"Here I Am" Part 1

All my life I have felt God nudging me. For many years I ran. I wanted nothing to do with Him and actually believed I could make that choice. I have never been so blessed to be so wrong! I may not have wanted anything to do with Him, but He had other plans. As I look back on my past now, I can clearly see that even though I was running He was busy laying the ground work to what would become my incredibly blessed life.

I will later discuss the past events of my life as God directs me, but for now I would like to talk about something more recent. As I mentioned earlier I liked to run from God. I would feel His gentle nudges and found myself to be at a total loss. I was afraid of Him, but not in a reverent sort of way. No, I saw Him as someone who stood over my shoulder watching...waiting to pounce on me when I did something wrong. It's hard to draw near to someone when that is your perception of them. But eventually we began to play a sort of tug-of-war game. He would draw me near and I would get just close enough to peak my curiosity. Then like a deer that hears a sudden noise, I was off and running again.

The good news is that I eventually stopped running long enough to realize He wasn't waiting to pounce on me at all. He was wanting to do the exact opposite. He was wanting to extend His grace to me. His wonderfully amazing grace. I really didn't have a clue as to what that meant. And it took me 47 years to figure it out.

I had been going through an "emotional crisis" for quite some time when I told a wonderful friend and confidant Raylene that I had to have some one on one time with God and it had to be soon. I felt so hopeless and knew not only was I driving myself crazy, but everyone around me as well. All I ever seemed to do was cry and didn’t know what to do with myself.

Hopeless. Like this-is-never-going-to-end hopeless. So hopeless that I just wanted Jesus to come. I knew the good we did here would store us up some treasures in heaven, but I was willing to forego all that. I hadn’t really done anything for the kingdom but at this point, it was good enough for me just to get in to heaven and not worry about this world any more. Life is hard, feelings get hurt and I just didn’t want to deal with any of it.

My friend thought for just a brief moment then she smiled and said, "You need to go on a Walk to Emmaus!" Now mind you, I had never heard about Emmaus let alone know how to spell it so I could Google it! Little did I know this was just the beginning of my transformation from the inside out. I have always known God had great intensions for me. It became more and more evident that He was about to lovingly knock some sense into me, whether I thought I needed it or not.

My name is Lori Davis and this is the story about My Walk to Emmaus.