Face to face with jesus

Here is the story of one of my encounters with Him. It wasn't the first, but it was one of the most life changing. I've told it many times before and I will again. It changed my life.

I was going into labor, and I was in the labor and delivery unit hooked up to a monitor with no detectable heart beat. We had just been told she was gone. My sister in law had come to pray over us before I went back for a csection, and Jesus had told her to simply call Him the man of sorrows as she prayed.

I wanted to die. We were devastated. Devastated isn't even a sufficient word. And I was angry. I should have had a c section the week before, but I wanted to have the chance to try this time. I wanted a VBAC. And Jesus wanted it, too. I had checked and rechecked with Him for 6 months leading up to this moment, and every time He had said to keep pursuing a VBAC.

So as I sat in that hospital bed devastated and angry, all alone as everybody scurried to get things ready and make difficult phone calls, I looked at that ugly green privacy curtain and said to Him, "You play games with us. That's all this ever was. And I think I'm done."

When Carey's sister walked in to pray, I had checked out. I lay there with my eyes closed, listening to her pray, and the MOMENT - the moment - she called Him the Man of many sorrows, I saw a bright light through my closed eyelids. And then I saw the figure of a Man come to sit down on the bed beside me. The light was so bright I couldn't make out anything but His shadow, but I saw when He leaned in and put His forehead to mine. In the very same moment that I was rejecting Him because of my flawed logic, He came to sit with me and help bear the load of my grief. He put His forehead to mine and I felt this spring burst open in me. It felt like a bubbling up and over. I remember taking a deep breath from the relief that came with it.

I have asked Him over and over about every moment of that day in the almost 6 years since it happened. But the part that is central in my focus is that moment He leaned in and put His forehead on mine. Jesus, MY Jesus, came to comfort me that day. He leaned in to me and He spoke not a word, but there was an exchange that happened in that moment. The Man of many sorrows came to exchange some of His joy for my grief. In every way imaginable, I got the better end of that deal. He got my fury, my disappointment, my lost faith, my hopelessness, my accusations, my devastation. He picked up my broken pieces, and in it's place, He gave me His wholeness. I was still devastated, but I saw the joy of the hope He had just set before me. He planted it like a seed in me that has continued to grow from that day onward. He burst open a new spring of joy and hope in me that day. I learned that I can face ANYTHING if Jesus of Nazareth really, truly walks with me like THIS.

I saw things about Jesus that day and then through that season that I couldn't explain properly if I tried. Too wonderful for words. NEVER the author of the destruction of a little life He had created to live and grow and thrive, but always the Finisher of our faith if we'll just let it take root and grow in us. I am obsessed because He put addiction in me that day. What kind of Person pushes through the hospital room of a mother who doesn't want to see Him; willing to be rejected again by this arrogant little one who simply doesn't understand yet? He draws near to the angry, prickly, broken hearted ones regardless of how they may flail and rage and throw things at Him. He is full of compassion. Long suffering and kind. His mercy "came by me like a freight train" that day. I couldn't stop it if I tried.

That day I discovered that Jesus really IS love.

Jesus, my Jesus. You need to have a Face to face encounter with this Man. It changes everything.

Footnote: Don't worry. Your encounter doesn't have to come during and because of devastation. He likes to come on the best day of your life just as well as a hard day. The key, it seems to me, is - Jesus is drawn like a magnet to those who NEED Him. Do you hunger and thirst for Him? Then rest assured, He WILL come. - Bevin