I'm Awake and I Felt Compelled to Share

For some odd reason, I'm having a difficult time getting sleepy at this hour...maybe it's due to a nap I took earlier this afternoon, maybe it's from the dark chocolate bar I ate around 12, maybe it's from my late night work schedule...who knows! ;D So now I'm left writing to the world thinking that there is a possibility of encouraging somebody on the internet with my words...so here it goes...

A friend of mine from work is learning english as he's teaching me spanish, and that's how I'm going to start my story. My story really isn't that interesting, but I'm going to continue writing it anyways because I feel like it...so hax if you don't care, 'cuz I don't either! hehe Anywho, the two of us decided to play a 'game' of sorts by writing down phrases in our native languages with the goal of learning how to read the foreign one better eventually. Each week we switch our index cards of random sentences about our lives and translate them when we're not trying to sleep, or when we're not crazily working. In addition to translating, we add more sentences to keep the 'game' goin'...this has proven to be a challenge at times when I have no idea what to write. Today, I decided to write a very concise and short testimony of my Christian life in the hopes that the Lord would use me to relay some sort of message to him that would glorify Christ and open his eyes to whatever he needs to see right now...Of course, I had to include at least a couple verses that I thought were good for him to translate at home...and the first verse that came to mind was Ephesians 2:8...

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God."

Context on why I chose this verse...well, he has told me before that he is a Catholic who goes to church every now and then...so I figured, 'why not open God's word to a testimony of His grace?!'. The Catholic church has done a mighty fine job teaching about how you need to work for your salvation, (along with every other religion out there) and I felt that maybe, just maybe, God would use this to get him to read the Bible more, or ask more questions about Christianity...Would you call that sneaky? Yeah, it probably is...and I would never dare say that all Catholics are unsaved, by the way. I would say that there are a lot of Catholics who know their Bible way more than some people who profess to be Christians, and no doubt, there are Catholics who know it better than me! I suppose the main goal of writing that verse down for him was to encourage him to think about the grace of Christ, and how awesome our God is! If my co-worker never decided to open up His word again or never got curious about what the verse said, I would still be okay with it knowing that the Lord's plans are way different than mine! WARNING: I'm pretty much just writing whatever comes to mind now, so if you're reading it and thinking that I'm rambling, that's probably what I'm doing.

I was getting towards the end of my 'concise testimony', and I wanted to 'close' with one last verse...So I'm sitting on the couch with my mom's Bible on my lap just flipping through pages of wisdom, wondering where to go from there. I was thinking I could close with another verse from Ephesians, but then I kept reading and wanted to read more from other books written by Paul...so I got to Colossians and set my eyes upon the beauty of those words...but then I didn't want to confuse my co-worker with the phrasing of some of those verses due to the historical context of the letter...and then I remembered how much I really enjoy the book of Philippians, so I finally chose a verse of linguistic simplicity, yet profound meaning: Philippians 1:21.

"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

And all that was going through my head at that moment was, 'LORD, WHY DO I NOT READ YOUR WORD MORE?! PAUL, YOU WERE SUCH A BEAUTIFUL MAN! I am an embarrassment to the faith...'. It had finally occurred to me that the Lord had used my spanish-speaking co-worker to get me to open His word. It had dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, the Lord thought my 'plan' was funny. All along I was thinking I would be an encouragement to him, when in reality, my co-worker is indirectly encouraging me. God uses people who we think may not be saved to get us to depend on His word more...and amazingly enough, I tend to think I've got it all planned out. GOD IS SO FUNNY SOMETIMES! What patience He has to deal with such small thinking! Can you imagine what it's going to be like when we get to heaven and am in the presence of a perfectly comedic God?! What joy and laughter we will experience, right??

I just thought I'd share that...and whoever is reading this may be thinking 'cool story bro, no need to tell it again!'... so I probably won't. :)

Come, Oh Lord. Maranatha. (Can't wait to experience that joy and laughter with You!)