I was raised as an Evangelical Christian (Wesleyan/Nazarene). By age 15, I was working in Christian radio. By 18, I was teaching the Bible to adults much older than me. But by 22, I had lost my faith after poking around the "Jesus Seminar" books which were popular in the 1990s. That was almost 25 years ago now. Lots of time in the wilderness followed.
Just about 1 year ago, the Spirit of God came upon me while I was sitting at my computer reading Twitter. For a couple weeks prior, I had been praying part of the 51st Psalm ("create in me a clean heart O Lord...") daily. Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, I was overcome with the PERFECT love of Christ for a few minutes (felt much longer). A few nights later, I was awakened to the glory of heaven while lying in bed in the middle of the night!
It wasn't visual but my heart became like eyes which beheld the presence of an exalted God and the host of heaven. Also, I heard music playing in my mind. No words can do justice to any of it.
The Lord led me here in quite the circuitous fashion. Immediately after wrangling me, He seemed focused on correcting and supplementing my knowledge of the Bible. Then, while the Biblical crash course continued, He began showing me the writings of the early church fathers (ccel.org, christian-history.org, etc). Shortly thereafter, I read "Rebuilding the Foundations" by Paul Pavao (as well as his books "The Apostles' Gospel" and "Decoding Nicea").
Not long after that I read David Bercot's book, "Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up". Then came Chester Weaver and his YouTube lessons in "Gelassenheit". That led me to "Joy in Submission" by Donald Martin which I finished a few weeks back.
I had very little idea what an Anabaptist was even as recently as a couple months ago. It was like the Lord was playing the game "Jeopardy" with me by first giving me the answer and eventually I discovered the correct the question ("What is...... Anabaptism??"). My guess is the Lord isn't terribly interested in how humans relabel the one true faith (Eph 4:5, Jude 3) over time. So apparently "Content is King" (ya know since the Word is Jesus and He's King... just a little geeky pun for you...
Google it).
So I am here for as long as the Holy Spirit lets me graze this pasture. So far I am really enjoying the meadow that you all have spread out for us! Thank you to all the contributors! And, of course, all praise to God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Peace to you all.
