A Divine Encounter

Last night the most amazing opportunity to share Christ with someone can before me in the most unusual way!! First, let me start off by saying that when I awoke yesterday morning, my heart was in uproar and felt the Lord was telling me to “get my gear on”. I obeyed and spent a good amount of time with just sitting in the presence of the Lord, soaking Him up for all He is to me. But, I thought it was because I was going to have a crazy day with 3 two year olds running around my home. I felt like I was in Telli Tubbie land ALL DAY. “uh oh” “NO” “bye-bye” and “no mine, no touch me”. It was an “OH MY” kinda day, but that’s ok, I love those youngins!

So my friend and I have re-joined weight watchers……..I know, AGAIN. But, it’s working this time, I’ve lost four pounds in two weeks and I feel so much better. For me……I know this is the way to go. But weigh-in was last night and afterwards we were going to look at a house that someone had asked her to clean. Yes, we are both short money and with Christmas right around the corner, I’m taking ANYTHING the Lord brings me! Plus, it’s only a once a month deal, so I can handle that for the time being.

Anyways, we leave weight watchers and make our way to her house. We pull into the driveway and on her bumper sticker I see a sticker that says “COEXIST” and it has all the symbols for many religions that you would find……..stars, moon, the cross, and some other things. I looked at my friend and I was like, “Oh boy…..I see we are here for a bigger reason.” She was like, “hmmm, yep.” We make our way through her home and she is a very nice older lady, likes to talk but very nice and she is telling us what she needs us to do the first time we’d come to clean. So……we’re just about on our way out and I had picked up a few clues to as to who she was by mention of things like “I’ve been to seminary, I’m starting a religious center with another minister……..” Just subtle things, nothing big, but we’re on our way out and we’ve been there almost 30 minutes and she says, “Oh my back is hurting me, come in here (the living room) and sit down and let’s finish talking about when you can come.

Oh, I’m running out of time, I wish I could share EVERY neat thing that happened. But, to make a long story really short…….we shared the gospel the truth with this lady…….it was amazing, we talked for THREE HOURS. I was very bold with my words and the Lord gave me truths that I hadn’t realized were in my soul! =) The bottom line is this…..although she did not accept Christ into her heart because she believe there are other ways to heaven…….and to be argumentative, let’s just say there are other ways……my point was this, I will never be “good enough” “smart enough” “perfect enough” to attain heaven any other way. So, I grab onto the grace that because Christ paid that price for me on the cross, HE made the way for me to have eternal life, through Him. I accept and I’m running with it! I explained to her that through her experiences (she’s had out of body experiences) and through my experiences, I see to very different end results.

I told her about the book, 90 minutes in heaven by Don Piper, since this woman is writing a book about her experiences, I said the biggest difference I see is that when she died, she didn’t go to heaven, she floated around the room and had different things happen, but when Don Piper died for 90 Minutes, he was immediately in heaven and was surrounded by incredible, wonderful, awesome things…………the two differences are this…….Don Piper believes that Jesus is the one and only way to achieve eternal life……this woman does not. So, you can decide for yourself where you stand on this……….two death experiences, two very different outcomes. I can’t say that this woman is going to change her way of thinking, but her argument was this, “Well, I just can’t argue with that.” So…….I don’t know, a seed was planted, that’s what I’m all about, and she actually spoke to me in HUGE ways, good ways. Even though I wasn’t able to relate to her on where I stood with my relationship with the Lord, I could relate to her life in many ways……..she’s been through lot’s of “fires” and we had some very neat things in common.

So, as Christians, followers of Christ, we are not called to be hateful, rude, prideful or anything like that when we come across people who don’t believe the same way we do. It is through a gentle spirit and only a gentle spirit can two people have a THREE HOUR conversation and both leave giving each other hugs! My heart is sad to know that as she lays her head down to sleep, she doesn’t believe that if she died that night she was “attain” heaven. But, I know, that if I died RIGHT NOW, I would be in the presence of the Lord forever. This was a life-changing night for me…….a divine encounter I had never expected from my day. We’ve got to be in the word though, each day……I leave you with this verse that I claim over my studies each time I sit down to write.

1 Peter 3:15 “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

We’ve got to know why we believe what we do, we’ve got to have our own personal experiences, not because it’s what our preachers say on Sunday mornings or what some evangelism class taught us……it’s got to be real to us. And does that mean living outside the box………YES. We can’t go through life and base everything we believe on because of what someone else said……that’s not a personal relationship with the Lord. That’s a relationship with the church. But we also have to be respectful to what other’s believe and truly find out where they are coming from not just saying “YOU’RE WRONG AND I’M RIGHT.” I gotta run…..busy day, I wish I could write all the amazing things that were said and reactions, and just how BIG our God is! I love him, it makes me want to serve Him with more and more boldness!