In the Classroom of the Lord

[write2witness]

I led a pretty misearable existence most of my life. I was thirty-six years old before I finally shut down my controlling inner pride, opened my mouth, and asked Jesus Christ to take over my life. The events which transpired to bring me to this conclusion are something I would like to share with all of you here (this is an exerpt from the book I'm writing, also entitled In the Classroom of the Lord).

I have always been a very intellectual person. I was born with an abnormally high IQ, which in turn made me a loner, an outcast. You don't have to have something different about you on the outside, that people can see; deep down people can sense when you are different.

I tried making friends and having relationships, but they all ended painfully (and some even tragically). My home life wasn't much better. My folks provided for me and my brother and I always felt encouraged and protected. Neither me nor my brother were ever abused, physically or emotionally. I knew my parents cared for me, but these were not words that were ever spoken out loud very often in our house. Sometimes silence can be just as bad as the smack of a hand.

I grew up bitter and angry. Alone. No friends. The best way to describe me is to say I was just like Stitch (in the movie, Lilo & Stitch), and angry little destructive alien who wrekced havoc wherever he went because deep down there was no sense of belonging to anyone or anything.

I also was born with handicaps, which only added to my feelings of alienation. To counter the overhwleming tidal wave of insecurity and wothlessness I became mean and nasty. No one could hurt me if I didn't give a rip. Eventually, anger and hatred became my personality, which only isolated me even more from the people around me.

In 1996 I got a small room in a boarding house and it was here that I realized I could no longer go on. My life sucked and there was nothing I could do about it. I had always been able to figure things out, to know what to do to get out of any given situation. But not this time. This time I had no answers. No escape. I finally understood that no matter how long I tried I would never be able to patch that deep, aching, inner hole inside of me. It was humanly impossible.

I knew about Jesus because I had heard about Him enough times. I knew of Him and that He was supposed to have died for me. I thought it was hogwash. I had always figured that Jesus was just the white man's buddha.

But even so, on the second day in my room, just me and the walls and what few meager things I posessed, I spoke aloud to the Lord for the first time in my life, "Ok, please help me. I can't stand it anymore. Help me. Please."

I remembered times when I was a little boy the feeling of love, for my parents, for the trees and the grass and the blue sky. So many simple pleasures which now felt like alien artifacts, buried in the dust, dead and dry as bones. I felt like a hollow shell, a shadow on the wall, the mere illusion of a man.

I asked Jesus to rescue me. I couldn't bear remembering who I once was and never being able to recapture some semblance of that humanity. I wanted to feel again. I wanted to belong. I wanted to love and be loved. Who doesn't?

I didn't feel any different that first day, so I asked Jesus to take over my life twelve more times. It didn't seem to be working.

And then one morning I woke up, and slowly I realized that the usual self-doubting, self-loathing thoughts I always had were no longer there. Almost every day I can remember I would always have some lowly, self-demoralizing thoughts about myself: I'm ugly, I'm not good enough, I'm a loser, worthless, disfigured, etc.

I tried remembering one of them. I spent about an hour trying to grasp just one of those bad thoughts. But I couldn't do it. I was shocked. At what point did I consciously decide to stop thinking these thoughts? And how had I managed to do it overnight?

Instantly it hit me, and I sat down hard on the floor. Jesus was real.

He really had come, and He'd taken those thoughts away. It was the only answer that made any sense, because I knew no human being could manage to do what I had just done in a matter of a few hours. Heck, I knew countless people who had spent years trying to do the same thing without any progress at all. Change for a human being did not happen that fast.

I started jumping up and down and in doing so it felt as if my insides were being warmed by some imaginary hot iron. It was a wild sensation, one I can't adequately describe. I just somehow knew .... Jesus had really come.

[to be continued]

[JudgeNot]

Anxiously awaiting the continuation…

[write2witness]

For the rest of that day, after that first stunning revelation in the morning - He had come! - I wandered aimlessly around town. I had no particular place to go, no thoughts of where I was going or why. I just walked as if bouncing, light as a feather; a small sparrow released from captivity.

Later in the day after stopping at the grocery store to get some food I was leaving the parking lot when I thought, 'Lord, I think I should get a bible.'

Immediately I heard the loud honk of a car horn and looked to my left and there was this small store with a large burgundy colored awning. In bright white letters on the awning it read Under His Canopy.

It was a bible store.

I sat and stared at it for so long the cars behind me began to honk their horns in irrtation. Finally I went over to the store, parked, and went inside.

I had no thoughts going in of what I was doing there, except to find a bible.

There were two women behind the counter when I walked inside and they both smiled as I approached them. I had no idea what I was going to say, so I opted to just say the truth (as odd as it was), 'The Lord sent me here.'

Neither of the women seemed surprised by this, and I found that even more bizarre.

The older lady asked me, 'What kind of bible would you like?'

'There's more than one?'

I was a little perplexed. Why would there be different versions of the same book? How could a person choose if there were more than one? It didn't seem like something God would do, although how I knew this I had no idea.

I pointed to one of the books on the shelf behind the woman, an older-looking bible in a leather bound cover, the same color as the awning outside the store.

'Let me see that one,' I said.

'Ah, good choice,' the woman said, and she took the bible off the shelf and laid it on the counter in front of me. 'I have this same one myself.'

I looked down at the cover; HOLY BIBLE was written on it in gilded gold letters. I picked the bible up and turned it to read the letters on the spine - KJV, King James Version.

'Who is King James,' I asked.

The woman smiled.

'King James I was a Christian who wanted the Bible in the hands of the common man,' she said. 'The crowning achievement of King James was his commissioning the translation of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible in 1611. The King appointed the world's best scholars to the work and throughout the translation paid careful attention to ensure that the translation was completed.

We Christians would do well to take heed to King James' comment on Christian conduct: "Holiness is the first and most requisite quality of a Christian, as proceeding from true fear and knowledge of God."

The Word of God is foundational to everything that pertaineth to life and godliness--it is also the standard by which we shall all be judged. Handle it carefully.'

I regarded the bible in my hands with a little more thoughtfullness. 'I see,' I said. 'I'll take it then.'

She put the bible in a yellow bag with the words Under His Canopy stenciled in white on the front. I paid for it, thanked her, and then left the store.

Watching the dark red canopy disappearing behind me in the rearview mirror as I drove home I wondered about this King James. I had no clue about God, let alone a bible written by a 16th century King. Everything it seemed was alien to me.

I thought about what the woman had said, Holiness is the first and most requisite quality of a Christian, as proceeding from true fear and knowledge of God. What did this mean? I wondered. And why would God want me to fear him?

When I got back to the boarding house I went up to my room and sat on the floor with my new King James bible in my lap. I had no clue what to do next, so I asked (out loud), 'What do I do now?'

I waited. There was no answer. I felt rather foolish, alone in the room, talking to no one.

I opened the bible, some dim memory lending me the compulsion to just let the pages flop open and poke my finger down, stabbing a verse at random.

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom".

I jumped, startled, throwing the bible all the way across the room. It hit the door with a muffled thump, landing face down on the floor.

The book is possessed! Absurd, but that's what I thought. How else could such a thing have just happened?

Well, you did ask God what to do next, didn't you?

I laughed. Yes, I had. Ok ... so this was how it worked? You ask God something and he answers from the book. It seemed reasonable enough.

[to be continued]

[Shylynne]

a small sparrow released from captivity

awesome!

Anxiously awaiting the continuation too…

[write2witness]

I spent almost every day reading the King James bible. After a while words like Verily, verily began to grate on my nerves. The main problem was that I could not picture Jesus, the son of God, saying these words. It made him sound like a bad stage actor in a Shakespearean play.

Finally I asked God if maybe I should get another bible. Since the woman at Under His Canopy had said there were other versions I figured perhaps there was a better one out there. Although, on some level I still couldn't discern, it bothered me that men would have made other versions of a book that was originally penned by God himself.

Either way, I didn't have much choice. The words of the King James version were too corny for me to believe in. I wanted a bible that didn't make me feel as if I were reading the screenplay to some bad Kevin Costner movie.

So I returned to the bible store and inquired about the other versions. The same lady who had helped me before suggested I try an NIV. I asked what the difference was, as opposed to the King James.

"The language," she said. "The New International Version is more modern."

I asked her if this interfered with the message in any way. She said it didn't, although I had my suspicions. I wasn't a bible expert (or an expert on God, for that matter), so I decided to purchase the NIV and give it a go.

I spent the next few days reading this new version, but I could not stem the disquieting sense that whatever the bible itself had to offer I was somehow missing out on it. I had no idea if this was due to the different versions, the language, or the fact that I knew nothing about the bible. Unsure of what to do, I left the NIV on my dresser and did not read it again for a couple days.

One night when I came home from work I walked over to where I'd laid the bible down and it was gone. I searched the whole room, but I could not find the bible anywhere.

For the next two weeks I would occassionally stop what I was doing and look under the bed, the dresser, inside cabinets, the bathroom, even walk around outside looking in the bushes that grew along the walkways of the house.

It was a puzzle, and so one day at work I told the young man I worked with what had happened. I had no idea until that night when I first spoke to him that he was a Christian. His name was Josh. He was twenty-one years old, almost twenty years younger than me. I had always seemed to graviate toward younger people. I suspected the reason being that most adults were too stuffy or stiffnecked for my tastes.

"Maybe God wants you to get another bible," Josh said.

I laughed. "Yeah," I said, half joking. "And so what? He threw the other one away?"

Josh shrugged. "You never know."

I went home that night wondering if that was even possible. Perhaps God was sick and tired of all these different bible versions, and maybe this was His way of telling me. It didn't seem plausible, but there didn't seem to be any plausible explaination for the disappearing bible, either.

The next morning I awoke to the gentle pitter-patter of rain. I got up to close my window, and as I looked outside I saw the bible: it was lying on the roof just outside the window, the pages fluttering in the breeze.

I stared at the bible. There was no way I had put it out there myself, that much I knew. I thought about taking the screen off and reaching out to grab it. Instead, I slowly closed the window and pulled the shade down. I went back to bed, but it was a long time before I could sleep.

[to be continued]

[Shylynne]

Verily, verily began to grate on my nerves...

I,  who can`t lay down a book once I pick it up ...am so enjoying this testimony!...but... how shall I say...not patiently waiting to hear the rest of the story lol!  

Keep going write2witness!  

[Faithwalk]

Encore! Encore! Encore!!!  Makes very good reading.

I went back to bed, but it was a long time before I could sleep.
What happened?  

[Shylynne]

what happened to write2witness  

[archangel]

what happened to write2witness  

:(Yeah...what happened?  I want to know too Shylynne, obviously a breakthrough but how?

[write2witness]

Sorry I left y'all hanging. I know its been a while since I've been to this forum, but I just wanted to let everyone know I'm still around. Hopefully I can finish this story at some point. Right now I got a lot going on. A whole other story for another time.

- w2w