If this is being a Christian, you can have it!

If this is being a Christian, you can have it! I actually said those exact
words as a new Christian! Looking back, I can see how silly I must have
sounded to God. He must have said, "Oh, look, our little baby is throwing a
snit. Isn't she being silly? But We will give her time and she will mature
in the matters of her faith, and will become a strong warrior in our army."

I know that is true, because I have become strong in the matters of Faith.
Faith is all we have that keeps us connected with our Heavenly Father. We
are promoted in His army based on our growth in faith in Him.

When I first came to the Lord, I was so broken. I went up to the altar and
cried and cried as all the poison of my wretched life poured out of me and
the love and power of Christ flowed into me. For months I would weep at the
drop of a hat. I was so overcome with the presence of Christ in my life.
The night that I was saved, people in the church came up to me and told me
that I had just taken the most important step in my life. I was now a
daughter of the living God. I would be blessed beyond my wildest dreams and
I would no longer want for anything and that I now had an advocate in Jesus,
who would fight all my battles for me.

I rode that pony for a good three months and then the reality of the world
that I still had to live in hit me. You see, I gave my life to Jesus, but
my body was still in the physical as were all my old ways of doing things.
I still was enticed by the material things of the world. Movies that should
no longer have a place in my new walk were still on my list to "must sees".
I still went out with my unsaved friends. That in itself was no problem,
but to continue to go to bars and drink and party was not good. What I
watched on television and what I let my children watch on television did not
change. My language and my attitude toward people and how I handled them in
business did not change. I did not think that I was a bad person. But if I
had been honest with myself I would have reminded myself that while at the
altar turning my life over to Jesus, all the poison that was torturing my
soul and all that weeping I was doing was about my life as I had led it to
that point in time. So many things started to go wrong. My kids started
rebelling. I lost my job. Credit cards started piling up. My car was
breaking down twice a week it seemed. I got sick. I had a terrible fight
with a dear friend and stopped talking to her. I started being mocked for
becoming a Christian. Sitting in a bar and drinking with your friends with
your same foul mouth and laughing at dirty jokes was not being the Christian
that I was professing to be. Looking back they had more sense than me when
they were mocking me. I wasn't being a Christian, I was actually mocking my
own profession of Christ by my actions.

I had hit rock bottom. Prior to having accepted Jesus into my heart, I was
relatively successful. The bills were always paid, my kids had what they
wanted, well, except probably a really good mom, and life in general was
good. So one morning I awoke in the midst of my "new life" and looked up to
heaven and yelled, "If this is what it is like to be a Christian, you can
have it! I am through with you God!" As I look back on it, all I see is
about a 5 year old girl trying to make sense to an adult with the very
limited mind and judgment of a child. Just as we would ignore the outburst
of a child, God ignored me. And thank you God for doing so.

A couple of days later the most amazing thing happened to me that started my
transformation into the spiritually mature person that God wanted me to be.
I was driving down the street and saw a homeless person hitchhiking. I my
mind I heard this from God. He asked me if I were to take mercy on that
poor wretched soul and pick him up and take him into my house and bathe him
and give him new clothes and feed him good and healthy food for his starving
body would that change him in a day? And when I took that person home would
I leave my wallet and credit cards and the keys to the house and car out on
the table for him to see? Would I leave him alone with my children? Would
I assume that his old habits would just go away because of my having mercy
on him? I had to answer no. And God told me that He would not do the same
with me either. He told me that my soul was that homeless person. Full of
filth and bad habits and a way of life that was not healthy for my soul. I
had to be stripped down and cleaned up and made new in Him.

So the next time that God puts you through a "cleansing", don't do what I
did. Instead, pray for the wisdom to see what the circumstance you are
going through is teaching you. Know that God is always there. Remember
that no tall, strong and healthy tree can grow straight without pruning.
And a new fruit tree does not produce fruit in the first year. As pruning
shears train up a tree in the way it should grow, so does our Heavenly
Father prune us to make us grow strong and tall and healthy and to produce
the finest fruit to feed those in His Kingdom. So the next time you are
"pruned" by God, give off the sweet fragrance of a mature orange in it's
blossom and don't be a "sour apple"......Patti