Execute… Caught off guard, my face rises from its half-asleep posture. The phrase wasn’t audible nor was it assembled with letters and words. But I felt it, almost as if it were an experience.
Pulled from my mind by the aggressive words of today’s Monday morning chapel speaker, my right leg begins to bounce. Turning my head slightly, my eyes scan the auditorium caging hundreds of undergraduate students, all glaring with tired faces. From my assigned seat on the chapel balcony, the dead ambiance is noticeable. The occasional sound of an interrupting cough and the sting of a stainless steel hydro flask being tipped over by a chemistry student nodding off keeps everyone awake. Barely.
Silence returns a second time as the speaker and students are abruptly whisked away and my soul feels again the gentle whisper to execute. Confusion fills my head, questioning this voice. Is this crazy? The world around me doesn’t need to fade this time. My mind blurs the surroundings on its own while thoughts form within. What is happening? I wonder if my brain is deteriorating.
It happens again. This whisper isn’t like a thought and it feels more like an urge than a voice. The thing isn’t coming from me, yet what feels like my soul is receiving it. Like a bookworm skimming a possible catch, my head cycles through possibilities, hoping to find an answer. My stirring soup of a mind halts and I’m left with a question. Is this you God?
Almost as if handed a response, my soul confirms it. This is God. A cliché shiver glides down my spine, my leg still now. The neighboring students continue their occasional blinks and cold-induced sniffs, but my body is quiet; not afraid, but not at peace.
Like waking from death, life returns, my brain darting to the whisper. God is telling me to execute. But what is it I’m meant to do? Turning an imaginary spin-the-wheel, theories of what needs to be done circle. Leave the building? No. Open my bible? No. Jump off the balcony? Definitely no. As the list approaches its end, reaching the last possibility, my insides drop. Yes.
In my room weeks before, frustration had hovered over me. My entire life was a lie. Painting my public image as dry and redeemed I secretly swam laps in a pool of cold sin. The redeemed side was much more desirable, but leaving the pool was too burdensome a task. Climbing the ladder out was impossible because of my soaked clothes. Like weights, the shoes of dishonesty, pants of lust, and shirt of pride were too heavy. Every time a powerful sermon or testimony touched my ears, the cold water would absorb the simmering flame of conviction and put it out.
Laying in my dark room, miserably depressed, the words, “Help me Lord!” had escaped my lips. “Strip me of the things that are keeping me.” followed.
A month later, lying in the same bed a few hours before Monday morning chapel a strange thought formed within. Stop seeing her.
The girl in question being a Godly one, made the thought seem intrusive, and as it didn’t repeat itself, it was left in the room alongside my pajamas. At least my conscience thought.
The wheel slows past its last tick and the arrow is left pointing to conviction. God is telling me to end things with the girl. Wondering if this is the moment God turns my life around, my foot steps on the first rung of the pool ladder.
Realization of what it would mean sets in. Doubt bursts through, filling my mind with what-ifs. The cold breeze and pain that would ensue stepping out of my comfortable pool is feelable. Obedience means letting go. Not only of the girl I like but of the sin I know. Loosening my grip on the ladder my body begins to descend again into the water, defeat looming.
“Where do you start?” Reality interrupts with words.
“How do you respond to the invitation?” The speaker is in the middle of her speech but God is cherry-picking words from her message for me.
“I know it may sound scary to you.” Pausing the descent, my fingers hold position on the ladder.
“But it’s worth it!” I release a whispered sigh and close my eyes. It’s over. The wrestle lasting twenty years of life was won. God had won.
From the second of consciousness to the moment of hearing God’s voice, relationship with Him seemed unattainable. My brain knew theology, the Bible, the gospel, and all the worship songs. Growing up in the church, in a Christian home, and even with missionary parents, you would think Jesus comes easy. The problem was I loved myself more than Him. I lived in dishonesty and lied about everything. I lived in sexual immorality and lusted with a depraved mind. I lived in pride, worshiping my very self. Life was about me and Jesus endangered that.
There were moments scattered throughout my life when conviction brought about change, but it never lasted. Even though knowing Jesus was a desire, letting go meant leaving behind that which was known.
An hour later after breaking things off with the girl, I spent the day crying. My obedience had signaled my life running from God coming to an end. Life was no longer about me. The tears were of joy because there was no turning back, life with Jesus had begun. Where do you start?
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:16-19
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