My life does not look the same today as it did ten years ago. This summer, in July, marks ten years of salvation for me. Ten years of reborn living, ten years of trials that ultimately have led me into the walk I am in today with the Lord. Ten years from now, I pray that my life is marked by ten more years of a daily pursuit of the Lord. The hinge point of salvation marked a point in my life where, from that point forward, the Lord was moving me into obedience. But, it didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen easily.

Ten years ago I was living a selfish, sin filled life. I was regularly using marijuana, and drinking almost every day. My view of God was that He probably existed, and even that He probably created the world -to an extent- but that He had no time or interest in the lives of the people now inhabiting earth. I believed that He’d left us to our own devices and that if He was even aware of our suffering that He didn’t care.

A drastic change was necessary for my view of who God is to change. It started with the near failure of my marriage. I was engaged in an affair, something that is not abnormal for someone who had been the victim of childhood sexual abuse, as I had been. I justified the behavior by blaming my husband for the problems in our marriage, and choosing to believe the lie that the intruder in our life understood me better and would be a better support for me to behave in ways that were ultimately destructive and dangerous. At the same time, I didn’t want my marriage to fail, was afraid of my husband discovering the affair, and lied copiously to him, family, and friends in an attempt to conceal the true details of the nature of it.

When I reflect on this period of my life, I am filled with sadness and shame. I wish I could stop the old me from engaging in behavior that was driven by my flesh, fueled by sin, and in such contrast to the will of God for my life. Change was necessary for me to be brought into the fold of God. That July, God performed a miracle in our marriage. By the grace of God, that came through a conversation with our pastor at the time, communication barriers and walls of self-preservation that I had built with the mortar of conditioned survival behaviors and layered on brick by brick since childhood, were penetrated by the love and grace of Jesus Christ. The day after the transformation of my heart occurred, I broke off the affair. It took ten years for me to fully confess to my husband and seek forgiveness. I also confessed to the pastors and deacons of our church, seeking their forgiveness, which they all graciously granted.

I had a knowledge of God’s word. I’d grown up in church learning scripture and all the Bible stories, I even professed salvation as an eight year old, one year into the sexual abuse that continued until I was fourteen, I was baptized and believed for all intents and purposes that I’d been saved. However, it wasn’t until this point in my life, when my marriage was on the brink of failure, I was engaged in such intertwined sin patterns that I had no hope to unentangle myself on my own, where God began healing the suffering and exposing the sin that was keeping me enslaved to a life of despair and hopelessness that I surrendered to His authority and governance of my life.

From this point forward, the Lord has been moving me further from the darkness and into the light. My life would not transform overnight, there would be more sin patterns, more destructive behavior, and more hardship that, as a result of the suffering, would shepherd me into a life marked by obedience and transparency. But, a lifetime of hiding didn’t morph into a life in full view overnight. Through a series of necessary changes, the Lord moved our life into a place of greater obedience day by day, as we pursued His word and will for our life.

It’s easy to view Christians as if through a lens of having a distance from sin and, therefore, the accessibility to salvation, by someone still entangled in the chains of sin, seems out of reach. However, I exist to tell you, as someone who Jesus burst into the middle of my entanglement, loosed the chains Himself, and pulled me free, there is no place where you are hidden from His sight, no place where He can’t reach you.

The appearance of a Sunday morning sanctuary where everyone is buttoned to the collar, polite, and seemingly unattainable is a far cry from some of the bathrooms floors where I found myself, dirty, broken, and hopeless. But, God was just as present with me there as He is in my row on Sunday morning. He is just as present as I load and reload the washing machine as He was beside me when I was pouring another drink.

The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 139,

⁷ Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
    If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
⁹ If I take the wings of the morning
    and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me.

There is nowhere that is hidden from God. No aspect of our lives that He is disinterested or disengaged from. My life underwent a series of necessary changes for me to realign the warped view the enemy had instilled in my mind regarding God’s position in our places of suffering.

But, I exist as a testimony that the life of obedience is marked by light, peace, and rest in the atonement made by Christ on my behalf.

Today is the day of salvation. If you haven’t accepted Christ as your savior there is no impediment to receiving the gift of His death and resurrection made on your behalf. I was addicted to drugs and alcohol, engaged in an extramarital affair, angry at God for the abuse I had suffered, and conflicted daily by the enslavement to sin, and that is where Jesus met and saved me.

Don’t neglect such a glorious salvation. Receive His free gift of grace, by faith today.

God bless.