I was raised a reformed Jewish girl. My Judaism is more of an ethnic heritage than a religion. I went to a temple on the high holidays twice a year. We kept Passover. We lit Hanukkah candles. But I never saw my family pray or read scripture. It was more like an ethnic identity. So I got into the American Plains Indian way, the Sundance way. That was my next thing. I did that for a while. I got into Hinduism, Buddhism and eventually ended up in the Rosicrucian order. I believed that I had God within me. That each person was in themselves God and all that we had to do was meditate to access the God that is within them. I am concentrating on learning visualization and meditation and all of those things. When I ended up getting back together with my college sweetheart, he was a backslidden believer in Jesus Christ. He had decided to come back to God. I had decided to go even further in with God that I had known, but not God with a capital “G”. So, he got me to read scripture along with my Rosicrucian studies. I would sit in lotus position meditating and he would kneel and pray. He loves, he wants to follow Christ and I want to show him that he’s immature and that what we call New Age is the right way of thinking. So we are falling more and more in love. We both love God as we understand Him. We don’t know how we are going to get together. We want to get married but we are not going to get married unless we are in agreement. He’s praying for me. I’m trying to teach him. One day he was coming into town and I’m at work. I felt like there were people in the room with me when there is no one in the room with me. I think if I just turn my head fast enough, I will catch them. Now I know that there was a battle going on for my very soul that day. At the time, I just kept thinking that there was someone in the room with me. I’m just exhausted. That night we are praying. He’s going to say the prayer for us before bed. By this time, I am not sitting in the lotus position, I am actually kneeling. I said to God; “Ted keeps saying that you’re over here and I keep saying that you’re over there. He keeps saying you’re like this and I think you’re like this. I don’t know where you are God. But whoever you are and wherever you are, I just want to follow you.” Then Jesus spoke to me. He said; “I’m right here Lisa.” When He said that, my mind just blew wide open. I understood a series of things very, very clearly. One, that voice that I have heard my whole life, that calling, that feeling of someone being next to me my whole life had a name. That name was Jesus. The next thing I understood was that He had been with me my whole life without me knowing His name. But now that I knew His name, I had a choice to make. I could choose right then and there to have Him be with me or I could tell Him to go away. Then I heard another voice and it was my own voice but it didn’t come in my head, it was like in my solar plexus. It’s kind of embarrassing but I said; “Take me, Lord Jesus, take me, take me.” At that moment, I was born again. That person who had been with me all of my life without me knowing His name now would be with me my whole life.
My folks were good folks. My family is a great family, I love my Jewish family. I love getting together with them for the Holidays. But I have a personal relationship with a God who hears me and guides me and adores me and is the kindest lover I have ever known. I never even heard of that sort of a thing growing up. He’s never left me and He’s shown up in my life again and again and again. That moment of clarity was the greatest clarity I have ever had in my life.
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