Send Me a Guru

I was always a believer in God, but not in Jesus Christ.  I became very interested in spiritual things when I was a teenager and lived in the self-help and religious sections of Barnes and Noble.  I had only been to a Christian church a few times in my life and had acquired my mother's doubts about the Bible even though I had never read it for myself.  As I got older, I became desperate and prayed to God for a guru.  Of course I was expecting a little Indian man to come into my life and reveal the mysteries of the universe to me, but the Lord sent me a little African woman who was full of the Holy Ghost.  The last place I wanted to find God was in church! There was no power in the Bible, (I thought).  However, she was so persistent that I ended up going to church with her.  I couldn't believe that people were reading the Bible literally! It was very interesting to me. 

As Jesus became more and more real to me and I became born-again, the boyfriend I had at the time became very hostile about my new-found faith.  He even put a huge walking stick up to my eye and told me to say that I loved Jesus.  It was definite warfare!  I had made the decision that I was going to sell out to the "dark side" because being "good" didn't pay. Within hours of making that decision, my life was threatened and  I questioned whether this invisible God could deliver me from these circumstances.  Soon I was laying in an emergency room waiting to be seen to find out the damage that had been done.  As I lay there, a peace came over me like I had never known.  I began singing songs that I had sung in church, but somehow I knew all the words.  I was having a hard time breathing, but every time I would be gasping for air, the Lord would tell me, 

"Don't think about your problems, think about Me and what I can do, I can move mountains!" This would calm me down and I would be able to breathe.  

After the doctors had taken x-rays and checked me over, I was praying at my bed and they came over with many other nurses and people and told me that they were in shock that I was still conscious because I was operating on one lung.  They told me that I must be in excellent health. They then proceeded to tell me that they would have to operate and insert a chest tube to inflate my other lung and that they had never had anyone conscious before this procedure was done.  This was God's supernatural hand on my life, I can tell you I wasn't in excellent health, my lungs had been ingesting marijuana smoke for years prior.  This was the peace of God that surpasses all understanding and that is the only way to explain any of it! It was miraculous. This event began my true walk of faith in Christ Jesus!I haven't been the same since He touched my life and it only gets better and better! He moves us from glory to glory!!!!!

Shanna 

(accepted Christ in 2000)