Tuesday, March 17, 2015

 36 Prayers in 36 Months
by Brenda L. Agee

Over the past months, I have reconnected with several ladies, through Facebook, with whom I was in school, either elementary, junior high, and/or senior high.  One of the ladies went to the same church I did and without knowing it, indirectly influenced my desire to know Jesus more.  I don't believe I ever told her.  My blogs are always about my life with Jesus Christ, and although several of you have asked, I've never told how I finally came to know Jesus as my Savior.  This is that story and how I prayed 36 prayers in 36 months.

I love the church I grew up in.  It was there that I learned about and grew in the knowledge of grace and faith.  I felt loved and safe.  Our pastor and his wife were kind people and had five children.  Their oldest was my age.  What I write next will seem somewhat out of place with the wonderful church and pastor I have described.  However, God had His reasons for what happened in my life and I learned much from the following experience.

I've heard people say that if you can't remember the exact date, place, and time that you believed and accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior then you just aren't a Christian.  Some people are so adamant about it that I think we are also supposed to remember what we had for lunch, the way we wore our hair and how many people we spoke to on that day.  I want to dispute that premise to some degree.  I don't remember the exact date.  I'm not quite sure of the time.  I'm fairly sure of the year because I remember the dress I wore when I was baptized.  I can, however, tell you a lot of other details and I know that I know that I know (is that proper grammar?) that I am a Christian and believe that Jesus Christ is God's only Son and our only salvation.

I was raised in a Christian home and no, that did not automatically make me a Christian.  I always loved Jesus and found going to church to be the greatest of times.  I loved Sunday School classes, I loved the songs, I loved the little elderly ladies who sat on the first two rows on the right as they faced the pulpit and waited for their Sunday School class to start, I loved Vacation Bible School, I loved church camp.  I loved it all and life was wonderful at church until I was nine years old.

Twice a year we had what was called a "Revival Meeting", which was a series of nightly services  for one or two weeks.  We had a visiting preacher called an evangelist.  When I was nine (actually, it was exactly five days before my 9th birthday) our pastor and the evangelist called me out of the Sunday School class to talk to me about being saved.  I didn't know what I was being saved from, but they certainly scared me into it.  The pastor spoke to me while the evangelist sat behind him and nodded gravely at everything the pastor said.  "Brenda, your two little girlfriends just got saved and if you don't get saved, you are going to Hell alone.  Now, you don't want to go to Hell alone do you?"  Well, I didn't even know there was a Hell or where it was but it sounded awful!  And, I did not want to go to Hell alone so I said I wanted to be saved. 

There are many things wrong with that 15 minute Sunday morning talk.  First, if you are reading this and you are a Christian, you are probably appalled.  Second, if you are reading this and you are not a Christian, you are probably appalled.  Third, I didn't even know what saved meant.  The one talking about salvation ought first to explain what it means, don't you think?  Fourth, not all children understand or are ready just because someone thinks they should be.  Yes, we should keep teaching and talking about Jesus, but understanding comes at different ages.  Fifth, don't scare either children or adults into saying they want to be saved . . . Jesus Christ loved us and we should explain His love first of all.   Sixth, I wouldn't have been in Hell alone anyway because it's going to be full of people, but that's really the least of the issues.

The following year, I began to understand more of the Bible and why Jesus died on the cross.  I began to realize He died so that we might live with Him forever and that if we didn't believe in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we would be separated from God forever.  He died because we all sin and sin is what separates us from our perfect God.  That separation would mean that we would be forever "lost" from God.  I then understood that being "saved" meant that I wanted to be with God forever and to believe in Jesus Christ as my Savior.  I realized that I hadn't known what it all meant the prior year.  That is what I understood as a child.  As adults we may argue deeper theological aspects of salvation but why?  That was all I needed to know and sometimes, as adults, we make it too difficult.

With that understanding, I went to my pastor one Sunday morning.  In our church, as in many, at the end of the sermon we sang a hymn which gave time for reflection on the sermon and if we wanted prayer for anything we would go to the pastor.  It was called a song of invitation.  I told my pastor that I really hadn't accepted Jesus as my Savior and that I wanted to do so.  He told me I was a Christian because he was the one who had talked to me that Sunday.  When I told him I felt like there was an emptiness inside me and that I needed more of Jesus, he said I just needed to "rededicate" my life.  So I prayed something and went to my seat, still feeling empty.

That continued for three years.  I was 10 and for three years - 36 months - at least once a month I would go to the pastor and tell him I knew there had to be more and I wanted to know how to have more of Jesus.  I was told one of two things.  I was told that I needed to "rededicate" my life again or that possibly God was calling me to be a missionary. So I prayed for one of those two things each month . . . 36 prayers in 36 months!
 
So, what about becoming a missionary?  I had gone to church camp for the first time and met a Chinese gentleman who was a missionary so maybe I should be a missionary to the Chinese.  However, by the time I went to the Pastor again and he said, again, maybe I was to be a missionary, I just thought I had chosen the wrong country because something was still missing.  Not really knowing how one became a missionary, I simply chose another country.  But again, the pastor repeated himself and I would doubt myself more.  I certainly chose a lot of countries through those months, hoping to finally get it right.

I think my pastor must have dreaded seeing me come at him at least once a month and he just ran out of things to say so he repeated the words "rededicate" and "missionary".  I'm not being  facetious.  I truly have wondered what he thought when he saw me repeatedly tripping down that aisle, eyes on him the whole way.  I have to give him credit, though.  He really believed that I had understood when I was nine.

That whole experience fits the statement, "That would be funny if it wasn't so sad."  The story does have some hilarity to it.  I mean, for one thing, what if I had run out of countries to choose?  Would he still tell me I was to be a missionary?  That crossed my mind quite often when I was around 12.  Also, I just don't think a little 10 year old girl could have sinned so much that she would have to rededicate her life every month.  Do you?  But to be honest, it is more tragic than funny.  What if I had just given up?

I didn't give up because God didn't give up on me.  Close to the age of 13, late one Saturday afternoon, I walked to my pastor's house and asked to talk to him.  We sat in his study.  He was behind his desk, I sat in a chair in the middle of the room.  It felt like an interrogation room which should have had a bright light shining in my face.  Actually, that just means I felt vulnerable and was afraid to start the conversation.  Slowly I looked at my pastor but said quite distinctly, "I don't know Jesus as I should and I have never really been saved.  I want to be."  He started to tell me again that I was saved and I stood up.  

Oh, I was a happy outgoing child but don't let that be mistaken for confidence.  I was quite timid and insecure inwardly at times.  I had been taught to respect my elders and to not talk back ,so my standing up to say what I did was remarkably bold.  I faced my pastor and said, "If you won't tell me how to become a Christian, I'll leave and I'll keep walking and asking people from door to door until someone tells me what I need to do."

At that very moment and before he could respond, I knew I had made my choice and that I would have Jesus no matter what.  I knew that with that statement and boldness I was declaring Jesus Christ as my Savior.  I sat back down and I was in perfect peace.  My Pastor must have realized it because he apologized to me and then we just talked about Jesus.

One aspect of this was puzzling.  If my grandparents and parents were Christians, why didn't I just ask them?  I wondered about that but came to know that both my pastor and I had to learn from what happened.  I had to make a stand to the very one who unknowingly intimidated me.  As a result, I have never again been intimidated by anyone who disagrees with what I know about Jesus Christ being my absolute Lord, my God, my Savior.  My pastor said he learned that he had to change his approach when talking about salvation.  

We were much closer and gained a new appreciation for each other after that Saturday afternoon.  He no longer treated me like one of the little children in church and I began a new journey with God.  The roots of faith and grace that I had learned began to grow and my relationship with Jesus Christ took on a new intimacy and wonder.  That may have been over 50 years ago, but the intimacy of my relationship with Jesus Christ still grows and the wonder of who He is even more remarkable now!  And, it will be so forever!


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That is the story of my becoming a child of God.   I told my friend through a Facebook message that I was going to write about her and now she knows that she was one of the two friends the pastor mentioned as having been saved which, according to him, meant I would go to Hell alone.  The pastor mentioned them by name but I didn't do so here.  I know she will read this so I want to tell another story from our years in that church.  I wonder if she'll remember this one . . . 

There were four of us, maybe late middle-school age, although it was called Jr. High then, and we were sitting on one of the back pews on the left during a Sunday night service.  It was Girl Scout day so I had on my Girl Scout uniform with the sash and badges.  There were we three girls and one boy (not the preacher's son) and we were playing with Silly Putty while trying to act as though we were  listening to the preacher.  We put the Silly Putty on everything to see the impressions it made.  The boy put the Silly Putty on one of my Girl Scout badges but when he took it off, not only was there an impression of the badge but it had also taken most of the paint off my badge.  We all started to giggle and so it was on . . . we giggled at everything after that.  Then the boy, who was seated on the outside near the aisle, leaned over and started bouncing the Silly Putty in the aisle and catching it.  But of course, there was the one time he missed the catch.

Before I tell you the outcome, let me give you a brief lesson in Silly Putty.  It does two main things when it bounces.  It bounces in a fairly straight line and as it bounces, it goes higher and higher.

Back to the story.  The boy bounced the silly putty, sure that no one could see him, but then he missed.  We were in the basement because a new sanctuary was being built and the basement had no carpet.  Consequently, the Silly Putty started bouncing down the middle aisle of the church and the more it bounced, the higher it bounced.  The preacher, the same one mentioned earlier, saw it coming and without missing one word of his sermon, he stepped out from behind the pulpit, moved in the front it, took a few steps up the aisle and caught the Silly Putty.  He calmly put it in his pocket and went back behind the pulpit where he finished his sermon without a word about the Silly Putty or our antics.

The four of us stopped giggling that instant and were as still as the air in the eye of a storm.  The preacher never mentioned it but he did give the Silly Putty to my daddy.  TO DADDY!  Later Daddy simply said, "Brenda, I think you need to sit up front with your mother and I for awhile."  But Daddy had a way of talking and believe me, even those few words put a fear in me.  I don't believe I ever again played with Silly Putty.


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Father God, Thank You for Your salvation and Your wondrous ways of teaching us so that we might teach others.  Help us always to realize, even when things are difficult and we lack understanding, that You truly are in control.  Cause me to be more humble and mindful of the feelings of others.  Help me to help others and to not be a hindrance.  Thank You for renewed friendships and for new friendships.  In Jesus Name I ask and pray, Amen!



 




5 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing your testimony and journey, Brenda!

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    2. Thank you, Pastor JIm. It is quite evident who Jesus Christ is in your life and I thank God that you minister to all of us and teach us as you do. May God bless you!

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  2. Brenda - I was kinda like you - around the age of 12 during the Sunday morning service our Pastor told us that he was leaving this church and moving away!!! Since he was the pastor of my childhood I knew I wanted him to be the one to bapize me. During the invitation I went forward and told him I wanted to be baptized!! So that night during his last service he baptized me along with two others. Now nothing was said about being "saved" - it was just assumed that I knew all about it since I had been in church all my life. I finally realized in the 1980s when we were joining a new church that I really hadn't been saved - so when we went forward to join the church I also rededicated my life!!!! I still, to this day, do NOT have a life-changing event to show for my salvation. So to some people I have not really be saved!!!! I think Jesus is the only one who can decide if I am saved! Mary

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    1. Thank you, Mary, for sharing your own testimony. Believing in Jesus as Savior is faith, not emotion. You know your faith and belief in Jesus Christ and more importantly, He knows! God bless you . . .

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