Evidence of God in My Life

As a Christ follower I know God is in my life. I have that assurance in my heart and mind that can’t be fully described. There is a wholeness and completeness that I know is because of Christ in my life. That is something that I can’t show someone. It isn’t tangible. But there have been times in my life when God has been tangible. There are things that I can’t fully explain outside the power of God. I am sure some of you out there will be able to find “reasonable” explanations for these things, and that is fine, but I know they were all God moments. I am going to talk about some of the times that have really stuck out to me during my life.

In high school:

One summer in high school I went to summer camp in southern California at a Young Life camp. It was a lot of fun. On the Wednesday of that week there was a planned service project for the campers to do. We were going to go to downtown LA and paint over graffiti in the “LA river” (a giant canal). I didn’t want to go. I was vocal to my leader that I had no desire to go. But he told me I had to go. So, I went. We got to a section of the “LA River” (a big canal) and we all climbed down into it to start our jobs. But very shortly after we started someone yelled, “WATER!”. Sure enough water started coming down the dry canal, and it was enough that we all had to move fast to get out of the way of it. At that point I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. But the person charge said he knew of somewhere else we could go and help out. My group ended up at a park/playground in the inner-city. We were tasked with picking up trash and doing general clean up. I still didn’t want to do it, but I did it none the less. After a little while some kids (and parents) started showing up to the park. These were all African-American families, and we were all white kids. I will never forget what happened then, I was picking up trash and a young kids came up to me and asked me, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”. I told them we were from a church camp, and we were there to pickup trash. The kid asked, “Why do you want to help people like us.” I remember looking at the kid and saying, “Because God wants us to.”. The kid said they had never seen nice white people wanting to help people in their neighborhood before. It hit me hard. I realized that God wanted us there. He wanted us to help not only clean things up, but also show an African-American community that there were white people out there that cared for them, and didn’t care what they looked like. I didn’t know before we got there that it was an African-American community, and it didn’t matter once I found out. I was there to show God’s love, and if it wasn’t for that water in the canal it never would have happened. God was working there. Thank you Dezi for making me go, and thank you God for teaching me a lesson.

College:

While in college I had a few things happen that have stuck with me that showed me that God is present in my life. My sophomore year had a couple things happen. I had to take a programming class for my physics degree. I have never been good at foreign languages and in that class programming seemed like a foreign language to me. There was one late night where I was working on a program for that class. It was due the next morning at 8am, and I had been working on it all week. I constantly had errors and every time I found one there was another one. I was at wits end that night, and I was ready to give up. So, I prayed. I asked God for help. I said I couldn’t do it without His help. And then, out of nowhere, I saw a semicolon and a line number. I couldn’t explain it, but I looked at the code to the line I “saw” in my mind and sure enough there was a missing semicolon. I added it, and the code worked. I thanked God. He intervened in a divine way that night while I was looking at that computer screen.

That same year I had the joy of chatting “online” with people from around my campus that I had met in one way or another. Some I knew well and others I only knew a little. There was one young woman that I knew because of my roommate. We had met in the dorm and talked a little, but we chatted at times in the evening. Well, one evening we were talking, and she was not in a good place. She talked about how awful her life was going. I don’t remember the specifics, but during the conversation she told me she was going to end her life that night. I was shocked, but immediately I felt God telling me to keep her talking. So, we kept chatting, and then I convinced her to meet me on campus to talk more. So, we did. We met up and we walked and talked for a long while. I can’t tell you anymore because I don’t remember anymore. What I can tell you is that God was there. She wasn’t a believer from what I recall. I didn’t mention God from what I recall. What I did was listen to her and talked with her. By the end of the night, she decided not to end her life. I walked her back to her dorm room and she made it through the rest of the night and forward. We talked on and off after that, but then lost touch after a while. But I know God was there. He gave me the words to say and the ears to hear to help her. I could not have done that without His help.

My next college God experience dealt with my future wife and my stupidity. We had started dating in the fall semester and things were going well. But I decided early in the spring semester to dump her. I am not sure anymore why I did, but I did. It hurt her a lot. She was convinced we were supposed to be together, but I still dumped her. Then over the next 6 months I was lost. I didn’t know what I was doing other than school. I prayed that I would be led to that right woman. I am sure I looked around and was trying to figure out who God was pointing me towards. Then during the following fall semester, I realized that I really missed her. So, I approached her and asked her if she would consider going out on a date with me. She didn’t seem too sure at first, but then said yes. And that was a huge answer to prayer. God brought us back together. And we eventually got married. I regret that time apart. I wasn’t thinking and I wasn’t listening to others or God right then. I was only listening to myself. But God intervened.

Adult Life:

I hate house hunting. I really hate “shopping” for most things. But as an adult houses are things that most of us have to shop for. When it was time for my wife and I to get a “new” house we had a number of parameters that we wanted. Our realtor told us that it would be hard to find something, but they would work with us to find what would work for us. So, that process started. We looked at houses all over. We really wanted to be close to my wife’s work, but we looked pretty far away at times because we were just trying to find something. During this time we both prayed that God would lead us to the right house. Nothing was coming up that seemed right. It was either too far, needed too much work, or just didn’t seem right. We looked at new houses, older houses, and even new build houses (boy am I glad we didn’t go that direction). After 12 months of fruitless findings our realtor told us to consider all our parameters. We really didn’t want to change anything. They wanted us to consider a high value or a small lot size. We had already decided not to compromise on out highest cost so after much talking we decided to drop the lot size down to the next level. A lot of houses came up (which we knew would happen), but low and behold a house very close to the top of the list looked pretty good. The lot size was only 50sqft under what we wanted before and therefore didn’t show up on our first set of houses. It was a short sale and had kept others away because of that. So we went and saw it, and it was nearly perfect. It was close to my wife’s work, it was plenty big enough for us, it had a big yard, No HOA, and it needed little work. The only issue was the short sale nature of it, and that just meant it was going to be a while (3 months) before the house would close on the paperwork. We were fine with that. And it has been a great house. It was a God thing. He allowed us to wait long enough for this house to go on the market, He guided us to it, and He made us willing to look for it. It was all a God thing. I am so joyful that we didn’t settle for something else, and that we waited for Him to show us the house He wanted us to be in.

God is amazing. I realize some people may look at all of these are just simple real-life things that happen to lots of people and there is nothing special about them, but I know they are wrong. These are all cases in my life where I can directly see God working in them and through them.