A WONDERFUL GOD-EXPERIENCE

I asked God earlier this week if He would mind doing something in front of me that would be a move His size and not of mine.  Christianity, my opinion, has become a consumer-based, humanistic concept, that leaves its participants dry.  The search is for something more and the more should and will be simply Jesus' engagement within our walk.

Tuesday evening I was called to the hospital because a man I met only once some fifteen years ago was desperate.  He told his ex he was afraid of dying and going to hell.  She asked if he would like for me to visit him.  He acknowledged that he would.

This man in his early sixties was awaiting release from the hospital with a target of a nursing home hospice assignment.  He had not been able to talk well for several days.

When I entered his room a frail, frightened, unshaven, broken man peered through hauntingly deep-set eyes. He did not know what to ask or say.  He was at the end of his controlling-by-nature rope.

I felt a deep love for him.  The occasion had a feel to it that I can't explain; it was just that more was going on than the three of us; him, his ex, and me.

I assured him he could just relax while I inquired of a few ideas that would help him move forward.  I asked if he had ever been buried in Jesus.  He had.

We next talked about how he was afraid because he had done so many bad things in life.  I assured him Jesus became all of his bad that he could become all of Jesus' good....II Cor. 5:21; the exchange was a success on the cross.  Assurance was given that Jesus paid for his debts completely and that he was a free man; free to die and free to believe he would always live.

My stay needed to be brief so I told him that he should pay attention to God; that God and he would work things out in his conscience.  I reiterated that I loved him dearly and that I saw him as a good, good man because of the Jesus exchange.

Before I left, I talked with his ex outside of the door pointing out that what we saw in there was no signal of what would go on after we left.  I wanted her to know that God had access to him all through the night and that there will be exchanges between the two.

The next day, yesterday, he died suddenly.  I was called to the room.  His ex was baffled and pleased and grateful.  God evidently did break in.  A nurse came by to check on him earlier in the day.  She called his ex and explained how different he seemed.

Something wonderful has happened.  Where he has worn the nurses station out by buzzing and complaining day after day, today was a total reversal.  He has a calm like he has never had. Something has changed.  He seems so different today.

God moved an intense and frustrated and scared man overnight to one of calm and peace and assurance.  I could not get over the look on his face as his body remained in the bed.  The night before it was that of 90+ year old man full of wrinkles and fret.

Now his face seemed to have every wrinkle erased. He appeared to be 50 years old. His once haggled face was smooth; not a common death-look, but of relaxed joy.  I think there was a relationship healed in that room during the night.

This experience was a wonderful God-experience.  I am blessed that I got to walk through what began as a stressful scene and concluded in a beauty not of this earth.

God works while we fumble in massive cluelessness.  May we seek more of His hand rather than our explanation and calculation.