FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS

So by 2011, my husband and I had been married for about 4 years (together for 14 years). I did grow up believing that there is a God and I’ve always felt God was out there, watching over me and protecting me. I even prayed directly to God and spoke to Him. Not that there was ever a direct response that I was aware of, but I felt a watchful presence over me – distant, but present.

However, I also didn’t have any direction in my life so I just believed in whatever else I wanted to believe in at the time which included ghosts, aliens, tarot readings, feng shui, yin and yang, superstition, horoscopes etc (you get my drift). It was anything that took my fancy really….anything except Jesus.

My thinking was this: I’m sure Jesus was a real person but He was just a guy, who did do a couple of great things, and over time, He became the face that represented God…nothing more.

My biggest arguing point with my husband was that Jesus was a product of marketing because God is not tangible so people created the story of Jesus so that Christianity is now tangible and can be sold.

The more he brought up the topic of Jesus, the more heated we got and I would say “I’ll believe it when I see it.” I even said to him “I’ll bet you any money, that when we all pass away, you’ll see that we have been praying to the same God. Your God and my God are the same!”

It got to the point where we couldn’t even discuss our beliefs and it was easier to just avoid the topic altogether. 

It was only when I became less defensive and stubborn, and more open-minded, that we developed a more mature way of discussing this topic with respect for each other’s beliefs.

Our heated debates slowly became discussions rather than trying to impose our views on each other. I started asking questions to get his views and thoughts on the topic and my defensive walls slowly lowered a little bit (maybe this is what it means to pray for hearts to be softened – though at the time I just thought we were growing up).

Then one day, still in 2011, while I was sitting on the couch folding some clothes, I was watching something on TV. I can’t even remember what it was exactly but it was something supernatural and out of this world, like aliens or ghosts or something.

Then, as I was watching it, I said out loud, more to myself, and partly to my husband who was in the kitchen “I believe in that!” and even before I could finish the sentence, a thought dropped right into my head overlapping myself and it said, “Why do you believe in that when you have not seen it, yet you don’t believe in Jesus?” I stopped folding for a moment and remembered thinking “yeah you’re right, why do I believe in that and not Jesus?”

I looked up at my husband, checking to see if he could hear this conversation going on in my head. I didn’t even know who I was talking to. But of course, he was still prepping his dinner (probably some chicken breast and broccoli fad diet that he was on at the time), but I kept thinking “yeah, why don’t I believe in Jesus? Why am I so against Jesus, yet so willing to believe in all those other things that I’ve never seen either? What is it about Jesus that’s making me say no?”

I knew my mind was starting to venture into new grounds here and I was too scared to even contemplate what that meant. I was also apprehensive about telling my husband about this “thought” as I was worried he would jump at the opportunity to preach to me. I just needed some space to think this over.

I started to do some research. I started reading the Bible, searching for some clarity, some direction, for something….anything. I started to read the Old Testament, starting from the beginning. I was reading it like a book, trying to understand it and make sense of what I was reading. Of course, it didn’t make much sense, it was still just a story to me. I googled and read some books on other people’s experiences, but I was still not there.