I Said "No."

I will never forget that night. God spoke to me with almost audible clarity and I ignored Him; to my eternal shame, I deliberately disobeyed Him.

My family was on vacation in Florida. Were almost to the condo we were borrowing from some friends and we stopped for dinner. It was just a little Chinese buffet, nothing special but we were all starved after traveling in the van all day. My parents ordered the food while my sister and I got some tables pulled together and sat the younger ones down. After acquiring a stack of napkins and straws I decided I should wash my hands before getting everyone’s drinks. The place was one of those where the bathrooms are right next to the kitchen and as I came out from washing my hands I glanced into the kitchen, what I saw made me sick.

The workers having already taken my family the food were standing around talking, one girl had her back to me and I don’t know if she waited at a “gentlemen’s club” or what caused them but I could see grooves in her back. Pressed into her back a quart inch wide and a quarter inch deep they came out of the front of her shirt, over the top of her should and down her back disappearing once more inside her shirt. The halter top made them hard to see from the front but painfully obvious from behind her.

I couldn’t move, none of them noticed I was there, and I could help but stare as a little whisper with the strength of the ocean behind it spoke inside me. “Go talk to her.” I heard Him say.

My entire being revolted at the idea. “No!” was my immediate response, “Why? What would I say?” I internally flinched at the awkwardness I would feel.

“Tell her she’s worth more than that.” He answered simply.

I stood there and, like Jacob, wrestled with God. “No.” the thoughts tore through my mind, “What would she say? What would her friends think? What would my family think?” I turned and walked away. I went and eat my meal in misery.

God wasn’t giving up. The girl stood behind the checkout counter, right where I could see her, for the entire meal. Then we sat in the parking lot for at least a half an hour waiting on my parents to get down shopping for groceries at the Publix next door while she and her friends stood around their cars talking after they closed the store for the night. The entire time God was wrestling with my heart, and I wrestled back. That wrestling match of me verses God ended that night after I went to bed, and it ended for the last time.

That night was a turning point in my life, but I didn’t know it at first. I thought everything was going to be fine, I’d repent later and everything would go back to normal but it didn’t. God pulled back and over the next few months I almost never felt His presence, not even at church. He was sending me a message and slowly I understood it, “You promised me your life, you promised to do My Will, but apparently you’ve changed your mind. So you want to do your own thing now? You think you know what’s best? Fine go head then, I won’t get in your way again. When you decide you want to stop playing games and do this from real I’ll be here.”

After that it was no longer God vs. Me, He left me to myself, it was Me vs. Me: the Old Me against the New Me. I had a choice to make: was I going to choose to follow Him, or was I going to choose to live for myself? I had to decide which things I really wanted, a girlfriend, a car, a life of fun in sin, or what He promised, the incomparable sweetness of communion with Him, the provision of all my needs in due time, lasting and meaningful pleasure. I couldn’t have both it ways, I had to choose one or the other, and I spent two years sitting on the fence unable to decide.

I was still a dutiful son to my parents, followed their rules and worked in the family business, I still went to church and worked as an AWANA leader, but I was cussing when around people who didn’t care, I used pornography, I went to good Christian school that forbade drinking and smoking, and I directly violated the contract I signed saying I wouldn’t partake in their use. I didn’t really run off whole-heartedly into sin but neither did I really seek God, and as living a lie always does, it really started to hurt.

The application is, I hope, obvious: we are all faced with this choice. As college students finally out from underneath our parents’ protective umbrella most of us are faced with this choice more pointedly than ever before. I’m not saying smoking cigars or drinking alcohol are inherently sinful activities and I’m certainly not saying girlfriends or cars are bad either, I don’t know what it is in your life that is an idol for you, what issues you struggle with; I simply present my story as an encouragement.

I can tell you first hand that the things of the world become empty and contemptible very quickly, and that nothing can compare to the amazing richness of a life lived in actively pursuing God. Choose Him and you will never regret it.

"And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." Joshua 24:15 (KJV)

~ Andrew J. Goggans
"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but
to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Micah 6:8

- add Go Play With Fire!