I have been meaning to write about this for quite some time, and i have finally gotten around to it. This isn’t a theological treatise or an exegetical paper. This is a personal testimony of a miracle the Lord worked in my life this past June at a conference in Atlanta, GA called, “Jesus Culture”.

As I settled in for the long drive down to Atlanta with a bus full of noisy, excited teenagers, I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. (which reminds me… this is a rather lengthy story, so you might want to settle in yourself). I was at a pretty difficult place in my life. For the last two or three years prior to this trip, my heart and mind had slowly but surely begun to fill with doubts of all kinds. I had doubts about the reliability of the Bible. I had doubts about the existence of God. I doubted my own experiences with God. I doubted other people’s experiences with God. There was almost nothing that I had ever believed about God, the church, Christianity, and life in general, that was not coming under deep, genunine, soul-wrenching doubt.

For a time during this season of doubt, I had continued searching for answers. I had continued to search for something or someone who would finally put my doubts to rest, and give me the answers I was looking for. After I began to believe that no answers were forthcoming, I all but abandoned seeking for them. I had been wounded by the silence I was hearing from God, and I was scared to keep asking questions lest my doubts be proven true.

All my seeking left me only with more questions and more doubts. I had come to a place where I felt like if I asked one more question and was met with silence, or if I stepped out in faith one more time, and was left grasping at nothing, I might end up in hopelessness and despair. I had a picture of myself during this dark time – There was a ladder coming down out of the sky, its bottom rung high in the air, and I was clinging desperately to it with both hands, too terrified to reach for the next rung. I feared that if I reached out again, and missed… there would be nothing beneath me to catch my fall. My fears and my doubts had paralyzed me.

So there I was, on my way to a conference in Atlanta, barely clinging to faith, not daring to expect God to reveal Himself to me in any significant way. Besides, what kind of name is ‘Jesus Culture’ for a conference anyway?

One of the first sessions I attended, the speaker gave a message about increasing our level of expectation. His point was that we serve an infinite and incredible God who loves us, and we ought to expect for this infinite God to accomplish astonishing and incredible things in this world. This message convicted me, and I began to ask the Lord to increase my expectations. I could not yet bring myself to ACTUALLY expect the Lord to do something astonishing, but i could ask Him to help increase my expectation for something astonishing.

The session that evening convicted me even more. The main thrust of the message was that since we serve an infinite God who is also relational, there is no limit to how well we can know him; His love, his character, his Being, is an inexhaustible fountain… how can we ever be satisfied with our present state of knowing Him, and experiencing Him? There are always new depths to explore, new sides of Him we have never experienced in our own lives. Our God is a Lion and a Lamb, a Warrior and a Servant, a Savior and a Healer. He is all of these things, and all of these sides of Him are infinite – we can always experience new dimensions and new realities of who He is. And, what is more, God deeply desires to reveal Himself to us, as fully and completely as our finite beings can handle.

After hearing these two messages, I began to repent – but not for my doubts. My doubts were genunine, and I have never thought that my doubting was sinful. I had honest questions, and was seeking honest answers. I repented of my lack of expectation, and of my being satisfied and complacent towards God. I had stopped pursuing a deeper relationship with this God of infinte depth, and that filled my heart with regret.

I will never forget the deep, unconditional love and forgiveness I experienced from the Father that night. I simultaneously experienced a profound recognition of my own unworthiness and guilt, and a profound sense of joy and worth as the Lord forgave me, showered me with his love, and declared me righteous in his sight.

But God wasnt finished yet. He had another miracle to work in me.

Over the course of the conference, I had the opportunity to receive prayer for healing on several occasions. I have been a diabetic since the age of sixteen. Whenever there was an opportunity to receive prayer for healing during this conference, I got it. Experiencing the Lord as our Healer was one of the main thrusts of the conference, in fact. I was prayed over numerous times for diabetes, and at least once for healing for my eyesight which is terribly poor. People were giving all kinds of testimonies throughout the weekend, of God healing them from all kinds of ailments and diseases. 

After all that prayer, from all kinds of different people, when I came back from Jesus Culture, I still had diabetes. I still depended on prescription glasses. And I had actually gotten some kind of flu, so I came home more sick than when I had left! (Three strikes, you’re out).

Now, here is the miracle. When I left for Atlanta, I was barely clinging to faith. All it would have taken was one more disappointment, and I would have slid from depression to despair. When I came back from Atlanta, I had experienced three significant disappointments – three things that should have knocked the winds completely out of my sails in the fragile state I was in. But, somehow, against all reason, I came back from Atlanta with a heart full of faith. It was not something that I tried really hard to bring myself to, it was not a choice that I made to believe in God. I just suddenly had faith. It was a gift from the Lord, pure and simple. Days before, I had found it nearly impossible to believe in Him, and now I found it nearly impossible NOT to believe in Him. I have no explanation other than that God gave me the gift of faith. It was a miracle. 

So, that is my story. I welcome your thoughts and comments about any part of it, including theological statements you may agree/disagree with. Don’t let the fact that it is a testimony, not a treatise, stop you from jumping in with questions or whatever. If you have had a similar experience, I would be interested to hear about it… especially if anyone  has gone through a similar time of great doubt and confusion.

Thanks for reading. That’s my two sense.