True Worship

I became a Christian in high school.  I came from a family that never went to church, and I knew almost nothing about Christianity, and had no real interest in spiritual matters.  But there was a girl in my study hall that used to read her Bible.  I thought it was odd, so I asked her about it.  She invited me to a non-denominational fellowship in Richmond called The Huguenot House.  A few weeks later at a Thursday night Bible study, I prayed to invite Christ into my life.

I can honestly say that was the first time in my life that I can ever remember being truly happy.  The next two years were some of the happiest years of my life.  There was a whole new dimension to relationship that I had never seen before. I felt at peace.  Life is all about relationships. including your relationship with God.  In fact, your relationship with God has to be at the top of the list if you want to be truly happy.  I knew that once.

But by the time I graduated from college, I decided that I had enough, and didn’t need this anymore.  It had fulfilled its purpose.  Now it was time to move on.   Part of the decision was caused by feelings that I had been wronged by a group of Christians.  Part of it was a burning need to prove something to others.  At any rate, I became focused on my career, and pretty much closed the door to everything else in my life for twenty years.

It is surprising what you can accomplish  when you focus on one thing, and exclude everything -  and everyone – else.  It is also frightening what you can do to yourself and those around you.  It is also surprising how easy it is to rationalize what you are doing.  You can kid yourself into believing that you are sacrificing yourself for your family.  You can think of all the things that your family has that you never had when you were growing up.  You can kid yourself into thinking that you are a wonderful father because you are a good provider.  And none of it is true.

Workaholics are addicts just as much as anyone with chemical addictions.  And just like any other addicts, they put themselves at the top of all their priorities.  Everything revolves around them, and they need to have it that way.

But that is a very unhappy way to live.  I woke up one day in my forties with a great job, and nothing else.  My marriage was on the rocks, I was a virtual stranger to my family, I had no true friends, and I was miserable -  once again.  But this time, I knew what I needed to do.

My wife prayed for me for years.  She joined a church by herself, and every Sunday got the kids ready and took them to church while I slept in.  I had to sleep in because it was the only day I had to myself, right?  For twenty years, I went to church only on the protestant holy days of obligation: Easter and Christmas Eve.  But suddenly one day, I took the Explorer’s classes and joined the church.  I became an usher.  I became a lay reader.  And a challis bearer.  I helped start a new Christian men’s group, and a year later became the Director of that group.  I took vacation time from work so I could go to Ash Wednesday services at church.  I taught the adult Sunday school class.  I took a week off from work.  and helped the youth group take the kids to the Creation music festival in Pennsylvania.

The word “repent” means literally to make a U-turn.  And anyone who doubts the presence of God, His awesome grace, and power to change lives, should have seen this U-turn.  My loving wife, who had prayed for me for years, became absolutely unglued when the change came.  It only goes to prove that you have to be very, very careful what you pray for.

There was another part of my life that was missing.  I have a deep love of music.  I played guitar when I was in high school and college.  But when I graduated from college, I knew that I was never going to make a living at playing guitar.  So, I packed them away.  I decided it was time to grow up and get on with real life.  I decided that if you can’t make a living at something, then it has no purpose.  I did not touch my guitars for twenty years.

But a piece of me died when I packed the guitars away.  And part of the gift I received when the prodigal son finally returned, was I learned the real importance of music.  Along with a friend, we started a music program for our church’s youth group.  The two of us worked with some other church’s youth groups.  Then one day someone said, “Hey why don’t we start a coffee house?”  As I said, you have to be careful what you pray for.