introductions

So here's the thing. I've followed Jesus for a long time.

When I was a kid, my parents were missionaries, meaning they were people who decided that they felt like God was asking them to pick up their lives and go somewhere else to help people there follow him. So they went to seminary, which is where you can study the Bible and Christian theology really in depth. They met there, and married, and had me, had my sister, and then, finally, moved to a different country. Their goal there was to help existing churches start new churches with new people who wanted to follow Jesus too. So that is the family I was born into.

As you can imagine, I heard a lot about God growing up. And since my parents are really smart people who went to seminary, I learned a lot of theology growing up, too, and learned that what you hear in church isn't necessarily true, but God always is. And my parents taught me that he's given us what we need to get to know him, and so you have to study and pray, and listen to other people who know him, so you can learn about him for yourself. With an invitation like that, and parents living what they preached, why wouldn't I go try to get to know God? So like I said, I follow Jesus.

And as I read, and prayed, and listened to people who'd been following the God longer than I had, something mysterious happened. I began to learn things, not from the teachers, not from the preachers or the books, but from the inside. And I didn't really notice it until I would then learn those same things from the teachers and the preachers - later. And as I read and looked for God on my own time, I felt protected. I felt love that resonated deep inside me. Some people say that when they start following Jesus, they experience peace, but for me, it was protection and love.

Eventually I put two and two together and figured out that I had, for years, been experiencing what Jesus was talking about when he said the Holy Spirit would be our teacher, and a spring of fresh, living water inside of us, and what Paul means when he talks about the Holy Spirit being in us. Those were things I'd read, but they then took on new meaning.

But I didn't figure that out for a long time, not until I'd been in college for a while. See, I didn't stop wanting to follow Jesus when I left my family because I'd accepted this connection with God for myself a long time ago, and it didn't depend on them. It was the root that nourished my life and kept me safe in the dizzying vortex of change. And as I followed Jesus into college, he sent someone to tell me what he was going to do. I was at a normal gathering of people from my church who were praying for each other, and as we prayed, the girl praying for me started telling me that God was showing her he was about to deepen and grow what I knew of him, beyond what I'd ever imagined. And in the next 3 years of my life, that is exactly what happened. And in that process I learned that the protection and love I'd felt growing up, and the things I'd learned on my own, were moments I could point to and say, "God was with me there." I had, as a child who'd decided to accept the invitation to try and get to know God, actually begun to get to know him. Not from a book, or a teacher, but in my real life.

That is my story. The story of my life. I hope I make space sometime to talk about what this relationship with God, through Jesus and the Holy Spirit is like, because so far I've only told you how I realized that that is, in fact, what was going on. Often it's still hard to realize and remember that God is living and active in my life, because he's not a visible, physical presence to us. But I wanted to write about it, because there's one funny feature about this relationship: it's easy to miss. Somehow, even though you might think regular interactions with the God of the universe might be remarkable, they slip from my memory ever so quickly, and it's not until I try to tell someone something about my week that I realize God's been doing something. So I want to tell the stories, so that hopefully I can mark them better, and maybe other people can benefit from hearing them.

This is my introduction.

I've followed Jesus for a long time. And to my surprise, it's the most real thing I've ever committed to.