The Local Church

I am His and He is Mine

I was born and raised in Berkeley, California. During the late 60's and early 70's my parents were seeking for some deeper meaning in life and became Christians. As seeking believers, they began to meet with the local church in Berkeley. Growing up in the church in Berkeley was as normal as any other Sunday goers' experience. Every Sunday, we would dress up in Sunday attire, pack ourselves into the car like a can of sardines, and go to what people typically call Sunday school, or what I call children's meeting.

At children's meetings we sang songs, learned Bible stories, ate snacks, made crafts, and best of all received prizes for memorizing verses in the Bible. To me, the Bible was at first just a storybook, something objective outside of me that I couldn't really relate to or identify with. I mainly liked to go to children's meetings to get prizes for memorizing verses or to have fun making the craft and to play with other kids my age. I didn't mind listening to Bible stories either. So, I continued to go to children's meetings and one day I had a definite experience of the Lord Jesus Christ.

One of my first definite experiences of Christ that I can recall occurred when I was eleven or twelve years old, the age that girls become petty and cliquish. One Sunday morning before the meeting, I told my mother, “I don't want to go to children's meeting today.” When she asked why, I told her that the girls were excluding me. My mother then told me, “You don't go to the church meetings for other people, but you go to the meetings for the Lord. You need to pray to the Lord and tell Him that you're going for Him.” So I prayed to the Lord and told Him that I'd go to the meeting for Him and no one else. I didn't get down on my knees to pray; I simply told the Lord how I felt and that I was making this decision to go to the meetings for Him. This small prayer didn't seem to mean much at the time, but looking back, it meant a lot. My praying to the Lord was my choosing Him. I didn't realize it at the time but that prayer was a conversation with the Lord Jesus.

Later at Sunday school that morning, although there was no drastic change in my environment, within me there was a deep sense of peace and joy. The Lord Jesus became a living person to me. His presence became an inexpressible, profound and abundant flow of joy, comfort and satisfaction that I experience to this day. Looking back, I now realize that the Lord has preserved my relationship with Him by honoring the prayer I had prayed. When God hears a prayer, He never forgets. Thus, God will use all means, positive or negative, as was my case, to bring all His people unto Himself for His possession and inheritance (1 Peter 2:9; Colossians 1:12).

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