In the Beginning…

July 6th, 2020

I think it is fitting to start with a little bit about me. I have to admit, I was trying to jump right in to writing about what I have learned about fear through cancer, because whoever you are, if you are reading this, that is what I want most for you. I want you to not be afraid. I want to bring comfort to you. I want to bring hope and good news. But I need to start at the beginning.

My name is Jennifer. I am forty years old. I am a Christian. I am a wife. I am a mother. I am a business owner. I am going through treatments for breast cancer.

Jesus Christ is my rock and my solid foundation. It is Him that I draw all of my strength from. Without Him there is nothing and in Him is all things.

God has always provided for me. Countless blessings. I have been given an amazing husband to share this life with who takes excellent care of me. He is my best friend and a true companion. I have been given a handsome son and have been blessed to watch him grow into a strong, smart and capable young man that I am truly proud of. I make a good living. I have a beautiful home and food on the table. And I know that I am on my way to heaven.

I didn’t always know that.

I have always believed in God. I was baptized and received my first holy communion in the Catholic church. My mother then converted and began bringing us to a Lutheran church when I was a teenager. I remained part of that church as an adult and eventually became their fifth grade Sunday school teacher. But I always felt disconnected. I never adopted the name “Catholic” or “Lutheran” for myself. When asked, I called myself Christian.

I am a bible reader. First casually, then cover to cover at least twice in my late twenties, early thirties. It eventually became an every day thing for me.

And that was my problem….

I know what it says….

and it convicted me.

I lived most of my life with a fear of death. I was taught that if you believe in Jesus you go to heaven. I tried to believe that, but I lived with doubt and a perpetual fear that I wasn’t good enough to make it there. I attended church regularly and there was always a cheerful positive message, “Jesus loves you”, “love your neighbors”, “be good and do your best to love everyone”. Week after week, year after year, the same handful of bible verses and stories told over and over with love and good intentions left me feeling empty, but God’s word was alive and burning inside me. I started rejecting a lot of what was being taught. I would purge the ideas immediately and shake my head, and say to myself, no, that’s not what the bible says…The Holy Spirit was beginning to teach me discernment. I was frustrated. I knew something was wrong.

Then there was this…

“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Matthew 7: 21-23

This became a huge problem for me. My younger sister came home one day and saw me crying and asked me what was wrong. I told her that I was reading the bible and couldn’t understand these verses. I mean, these were people that called Jesus Lord. These were people that were casting out devils and prophesying, and doing great and wonderful works in the name of the Lord (I certainly wasn’t doing all of that). But Jesus said that they were not going to heaven, and then told them to depart from him, that he never knew them. This validated my fears. These people believed in Jesus, but they were clearly not going to heaven, and neither was I. If they weren’t good enough, how could I be? I believed what God was telling me, and I was… well… I was concerned.

When I was about thirty years old I had a couple of conversations with my Pastor. I told him that I didn’t feel that I was saved and that I wanted to be baptized. I knew in my heart something was wrong. He lovingly told me again that Jesus loves me and that I was going to heaven and that I should not be worried. He also told that even though I didn’t remember it, that Jesus recognized my infant baptism. I left those conversations feeling empty. I wanted better answers. Without any understanding, in a desperate attempt, I woke up in the middle of the night one night, filled up my bath tub, and dunked myself under. I didn’t understand baptism then, but I wanted it, and I wanted it badly. It would be almost ten years until God answered my prayer.

There was another church that was growing in my town, a Calvary Chapel. It seemed to be bible based and I had this little gnawing feeling about attending. I went to a couple of their summer services, but I felt tied to the Lutheran Church that I was still teaching in and in the fall I returned to it. I was part of that church family and had been for a long time. Then God started working. Winter came, and I started having plumbing issues, a lot of plumbing issues. Week after week something was happening, appliances were dying, furnaces were breaking, water filter systems were shutting down…

Enter the plumber.

A faithful man, an attendee of the Calvary Chapel, a witness for Christ. He was using his profession to reach people, to invite them to church. And that winter he invited me to attend a Wednesday night bible study on the book of Revelation. I tried it for a few weeks, but something about the lessons still just didn’t ring true for me. But God had set the wheels in motion. He accomplished two things that would change my life. In those few weeks: 1.) my plumber put me on to the King James bible, and 2.) I found a chapter by chapter bible study through the Book of Revelation done by a baptist preacher on YouTube. And that was it. My life was changed. God had accomplished his mission.

Night after night that winter I was binge watching through the online Revelation series and I kept being fed additional suggestions for more of the preacher’s videos, including ones on Salvation and Soul Winning. For the first time ever, I was hearing God’s words ring true, straight from the bible, unapologetically. They weren’t being stuffed into a man shaped box, all neatly packaged, with the not so pleasant ideas being explained away. Then it happened, as I watched one of the sermons on Salvation from my living room sofa, a light came on, and I found what I was searching for. I burst out into tears, and as I cried, I felt something like a callus peel from my heart. I knew in that moment that I was saved and that I no longer had to fear that I was going to hell, because I was going to heaven.

So what was it? What was the mystery that I had been missing all along? What was keeping me from understanding? Well, it was me. Or rather in truth, it had nothing to do with me. I had been wrapped up too tightly in myself. What could I do (or not do) to get in to heaven? What did I have to do (or not do) to avoid hell? The short answer ended up being absolutely nothing. There is nothing that I can do (in either direction, good or bad) to put me into heaven or to keep me out of hell. I am nothing outside of Jesus. It is all Jesus. As usual, I was over complicating things.

“And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” Daniel 4:35

We are nothing. We are not self sustaining, we are fools. God created us from dust and breathed life into us and we became a living soul. Who are we? Outside of Christ we are nobody. Outside of Christ we don’t even exist. We are the clay and he is the potter. All things come from God. He created it all, including us. Lovingly made, we are a creation of God. We belong to Him. We are His. What can we give Him that doesn’t already belong to Him?

Who am I? Nobody. I am nobody. And when my body dies, my flesh and blood will return to the dust from which I came, from dust I came and unto dust I shall return, but my spirit, my spirit will return to him who gave it, and I will be judged. But God knows all of that. He knows the stuff we are made of. It is us that needs to first recognize who and what we are. We need to have a look inward and admit to ourselves that:

1.) We belong to God. We are a creation. We belong to the creator;

2.) We are sinners. We live our lives as though we belong to ourselves and not to him. We go about our lives with our own personal agenda.

When you ask most Christians “if you died today, do you believe that you are going to heaven?”, they will mostly tell you, yes. If you then ask them why they believe they are going to heaven, they will mostly tell you that it is because they try to live a good life, that they try to do their best to be good. It is usually a matter of being good vs. being bad. They may even make a statement about Jesus dying for their sins. But if you are asking to be weighed by the measure of yourself, you will fall short of the mark every time, because the mark is perfection. God is perfect and holy and all sin must eventually be punished. We deserve nothing.

This brings me back to Matthew 7. What were those believers asking to be judged by? What was their reasoning for their expected entry into heaven? It was their works. “But Lord, haven’t we cast out devils in your name, haven’t we done many wonderful works in your name, haven’t we…” they were focused on what they had done for God. Not on what God had done for them.

“I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. –John 15:5

I will not be judged by my works. When asked why I should go to heaven, I claim Jesus. And Jesus is perfection. That night, I asked Jesus to save me, and Jesus is faithful and just. He cleansed me from my unrighteousness. Jesus is my advocate at the judgement seat. When God the Father looks to me, Jesus stands in the gap. He paid my sin debt in full. I owe my life to Jesus and I want to live it that way.

God gave me a great blessing. A guilty conscience. It is part of my nature. I spent most of my life telling myself that I couldn’t possibly be going to heaven because I wasn’t good enough to get there. I knew I was a sinner. And I know what God does to sinners. He casts them right into hell. Why would God want me? That is where I spent the first 40 years of my life. But that is not where I will spend the rest of my days.

Jesus came to fix that. He came to fix that for all of us. We only have to do one thing. Change our minds about who we are, and ask Jesus to save us. To save us from ourselves, to save us from having to suffer our deserved punishment of hell. All we have to do is believe. But, not just to believe that Jesus existed, which he did, or that Jesus is God, which he is, but that Jesus took the punishment that was reserved for us. He took our deserved beating, he took our deserved humility, he took our deserved torture, he took our deserved crucifixion, and then he took our deserved eternity in hell. He did it all for us, He suffered it all for us. The work is finished. He did it all. He did it all out of his love for us, and not out of our goodness.

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; Isaiah 64:6

This is the free gift from God to all those that would ask for it.

This life is our chance, our opportunity to submit ourselves to the creator of the world. To the one who holds it all in the palm of his hand. We can either live in rebellion to him, continue in our sin, in our vanity, living to ourselves and our worldy lusts, or we can choose to submit ourselves to our Lord, to our Savior. We belong to him, we do not belong to ourselves. We owe him a great debt that we can never repay.

I was saved that winter night.

I was baptized last August, on my birthday, in a baptist church.

Baptism is a symbol. When you are submerged under the water it is symbolic of your death. You are no longer living for yourself. When you are raised out of the water it is a symbol of your new life in Christ, a life lived for Him. An infant can’t make that decision.

I was baptized for real this time.

Just in time for the cancer diagnosis.

Dear Lord, I pray in thanks for the time spent with you as I sat to write these words. Thank you for being patient and long suffering while we slowly make our way to you. I pray that even now you are working to heal the minds, bodies, and spirits of the people that are reading these words. I pray that you will bring us comfort and peace so that we may serve you and make you proud Lord. In Jesus name. Amen.