JESUS, I BELIEVE

John 11:27  "Yes, Lord", she told Him, "I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world".

Where do I begin.  You know when you first become a Christian, first accept the Lord as your Savior, it seems almost surreal....like you are watching yourself from outside your body.  I can remember crying, I was so caught up in the service I was in, the music, the preaching, and here I was, at that altar, with some of my friends, giving my heart to the Lord.  The first time I gave my heart to the Lord, I was eight years old.  I just knew that I loved the Lord and wanted to have Him love me. I don't think I understood everything then. And truth be told, I did not know the second time I went to the altar either, not really.  I loved the Lord and wanted to be saved.  I did not want to go to hell, like the preacher talked about.  Funny now, as you don't hear the word hell used in too many services these days.  Just isn't a popular subject, turns people off, they may not come back next Sunday so we just don't mention that there is a judgment day when sinners that have not turned their lives around will go to hell if they have not accepted Jesus as their Savior.  But once again, I rabbit trail ....

But I gave my heart to the Lord.  Little did I know what He would become to me so many years later.  I have talked about my life several times before.  I so do not want to go there again, Lord.  I have no way of explaining the outcome without giving you some of the why fors.....I sang in the choir at church most of my growing up, youth choir, adult choir, I went to a denominational church most of my early life until I was about 22 or so.  But I always sang, was in choir in high school, college, for the short time I went.  But that also is another story.  But I sang.  I married, it was such a failure.....did you know you can not change people, no matter how much you try to love them, no matter what kind of a home you try to make with them?  Only God can change people.  So for a few years I did not even go to church.  It was easier not going than to go and suffer for it.  And at the time, I suffered enough without Sundays also.  How different I would do that now.  But after a horrible few years, I got away and moved out of town for a while.  When I came back home I began to sing in a nightclub, not regular, but when I would go, the band would ask me to sing with them.  That is where I met Robert.  He was enthralled with the little girl singing with the band, at least that is what he told me.  So you can see this romance got off to a great start, in a bar, so to speak. 

After we had been married a few years, I got a cold, lost my voice, and when my voice returned, I discovered that I had lost my singing voice. Literally could not sing a note.  My voice would crack, squeech, make very funny noises but there was no singing.  The gift I had been given had been taken back.  I had misused a precious gift that was given me to worship the Lord and justly so, He just took it back.  I like to think it was given to someone during those years that used it to worship Him with.  To my great surprise, after my husband went through what was probably one of the worse years of his life, I came home one day to be told that on Sunday we were going to church.  He had watched a service on TV that day while I was at work and the Lord called him and he gave his heart to Jesus.  So Sunday we went to church, sat on the back row. But we were in church. He had some friends there that he worked with so it wasn't too strange for us.  It was a non-denominational church.  Yes, I tried to sing, it did not happen.  I would like to say that I could sing right away because I was again going to church, being who I was suppose to be, but it did not happen.  It was a number of months of going to church, almost a year, changing the way I was living before anything happened.  And it was not gradual, just one Sunday morning, I opened my mouth to sing, thinking I would hear the usual squeak, but instead out poured the voice that I had forgotten was once mine.  And so I sang.  I sang specials in church, did for years after that, but that is what I did; I sang songs about Jesus.  About Him.

Jesus, I believe You never let me go from You.  I just did not know You.  I knew about you.  Jesus, I believe You protected me from all that was intended to destroy me, from the time I first gave my life to You.  Jesus, I believe You knew everything that was going to happen to me.  Jesus, I believe You knew what I would do with the voice You gave me to sing to You.  Even knowing what I would do, did You not wish that I would have stayed on course.  I sure do.  I wish I had always been there, where You intended me to be. 

But I sang again, finally sang again, but a lot of times it was still for man, for approval, making sure all the notes were right on, the words were perfect, worrying that I might forget a word, might not be perfect.   How foolish I was, still misusing my voice. Still not being who I was to be in You.  So far off target.  What a waste of years.

Jesus, I believe You had this time in my life all mapped out.  Jesus, I believe this would be the time that what I could do would make the biggest difference in my life.  Jesus, I believe You are using me to make a difference in other's lives.  Jesus, I believe that You walked me through everything that happened to me for just this time, right now.

I don't sing anymore.  I do not sing songs anymore.  I worship.  I glorify the Lord that has never left me alone for a moment of my life.  I worship my Jesus, my sweet Jesus who has given me back my voice once again.  I did not lose it through the songs I sang, but it was not the voice I have now.  Now I have a voice that worships my Lord, that sings out songs that come from my heart, from the depths of my soul with love to my Jesus.  I belong to a Praise and Worship, I stand amazed this past nine months that they trust me with an open mike.  They never know what I am going to say, what I am going to sing; I don't know either.  I just know that if the Holy Spirit tells me to say this, I do; if He leads me to begin worshiping the Lord with different words than everyone else is singing, that is exactly what I do.  I do not sing, I worship.  The words I sing when I do a special may not always come out right; I have gotten caught up in the spirit of my Lord and lost myself, not even knowing what I was singing except to know they were not the words of the song.  Afterwards the enemy has tried to make me feel ashamed for messing it up, but I found out that no one even realized it had happened.  They had gotten caught up in the Lord also.  It is the way it was meant to be.  Music, words that are used to express the feelings of my heart to the Son of Almighty God, the Man who walked this earth so many years ago, making salvation possible through His sacrifice on the cross.  I worship this precious Savior, Who upon His return to the Father, sitting beside Him on His throne, looks down upon me, just a simple woman, no different than any other, except that He changed my life, changed because He never let me go.

Jesus, I believe You love me.  Jesus, I believe You will always love me.  On this 19th day of May, 2011, Jesus, I believe You know how much I love You.  Jesus, I believe You know I will never let go of You again.  Jesus I believe You are coming back for me.  Yes, my precious Savior, I believe; for eternity; Jesus, I believe.