Stand By Night

I met an old friend last night at the House of Prayer. I knew him about two years ago when I kinda mentored him. We’ve both been through a lot since the last time we spoke, and we ended up filling each other in on the last two years of our lives. For those of you who don’t know, my story goes like this…

In mid 2006 I decided that if the Christian life that I was living was all there was, then what the world had to offer was better. So I gave God an open invitation to prove me wrong, and started drinking and partying at every chance I got. I was drunk more than I was sober for a good six months. I started a cycle of depression and drinking that just led to deeper depression and more drinking. Soon all my money was going to gas, rent, alcohol, and over-the-counter pain killers.

That lasted until Saint Patrick’s Day, 2007. I had a choice to go to a pub crawl in downtown Sacramento, or the Sacramento OneThing conference put on by The International House of Prayer in Kansas City. For reasons I still don’t know, I chose the OneThing conference. For most of the conference I just walked around and judged all the fake hypocritical church people that were there to get their God-hype fix so that they could continue their sorry excuse for Christianity.

To try to avoid too much attention from anyone who may recognize me from my church-going days, I went to a teaching by a guy named Corey Russell. He looked crazy, so I thought it’d be entertaining. Well, I’m pretty sure that I was right, he is crazy–crazy enough to actually get through all my pride and judgment. He shook my paradigm to the core. The phrase that caught my attention was this:

“God’s not boring, you’re boring. If you think God is boring you have no idea who He is.”

Corey did not look bored, and he didn’t look fake and hypocritical like a lot of the other people there. I decided that whatever Corey had, I wanted. From then on I was on a search for the knowledge of God. I was still drinking and depressed, but I had a purpose in life for once: to know God.

Not a lot has changed since then. I drink a lot less, and know a little more, but my purpose hasn’t changed. I still need to know who God is. Not what He’s done or why He did it, I was raised in church, I know all that. I need to know Him as a friend.

I’m so convinced that the knowledge of God is all that matters that I’ve quit my job and am going full time in a place that I believe I can find Him.

Well, now you’re all up to speed on my life for that last two years. I’ll make this a separate page from now on so everyone can read it.

-J