God’s Plan is Bigger Than Your Fear of Religion
Some moments in your life are absolutely pivotal for everything you will become and everything that God has planned for you.
My sister, strong in her faith, asked me if I would go to a church service where a man was going to be sharing his testimony. It’s funny because I didn’t even know what a testimony was. That word was completely foreign to me. Not realizing the event was on a Saturday night, I told her, “Sure, I may come by. I’ll think about it.”
Her response was, “No, you have to come. You don’t have to stay long. Just come in and hear some of it. If you don’t like what he’s saying, if it’s not for you, you can leave.”
“OK,” I said, “I’ll be there.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“I promise.”
My dilemma was that I couldn’t risk being seen in a religious place. That was my narrow reasoning anyway. I know I’m not the only one who has ever felt out of place of going into a church setting. The preconceived ideas many have is that church is either for the weak or a place where fun and free living dies because they don’t understand that it’s the place where our lives are truly found. Whether they’re gangsters, CEOs, or preachers, most people will do anything in their power to protect their reputations. It’s human nature. The reality is, however, that our fabricated reputations may not be as important as we think, not when it’s a matter of finding true life or continuing in the false identities we have created.
It may not seem like a big deal to some, but attending this service would become a life-and-death decision for me. Death had been knocking at my door daily, but now, for the first time, life was knocking at my door too. They are two distinctly different sounds. You can tell when someone is angry by the sound of their pounding on the door. Death’s knock is a relentless pounding that wears you down until you eventually answer its call.
Life’s knock, on the other hand, is a peaceful sound. There’s no condemnation, just an invitation to experience true life instead of the counterfeit. Life was knocking on my door through my sister and the words she had spoken to me. Yet instead of freeing me, her questions were haunting me. What if God is real? What if prayer works? What if you have a different destiny? Love was chasing me, and at the same time, so were the life and identity I had built in the gang.
I had so many emotions running through my head. I was wrestling inside myself, thinking, “Man, I don’t know if I want to go up there, but I made Laura a promise.” I knew my homeboys were going to start talking trash about me and I would have to deal with that.
But something inside me said, “Don’t look back. Keep your word.”
I began walking toward that church.
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