally in awe of.

My name’s Collin, and I just get to share a little bit of my story with you and how I came to Christ.

I was born and raised in a conservative Christian home in a very conservative Christian town, Wheaton, Illinois, and from day 1 I was pretty much expected to be a conservative Christian. About 7 or 8 years old I went to one of those Awana club meetings, and they told me I was gonna go to Hell if I didn’t accept Christ, so I went home and did that, and pretty much nothing in my life changed after that point.  I was really just doing it out of fear.

Fast-forward to junior high and high school.  The first time I ever went on a youth group retreat, first time I ever realized, that there was a little bit something more to Jesus and Christianity than just Sunday school stories, and after that I got real big into the Christian pop culture, all the “What Would Jesus Do?” stuff and bought all the bracelets and everything… and I did that kinda to maintain an outward appearance that I was a Christian.  I did that ‘cause I saw my Christian friends doing it, so I kinda felt, well, maybe that’s what a good Christian would do.  Buy all the “What Would Jesus Do?” stuff and just get real into the Christian culture, but I was really empty inside.

I had a lot of doubt and the doubt wasn’t about Christ, the doubt was about myself.  I believed that there was a God who loved me, who sent his son to die for me and that all my sins could be forgiven.  I believed all that, but there was just some strange, strange doubt in my heart, that somehow I wasn’t good enough.  I felt like my prayers just went to myself.  The few times I did feel like they really went to God, it felt like He was just looking at my sin and not me.  That’s what I thought, and I kinda felt like I needed to be perfect before I could come to Christ.  And so, I endlessly, I repeatedly rededicated my life to Christ, reaffirmed my faith.  I kept on saying “This time, God, I’m gonna do it.  This time, I’m gonna do it right, God,” and I probably ended up reaccepting Christ about once a month or more throughout all of junior high and high school, and that just got so tedious and so spiritually and emotionally draining.

And, to kinda protect myself from that I turned to cynicism.  I turned to pride and I turned to intellectualism, and I convinced myself that, yes, I was a Christian, even though there were these doubts in my heart.  I kept on that outward appearance, and I thought that being cynical was a really cute personality trait, when, in fact, it was really, really destructive.  I hurt a lot of people with that.  I can’t count how many times I would accuse other people of being shallow when they worshipped, how many times I recklessly threw somebody’s sure faith into question just because it made my own faith look better, and, really, that was just a reflection of what was in my heart.

I came to UK in the fall of 2001, started going to Quest, and at that point, God started to pierce the hardness that I had built up around my heart.  I finally came at least to accept that when I see people worshipping, when I see people praising and they’re putting their hands up in the air and all that… maybe there’s something real about that, maybe there’s something to that, but I just didn’t get that for myself, cause I was an intellectual, I wasn’t a heart person.  I was thoroughly convinced that I was a mind person.  I felt really disconnected, and in fact, my, pride and my intellectualism just kinda kept building up and building up and that just really nurtured the doubts.  It nurtured the emptiness that I felt inside of me.

I had been coming to Quest for about 3 ½ years, and I notice every time I come here something inside of me is stirred.  Something inside of me is stirred up but for those 3 ½ years I just kept my defenses up.  I hid behind my intellectualism and I hid behind my pride.  I hid behind my cynicism and I just wouldn’t let it get to me.  I was hardened on the outside.

Then, this last March, it had actually been a few months since I’d been to Quest, and I didn’t even go to a service.  I went to a music practice, and that’s where God really started to come into contact with me about what I needed to do.  I had three separate conversations that night, one with Justin, and one with Sharon, two people you saw up on stage, and one with Pete, and, all three of them unknowing of each other said the exact same thing to me, and I kinda got the hint at that point that there was something.  There was a step that I needed to take.  I just wasn’t sure what it was right away.

Two weeks later, at a baptism service, everything just all dawned on me all at once.  I realized if I was to get up and be baptized, I couldn’t really tell you what my story was.  I couldn’t tell you what ways God has affected my life, how God’s grace has affected me and how Jesus has worked in me.  I just couldn’t, and after the service was over, I got to talking with Chris Anderson, one of my small group buddies, and we just started talking through some spiritual stuff, and I realized I was really in a gray area spiritually, and God is a God of black and white.  A gray area’s a dangerous place to be spiritually, and that’s where I was at that point.  Jesus is either in your heart or He’s out, and there’s no fence sitting, and I could not say with any degree of confidence that I had Jesus in my heart, which left me with the realization that He was out.

But I wanted Him in.  I wanted Him in badly, and God revealed to me that night something that had been getting in the way of my relationship with Him.  It wasn’t anything to do with me being a perfect person.  It was the fact that I had kind of made up my own version of God.  I had manufactured my own version of God that kinda looked like the one that really does exist, but he followed my will, the one that I made up, and that just wasn’t real, and that’s why my prayers always felt empty.  That’s why I always felt like I was talking to myself.  That’s why every time I rededicated my life to Christ, nothing ever came of it.  I always failed in that.  And so, knowing the truth of who Christ really was and being able to get past the god that I had made up, I was finally able, March 23, 2005, to really accept Christ into my heart, and it’s just been an amazing thing ever since then.  The funny thing was all I really had to do was say “yes.”  It didn’t take any effort on my part.  It didn’t take me relying on my own strength like I had, like I had pretty much the last 22 years of my life.  All I did was say “yes” and He just did the work in me.

Since then, it’s just been really, really amazing.  I have power of the Holy Spirit in me… something I always saw in other people, I was kinda jealous of, I kinda marveled at, but never really figured I could have for myself.  I have this great, intense hunger for God’s Word.  I remember the first time I read the Bible after I accepted Christ that day and it was like I was reading a letter written straight from God to me, and Jesus peeled away the cynicism that was around my heart and replaced it with love.  I’m not perfect in that respect at all, but God’s changed the nature of my heart to one of love, and I don’t have to rely on my intellectualism any more.  God’s grown my heart so much that my heart actually now leads my mind.  I used to be the guy who would always sit way in the back, near the door, and I would sit there and scoff at the people who were putting their hands up and just dancing around and being crazy when they worshipped, and now I can’t restrain myself when I worship.  I used to be that guy making fun of those people and now that’s who I am, and, another thing that’s been really kinda in line with that, it’s been really encouraging, it’s been really humbling, and it’s really kept me in awe… it’s that people ever since that day have come up to me and told me how much they love watching me worship, and I can’t tell you how amazing that is, and the Sunday after I accepted Christ, five different people, once again unknowing of each other, five different people came up to me and told me they saw a glow in my eyes that they had never ever seen before.

It’s just been amazing.  It’s been so amazing.  That’s why I’m getting baptized tonight.  I’m free from rededications.  I don’t need to rededicate myself anymore.  I don’t need to say “this time I’m gonna do it, God,” anymore.  I don’t have to rely on my own strength anymore.  Christ is in my heart once and for all, and I’m going public with that.

OK, so I'm not the best Xanga-ite in the world, usually takes me a month or 5 to post something new.  But here it is, and I have GREAT NEWS!!!!!!!!

Not only has God been working in my life in amazing ways and kept the chains of doubt, self-consciousness, and cynicality(?) broken and holding absolutely no power over me, but I got a call from church last Saturday night, and they had some great news for me:

I'M ON FOR THE NEXT BAPTISM AT CHURCH!!!

I'm excited, can you tell?

Time and place information:
Wednesday, October 19th at 6:30 PM
Quest Community Church
410 Sporting Court
Lexington, KY
Behind Meijer off of Nicholasville Rd, where the Stadium used to be.
For directions, go to www.questcommunity.com

All are invited, and all are invited to invite more people!  This is going to be great!