I’ve been visiting the early days of my life in Christ as you have read over the past week.  It’s been good for me to revisit those days in my life.  Much of what I was taught as a young believer came from several bands and friends.  What I was taught was radical… deeply life changing… and scary to some who saw the change in me.  I’ve always tried to live my life with that raw unbridled  edge to it that some have scoffed at or at least questioned.

I can look back over my days growing up and see where God had been at work all along the way.  The day I responded to God’s love as He reached out to me was December 26, 1983. 

I was in the midst of a half house crowd at what used to be the Omni in Atlanta.  The band on stage was KISS.  Standing there in the middle of the mayhem Gene Simmons gave an altar call… no – not really… but I heard God tell me (not audible) “You don’t belong here… I have something better for your life.”  I leaned over to my friend Key and told him, “God doesn’t want me to stay here.”  He responded, “I was thinking the same thing.”  Together the two of us started a new journey in life.  I would like to say we left but my brother was there too so we stayed – but my life was changed.  I surrendered my life to Jesus right there in the middle of the “Lick it Up” tour the first show KISS did without makeup!

I re-visit these days in order to see where I am today.  I question if I have become comfortable in my religion… Have I become comfortably numb? (Thanks for the wording Pink Floyd). 

“Perhaps the tragedy of our time is that such an overwhelming number of us who declare Jesus as Lord have become domesticated – or, if you will, civilized.  We have lost the simplicity of our early faith.  Beyond that, we have lost the passion and power of that raw, untamed, and primal faith.” Erwin McManus.

I know there’s much more of me that must die each day I live.  My greatest desire is to be the person I was created to be.  I don’t want to live it someday – I want to live that now!

Lord, I ask You to come take my heart and use it for your purposes.  I’m seeking to know where I belong at this time in Your Kingdom.  Invade my life – capture my heart – I am Yours.

“To belong to God is to belong to His heart.  If we have responded to the call of Jesus to leave everything and follow Him, then there is a voice within us crying out, ‘Fight for the heart of your King!'”Erwin McManus.