Story Time with Jesus, Part 3

It’s been probably over a year since I’ve had story time with Jesus.  Since I’m trying to avoid work at the moment, I’m writing another one.

This story commences during my Junior year of college. 

Background:  My whole life I’ve struggled with my weight.  It’s been an up and down thing, and, thanks to several woundings in the past, it has always (in the past) caused me to feel very insecure.

This year of college was my hardest – physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.  All of the above.  I started writing this “victory journal” so I could catalog all the victories I had during the year – this was done mostly because I was so beat up spiritually that it was really hard not to fall into depression and feel like crap all the time.

One day, I was sitting in one of the school’s cafeterias, by myself, studying for a test that I was having next.  I saw several of my friends that I sometimes eat with a few tables over, but I really needed to study for that test.  As it was nearing time to leave, one of my friends (a really hot guy) comes over and gives me an ice cream cone, just to be nice.  These girls, that I didn’t know, sitting in front of me are all like, “Awww, how come no guy ever does stuff like that for me?!”  And it was an incredible self-esteem boost for me.  And, I knew, it was a gift from Jesus.

  In order to understand that way of thinking, you have to realize that I’m not ugly by any stretch, but I surely thought I was at the time.  I had never had a boyfriend or anybody even remotely interested in me.  The lie that I was believing wholeheartedly at that time was, “You’re fat and ugly; no one will ever want to date you.”  So, for a guy, and not only a guy but a hot guy (even though he was just a friend – but those girls didn’t know that), to come over and give me food (realize food and “fat and ugly” were intricately entertwined in my mind as to why no one was ever interested in me) was an incredible miracle to my warped mind.

  And I know it was Jesus because He knew those lies that I was believing in my head and knew that some hot guy giving me an ice cream cone would be a way of speaking truth louder than any words that I am not undesirable because I’m fat and ugly, but people actually like me!  I can’t tell you how profound that one simple act was to me.  Thinking about it makes me so thankful for Jesus lavishing His immeasurable love on me in that instance.  It was nothing in the grand scheme of things, but He knew.  And He undoubtedly cared.  Thank you, Jesus. 

Story Time with Jesus, Story 2

I loved my freshman year of college. I think it was my favorite year of college. It was the year that I fell in love with Jesus. When I was seven, I asked Jesus into my heart, and I had a relationship with Him in jr. high and high school, but He was only a part of my life; He wasn’t my whole life. So, in August of 1999, I set off for Baylor University in Waco, Texas, to begin my college years. It was there that I met a girl, Michelle, and her church, Antioch Community Church, that showed me that there was more to Jesus than who I had currently known Him as. I got filled with the Spirit for the first time in September, and it was then that Jesus and I really started to get to know each other.

Well, that was just the prologue. I had to set up the setting of the story. This story is about my first experience with what a lot of Christians call “travail”, but can less eloquently be called, “crying-till-your-eyes-hurt intercession”.

This was an interesting event in my life. I had never heard of intercession (praying on behalf of someone), and no one I knew at college had ever labeled it that. Oh, we interceded for people all the time, but we never really delineated that there are several types of prayer, intercession being only one of them. So, on October 31st, our church drove down to Austin for a Halloween outreach on one of the most frequented streets of Austin – 6th street. It’s an amazing site to behold there on the 31st. Thousands of people dress up in a variety of costumes and “parade” (or you could say, trudge drunkenly) up and down the street. Our form of street evangelism was to set up on a side street in groups of 20-30 people and do three things: worship to invite the Holy Spirit, do several dramas set to music (which I particularly loved – the people who made the dramas were especially creative), and talk/pray with people who pass by. I’m not so much a street evangelist, but it was fun!

Anyway, so I and some friends had talked to a guy, Jonathan, about Jesus, and I was really moved by His devotion to search out spiritual things, even though he was ultimately misguided (although now thinking about it, I’m not all that impressed cause I know he was a completely deceived guy and his unerrant zeal to go after things was probably a result of having a radically single-minded personality). So, at the next home group, we shared our experiences with the group and with those who didn’t go.

So, I start talking about Jonathan and how talking with him had really affected me. As I near the end of saying my two cents, I’m crying and have this huge urge to weep really hard. And it doesn’t go away through the rest of the testimonies. Finally, at the end, I just let it ALL out and cry uncontrollably, except then, I’m not just crying for Jonathan; now I’m crying for the whole world who doesn’t know Jesus. This was such a weird experience for me because it was the first time that I was just crying out for PEOPLE in general, and not someone specifically.

Anyway, it was also funny the responses of the people around me toward my weeping. One girl took it upon herself to comfort me – which was funny! There was nothing wrong with me! If you’ve ever been in a community of people who is not familiar with intercession in the form of “travail”, you’ll get that a lot. I did that several times over the 4 years of my college life; no one understood why I was crying, and I got a lot of sympathetic pats on the back. It wasn’t until I got to IHOP the I realized I wasn’t the only person crying in travail. At IHOP, practically EVERYONE did it. So, whenever I would go into a bout of travail, everyone would just leave me alone and let me cry cause they knew what was happening to me.

But bless those who didn’t understand me. May they all experience the joy of travail at some point in their life!

Yum. I love me some intercession!

Story Time with Jesus – Story 1

I was reminiscing about my freshman year of college when I first met the Holy Spirit and my relationship with Jesus took a dive into the depths. There was one event in particular that sticks out to me because it was a fun part of my history in God, and it really has endeared the “foolish” things of the Holy Spirit to me (probably b/c I’m so foolish and not a fan of decorum).

When I first entered my freshan year, the Passion worship “movement” (the one with Dave Crowder), or whatever it was, was first sweeping the nation. That year there were a plethora of concerts that were held across the country, the important one in this story being in Austin, TX. It was only a month or so into fall semester and I had made a friend whose friends had tickets to the concert, so I ended up going along. It was funny the dichotomy between the painfulness of the actual trip there and back, and the beauty/endearing nature of the actual concert. The two guys that my friend, Crystal, and I went with were just full of themselves and selfish. One the way back from the concert, after I’ve expended all my energy weeping profusely and wiping snot off my face, one of the guys decides he needs to go to a hotel to meet this hot girl he had met and talk to her for hours into the already deepening night while we wait, exhausted and bored.

But the concert made up for any of the bad memories.

I love worship. I have always loved it. It speaks to my heart often times more than a really good sermon. So, the concert consisted of most of the Passion worship leaders of the time (although I can’t remember any but Crowder at the moment) and we were in the nose-bleed section, but enjoying worshipping all the same. In the middle of a song, my mouth just starts moving and all I can say is, “Jesus”, over and over again. Now, I had only just been introduced to the things of the Spirit and had really had no actual experience with the Holy Spirit when this happened. I thought maybe I was speaking in tongues, but I was saying “Jesus”, not words I couldn’t understand. Anyway, in the midst of this “foolishness”, I was crying because the immensity of the love of Jesus I was feeling – also another experience I had hardly ever experienced in that capacity.

In the midst, there was kind of a “selah” instrumental time and then this guy, who was above me in the Nosebleed Plus section, started crying out, “Holy, holy, holy”, over and over again, which, of course, just made me cry more. Needless to say, after the concert, even though we had to go see the retarded guy’s girlfriend, I was on a high. Love was all around me. It was beautiful and glorious.

postscript: I did find out later that I was not alone in my weird “tongue-moving” experience. My college pastor, much later, told us a story where he experienced the same thing. Perhaps this phenomenon has an actual name, like crying in intercession being called “travail”, but I don’t know what it is. I didn’t get my prayer language until that next April.

I think this will become a series on my blog. I love when people share their own experience with Jesus. It helps me understand them more and enjoy them all the better! Write your own. . .