BEFORE AND AFTER

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Do good to Your servant according to Your word, Lord.

Teach me knowledge and good judgment, for I trust Your commands. Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.

You are good, and what You do is good; teach me Your decrees.

Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies, I keep Your precepts with all my heart. Their hearts are callous and unfeeling, but I delight in Your law. It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn Your decrees.

The law from Your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.

Psalm 119:65-72

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Most of my readers probably think I have been a Christian, strong in his faith, all of my life. They would be wrong.

You see, I started in my youth in the church. My mother made sure I attended on Sunday and went to Sunday School. She made sure I got baptized and confirmed. She did all she could do to ensure I knew who Jesus Christ was.

But then something happened. I became an adult and given my own choices, there was a period when I decided that church was something I didn’t need any more. Unfortunately, when I vacated the church, I also vacated everything else in my Christian faith to include prayer and the study of God’s word. Like the psalmist in today’s scripture, I had gone astray and this led to an affliction.

Now we’re not sure about the affliction the psalmist suffered through but we do know it led him back to his faith which was renewed and stronger than ever. Before this turning point, the psalmist was lost. Afterwards, he rediscovered he could face anything in life because God’s word and its associated promises were sufficient to give him confidence, inner strength, and peace, no matter what life would bring.

As for my life, I walked down the road of relying on myself and my strength and my judgment. I wanted control and God allowed me to do just that to show me just how much I could mess my life up when I did so. And so I walked this path of destruction and in doing so, ended up wrecking my family.

You see, I was married with two beautiful little girls. God had blessed me so very much with a woman I was to love like Christ and two children who He entrusted to my care. I was to lead my family spiritually but I didn’t. You need the Spirit to do that and I had chosen to turn my back on the Great Counselor Jesus sent to guide us. I elected freely to walk the road of destruction and my payoff was divorce as my wife found another to love and took the kids with her. I was left as void as my faith life had been.

This experience left me bitter and angry. I blamed everyone except the one I needed to blame: myself. This went on for three years. It was a wilderness experience where I still tried to find my way without the Lord and little fruit was bore during that time. I call this stage of my life “BC” because it was everything that happened before I accepted Jesus back into my heart and back into my life, never to turn back again to the man I used to be.

For my wilderness period ended when God brought a woman into my life that He used to bring me back to Him. I just call her “Amazing Grace” because that’s what she was to me. Grace told me that if we were going to have a relationship, the Lord would have to be first. I agreed although my heart raced with anxiety as I had been away from the church for so long. The questions swirled in my heart and mind:

“Will God take me back to Him?”

“How is He going to receive me? Will He be angry?”

“Am I going to be able to understand the Bible? I don’t remember the Old Testament from the New anymore.”

But I wasn’t deterred, although I was nervous, I must admit. I started to go to church with Grace and guess what, I realized right away just how much I missed. My heart filled with the Holy Spirit as I was reintroduced to reading the scriptures, listening to sound preaching, and singing His praises through hymns. The Lord wrapped His arms around me and showed me nothing but love, just as the father received his lost son in Jesus’ parable (Luke 15).

This was the start of my “AC” or “After Christ” portion of my life, a season I have lived in for more than 20 years now and a season I will never leave as long as I have breath here on earth.

In this “AC” period, I cling to the Word of God and its associated promises, trusting in the Lord in any and all circumstances. I have been given the gifts of writing, teaching, preaching, and singing for the Lord during this new period of serving Jesus.

The psalmist also had a rebirth and renewal after recommitting his life to the Lord, Look at what he had to say:

Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.

You are good, and what You do is good; teach me Your decrees.

Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies, I keep Your precepts with all my heart. Their hearts are callous and unfeeling, but I delight in Your law. It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn Your decrees.

The law from Your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.

From insubordination to obedience. From hardship to goodness. From fear to confidence. From pain to delight. From worthlessness to riches. All these changes happened in the psalmist’s world when we chose to turn back to the Lord from his sin. It was quite a before and after contrast.

The Apostle Paul had his own before and after experience. You’ll recall that he wasn’t always Paul but at one time Saul, a murderer of Christians. Who would have imagined that the man who oversaw the stoning of Stephen (Acts 6, 7,8:1), a man elected to work for the cause of Christ, would become the greatest apostle in the scriptures. Saul’s “AC” life began after a one-on-one encounter with the very Jesus he persecuted on the road to Damascus. Struck blind, he remained that way for three days until a visit from Ananias led to his sight being restored, his eyes open to a new life in Christ Jesus, a life that led Paul to write the following:

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:11-13

Paul penned these word while in prison, uncertain if he would ever be free again. And yet, he was content because He knew He had Christ and that’s all He needed in life. Before he killed Christians. After, he helped lead them to salvation.

Friends, the Lord is always pursuing us. Like Jonah, another man who experienced a before and after experience with the Lord, we might try and run from Him but He will always find us and seek to turn us back to Him by whatever means He chooses. The psalmist experienced it. Paul experienced it. I did too and for that I am eternally grateful.

You see, God gave me a second chance to live and love. Grace and I have been married for more than 20 years now. My girls who I lost when my wife left returned to live with Grace and I seven years later and that’s where they remained until they became adults. The Lord knew my home, now a proper Christian home, was the place where they would be nurtured and brought up in Christ, just as I had been raised by my mother. And I was now ready to be the spiritual leader I should have been from the start.

Our God is a God of second chances. There is no doubt about that. No matter how far you may have fallen away from Him before, He is ready to catch you and bring you back to write your own “after” story. My prayer is that you’ll allow Him to do just that today.

Amen.

PS: If you have your own personal before and after faith story, please comment on today’s blog and share with others. Your testimony is a powerful way to minister!

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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