My Story Part III: Cheap Vodka, Church & a Call to Preach.

Noticing that I felt love for complete strangers was strange. I could not understand the awakening that was happening with in me. It was as if it happened to me. No one told me that I was supposed to love others nor did I have any direction on how to nurture my spiritual self. So I went to my bedroom closet and pulled out a bible that a woman who stayed with me while my parents traveled gave to me a decade earlier.

I started to read it.

I began with Ephesians and then read 1 Corinthians. I had no idea what I was doing nor did I really understand what it meant. I guess I would have called myself Christian for J.P. made Jesus the center of the conversation. The night we prayed together we actually prayed to God through Jesus and J.P. spoke directly to Jesus, so I guess that’s what made me Christian, plus I was born in America.

That summer as I was preparing to return to the university 175 miles away I decided to read some books that may help me perform better in school. While at the Waldenbooks store in the mall one summer day I stumbled across a book that I had never heard about, it was titled The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. I had no clue what the book was about and had no idea the author was a pastor. So I was surprised when I began to read it to discover the man talking about God.

This is the book that taught me to pray.

The author instructed his readers to talk to God as if God was a friend sitting in a chair next to me. So I did. Honestly, I felt really stupid at first but then I noticed that it started to feel right as I practiced each day. Once I got over feeling silly, I developed a very strong prayer life. I grew intimate with God and began to share everything in my heart and soul just as if I was speaking to a friend. Dr. Peale also encouraged his readers to write scripture on index cards and read then several time throughout the day. It was the beginning of meditation and lectio divina, although I would have not called it either. Slowly my outlook began to shift and I began to strengthen my faith. I kept this practice for nearly 20 years.

I even posted a few index cards on my sun visor in my car. (This will be critical later)

In August, I returned to school and my new apartment with my roommate who I feared may not understand my “new found” spirituality. I went from a kid who could drink a fifth of Rebel Yell or a pint of Vodka just to get the party started to not really having a major desire to drink. No one told me not to; the desire for the massive buzz just left.

After about two weeks I could not keep it a secret any longer. So one night as we were preparing to leave to go out right before I put my car in drive I looked at my roommate and said, “Dude, I have something to tell you and you are not going to understand it. I’ve wanted to tell you this for a few weeks but did not know how.” And that’s when he turned to me and said, “Is it about God?”

I said, “Yes! How did you know?” He said, “Me too.” “You! You are into God? When did this happen?” I asked “April of last year and I did not know how to tell you. I wasn’t sure you would understand.”

Neither of us attended Church or had any real desire to do so. I did not understand pipe organs or hymns. I was into the Clash and being free-spirited. Church felt like it had too many rules and the pastors that I knew never understood folks who could smoke a gram of Blonde Lebanese hash chased by a pint of blue-labeled Smirnoff 100 while Black Dog blared from the studio JBLs. I just did not relate to the folks I had met in the churches we visited. We needed to clean-up out acts before we would be acceptable in the church, or at least that is what we thought. It was only rock-n-roll but we liked it.

So I stayed in the house and continued to read the bible, pray and meditate on scipture.

But what was I to do with this overwhelming heaviness in my soul that made me think I was supposed to be one of them? Why did I think I was supposed to preach in a church when I did not attend, understand the culture or even really like “Christians”?


To be continued.