Never "Sub-Normal" Again

FROM THE ARCHIVES PART 4: WINTER 2007

When I was eight years old I asked my Dad what it meant to be a Christian.  After he explained it to me, I’ll never forget kneeling beside a heater in my hallway and being led by my Dad in prayer, to receive Jesus as my Savior.  That whole time in my life was so very special to me because that same week my mom made a profession of faith as well and together we were baptized.  As I reflect back on this it reminds me how grateful I am to have been raised in such an environment of love.  My parents’ love for Christ, for each other, for my sister and me and many others whose lives they touched has made a major difference in my life. 

After praying with my dad and being baptized with my Mom, I remember being so filled with joy that I just had to share what I had experienced with others.  For example, most of the sentences I wrote using the vocabulary words we were learning in school had to do with my new found faith.  When the adults in my church would go on visitation to share their faith with others, I always went with them.  For quite some time, I had a zeal, a passion and an excitement to share Jesus, but as I got older I observed that other people didn’t appear to have the same excitement I did, so I decided to tone it down.  I stayed true to the faith, but I lost that zeal and passion I had at first.

When I was in my late twenties and involved with my husband Wayne in his first ministry job at a church in Raleigh, I began to long for the zeal and the passion that I had when I first got saved.  There’s a verse in the Bible where Jesus says that He came to give us abundant life not just eternal life and I knew there was more to the Christian life than what I was experiencing.  I felt like there was something blocking me from the life that should be mine.

About this time, Wayne and I moved from Raleigh to Winston-Salem so Wayne could serve as the associate pastor at the First Baptist Church there.  In Winston I met other people who were experiencing the same longing I was and we began to get together and pray for God to work in our lives.  One book we discovered that helped us a lot was Catherine Marshall’s book called Something More.  In it she talked about the need to deal with unforgiveness we had towards others because that could be a major blockage to experiencing God’s love the way He wants us to.  I began to pray and ask God to reveal to me any blockages I might have in my life and, I was surprised to find, there were many.  I made a list and dealt with them one by one.  Some were easy to forgive and release to God, but others were not.  I called one of my fellow seekers and she told me how she dealt with the tough ones.  She would take a red pen, because it symbolized the blood of Jesus that had washed her and forgiven her of her sins and she would mark that person’s name with the pen.  She told me that somehow it helped her really forgive as she should.  With those words of encouragement I went back to my list and took what she said one step further.  Using the sign language that I had learned for my ministry to the deaf, I symbolically reached into my heart and lifted it up to God, and then I took the red pen and wrote across each name on my list, the words “I forgive you”.

After this the Bible came alive to me in a whole new way when I read it.  Hymns that I had sung for years meant more to me.  The joy and zeal had returned and I was so grateful.

After a few days of doing this and working through issues I had that were blockages, I experienced a tremendous flood of the Holy Spirit’s love.  It was to me like that old Drano commercial where the clog was cleared and the water flowed again.  After this the Bible came alive to me in a whole new way when I read it.  Hymns that I had sung for years meant more to me.  The joy and zeal had returned and I was so grateful.  As I have journeyed on from there the continual challenge is to keep the drain unclogged, which I’ve learned God will help you do if you’ll let Him. 

When I think back on that time in my life where conditions around caused me to tone things down, it reminds me of something an old preacher named Vance Havner used to say. It goes something like this, “As Christians we’re so subnormal that if we ever get normal, people will think we’re abnormal.”  Now that I’ve gotten that joy back that I had at first I never want to be subnormal again.