Knowing Jesus And The Power Of His Resurrection

A few years after becoming a Born-Again Christian, my life was transformed through the lives of fellow Christians I met in high school. I saw a vibrant faith in them for which I yearned. Then, just days after meeting them for the first time, I broke my ankle in two places, shattered a bone on Friday, and didn't return to school until Tuesday. I was in a lot of pain, wearing a cast and walking with crutches.

My Christian friends looked at me and said, "You know God can heal that. Why don't you come with us to church on Wednesday so that you can get healed?"

I hesitated because I had no idea what their church would be like. I had become a Christian watching Billy Graham on TV. Despite my uncertainty about their church, I told them, "If God wants to heal me, I'm all for it." I loved Him and wanted to know Him better. I decided that if He wanted to heal me, I was more than willing to receive.

I went with them that Wednesday night, and during the worship service while my hands were raised in praise, before I knew what was happening, something like a warm electrical surge flowed through me, starting at my finger-tips, down through my arms, flowing into my legs and then seemed to settle all of its energy in my broken ankle. At that moment, I knew the hands of God alone instantly healed it as my joy was overflowing! I was so overwhelmed by the experience that I walked two miles home that night without feeling any pain whatsoever!

A few months after that amazing experience of being supernaturally touched by God, problems with sin arose in my life that made my Christian witness a farce. In my minds' eye, the image that appeared in my bathroom mirror each morning had the giant word "hypocrite" written all over it.

I couldn't handle my hypocrisy because I genuinely tried to live a righteous, holy life before God. Every time I tried, I failed, falling flat on my face. I felt as if I was bringing shame to the Cross of Christ by saying I was a Christian living a holy life. I didn't understand what was happening to me, tearing me apart from the inside out. I chose to remove myself from church fellowship until I could figure the 'discipleship' thing out. The youth pastor at the church declared me reprobate and warned the people in the church to stay away from me.

Through the course of many months and with the support of a few exceptional Christian friends who ignored the youth pastor's declaration of judgment on me and helped me to focus on Jesus and not my sin, I ultimately came to realize that once I stopped looking at my failures and faults, and started looking to Jesus, I was no longer obsessed and overwhelmed with them because I knew He died for my failures. I began to see that He was changing and challenging me to trust in the work of forgiveness He had already done on the Cross and was working daily in me rather than the work at which I had failed.

"for all of you who have been baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Him." (Gal 3:27 NIV)