“My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready.” Psalm 108:2
Words fail to convey what happened next. As many times as I’ve tried to explain it out loud (which is few) or tried writing it down (which is many) I can never quite put the right words to the experience.
In a night of despair at my pitiful state, I found myself doing something that I never would have imagined myself doing… Overwhelmed by the bleakness of my world-views, I decided that I would give God one chance and once chance only. I knelt down by the side of my bed, thinking to myself the entire time that I had gone absolutely crazy, that I was speaking to no one but my imagination.
But I desired to believe. I think it was the first time in my life that I was actually open to the possibility that God could exist. It was the first time that I laid aside my pride and was ready to believe, should there be good enough reason to do so.
So I knelt down and I prayed for the first time in my life. I told God that I was ready. I asked Him to reveal Himself to me; I told Him I wanted so badly to believe, but that I couldn’t. I poured out my heart before Him and I asked in all sincerity if He existed.
What happened next is beyond words. Truly ineffable. My body began to shake ever so slightly and I was filled with a joy that I had never before known. I thought my heart would burst out of my chest! In the course of a single moment I knew, without any doubt, that God existed and more, the He loved me! That God was love! Love beyond any love I had ever known!
A few moments later I was sitting on the floor next to my bed, out of breath and shaking uncontrollably. My palms were sweating. All that I could do was cry. So I cried. Out of joy, out of shock, out of sorrow… I don’t know. Probably a mixture of all three.
This experience left me convinced, beyond any measure of doubt, of God’s existence. Despite my skeptical nature (which, trust me, I’m a very skeptical person), I could in no way doubt what happened that night. But it also left me a little bit lost. My whole world was turned around. Everything I had believed was debunked in one night. Where was I supposed to go from there? God seemed to have overlooked that part.
I don’t remember how many days or weeks passed before I confided my experience to one of my Mormon friends. I had already decided beforehand that I needed to find the Church which held the “truth” about God and about Christ. I knew that it could not be any Protestant or non-denominational church, because they did not have any legitimate claim to the truth. They all disagreed about major questions about the faith. Plus, they all had broken off from the Catholic Church and had no direct connection to Christ.
The Mormon Church claimed to possess the fullness of truth and proclaimed a “Great Apostasy,” during which the Holy Spirit had left the Church Jesus established.
I won’t go too much into my exploration into the Mormon Church, except to say that I spent a few months looking into what they believed and why they believed it. I didn’t care that they had “strange” beliefs. In my mind, God existing was itself a weird belief. And besides, God could do whatever He wanted. I just wanted to know what the truth was.
I almost become Mormon. I’m not sure exactly what eventually dissuaded me. Perhaps it was another work of the Holy Spirit, guiding me where He wanted me, despite my wanderings.
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