My Personal Relationship with Christ

"To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement." St. Augustine 

I grew up in a strong Catholic family. It was a great part of my life. I went to twelve years of Catholic school. I was an altar server till the end of high school. I participated in youth group stuff only in senior year. God was a part of my life, but I really never made number one. If my spiritual life was a car, I allowed Jesus to hang out in the back seat or the trunk.

During high school both of my parents passed away. You would think that it would have had an impact on my relationship with God, but it didn't because I was pretty numb from the whole experience. I never was able to process it. After my Mom died, I stayed in my family's home with my brother Rick, and then he moved out. My oldest brother Paul, and his wife Kathy moved in. They had my niece Kelly, so it was great to help with her. Between Rick and Paul, I was well taken care of. I was able to get to know Kathy 's family especially her mother Ruth. It was a relationship that I cherish. God was so good to me. He provided for me every step of the way.

While in college, I moved out of the house and moved in with my oldest sister Deb. She was my second mom. I couldn't of asked God for a better sister. She has been the rock of my life. She was and has been God's hands and feet and voice. After I lost my parents, she has been a steadfast influence and someone I could turn to in times of trouble. I would not have been in youth ministry for twenty seven years without her support.

I went off to college with God in the trunk. I fully participated in the college party atmosphere. God blessed me with a small group of friends that helped me to ultimately succeed at school. They taught me new things like how to play spoons or how to fish or how take apart a phone and use it to record music. More importantly, they got me to think about the deeper things. In fact, one of them called me a hypocrite which forced me to relook at questions like "Did I really believe in God?", and "If I did,  should I not respond in some way?"  

After I graduated from college, I started working on the Happening in Christianity weekends. We did three weekends a year. It took eight weeks to prepare each weekend, so you can see that it took quite a bit of my free time. I eventually took a job with Radio Shack in retail management. The Happening was more than a weekend retreat program. It was a community of people. We did a lot more than just retreat planning. We hung out together especially at the Wahrman's house.

While working these weekends, I was surrounded by adults and young people who put Jesus at the center of their lives. If he wasn't driving their car, he was in the front seat. It challenged me to rethink my relationship with God. It culminated with a weekend in December at St Theresa Catholic Church in Kankakee, IL. Being that it was the middle of the Christmas season and I was working in retail, I could only help on the retreat at night. So, after the store closed, I made the hour long trip through corn fields down to the weekend. The talks and all the rest of details of the weekend are prepared over the eight weeks of planning except for one talk. The Holy Spirit talk is given on Sunday afternoon, and the person giving the talk is decided after hours of prayer on Saturday night.  After the store closed at 5pm on Saturday, I started making my way down to the retreat. I turned off the radio and road in silence. Somewhere on I57 among the corn, I heard a quiet whisper in my head. "You are going to give the Holy Spirit talk." Now, I had never experienced God speaking to me. At least, not that I ever noticed. So, I just thought it was my own imagination. Yet, I could picture myself in front of the group, and the words of the talk came into my head.

When I arrived at St Theresa, I just went about helping wherever I could, and I didn't tell anyone what happened on the road to Kankakee. During the night, the directors and other retreat leaders spent a time of intense prayer trying to discern which team member should give the Holy Spirit talk. About 3am, I was woken up, and asked to go to the Directors room. They told me that they had spent many hours in prayer and my name kept coming up as the person to give this talk. They knew that I was supposed to work the next day. So, I shared with them what happened on the road. They sat in a circle around me, and laid hands and began to pray over me. I could feel the heat of the Holy Spirit start at the tip of my head and slowly makes its way down till it consumed my whole body. It was the most powerful experience of my life. I spent several more hours in prayer.

Did I really trust God? Was I really going to give Him the drivers seat? I was supposed work on Sunday. My job is at stake. My boss was pretty intense. Was I going to make this call? I gave it over to God and put my trust totally in Him. I made the call to my boss, and told him that I couldn't work because I had give this talk on this retreat. I gave the talk as best as I could remember from the words that God gave me on the road. On Monday morning, I went into the store expecting to be fired, but hoping in the mercy of God. Not only was I not fired but within a couple of months, I was promoted.

After this experience of the quiet whisper of God's voice, I wondered if it would happen again? By the time it happened again, I was managing my own store. One day, I was running the store by myself. It was quiet without any customers. All of a sudden, I hear a quiet whisper. "You are going to give the 'Where do we go from here?' talk". Again, I didn't know if it was just my thoughts or really God speaking to me? Then, I remembered that I was supposed to go to Chris' house that night to help him pray and discern the talks for the next retreat. I arrived at his house and he had a list of the five talks on one side of the page. On the other side, he had a list of the forty plus team members who had committed to working the next weekend. We started with the first talk. After discerning which team member would give the talk, he drew a line from the talk to the person. After working on several talks, Chris' brother called for a ride home from work. I was the last car in the driveway, so I volunteered to pick him up. As I am getting into the car, I realized that they were going to discern the 'Where Do We Go From Here' talk next. Because of my experience, I believed that when I returned that the line would be drawn from my name to that talk. Was this another experience of God guiding my life? Could the same God that talked to Moses, Abraham, and others be talking to me? I picked up Matt, and brought him home. When I came into the living room, I peeked over Chris' shoulder and the line was drawn from my name to that talk.

I decided to give God everything. I had a collection of two hundred albums. I took out all the albums with bad messages and threw them into the garbage. It was about one hundred eighty albums. I used to swear a blue streak. I gave God my language. After about six months, I realized that I wasn't even thinking swear words. Drinking alcohol isn't sinful, but for me it kinda consumed my life.  So in January of 1985, I gave up drinking alcohol for the rest of my life. I gave Him the drivers seat. In future blog posts, I will talk about how it changed the trajectory of my life.