Psalm 150

Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty expanse. Praise Him for His mighty deeds. Praise Him according to His excellent greatness.

When I was 18 I began experimenting with drugs, including hallucinogens. On one of those occasions I had a strong impression I had tapped into the root of all knowledge. This impression did not feel like a hunch; it felt like a knowing. Looking back, I wonder if I bit into the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 5 years later I experienced another type of knowing.

When I asked Jesus into my heart at 23 I didn’t just ask him to save me from sin so I could go to heaven when I die. I asked Jesus into my heart so I could escape the dying I was already doing in this life. I gave him my life to do with as he pleased. Five years of drug and alcohol use had made a wreckage of my life (and of a number of cars as well). I had become the Lord of my own ruination. I wanted a new life and that is precisely what Jesus gave me. When Jesus made his grand entrance it was as though my heart itself had somehow become a part of His mighty expanse.

There was a knowing to this new life in Christ as well but it wasn’t just a flirtation with comprehensive knowledge. I didn’t have all the information or all the answers but I knew who did and he was now closer to me than my own skin. Jesus – God’s Wisdom and Mystery had entered my life, claiming it at my request, as his sanctuary. Astonishingly, my  wasteland of a heart had become the dwelling place of God!

Jesus did not wear off 4 hours after taking a pill. With Christ in me, relationship with God has worked itself out as an abiding experience. Encountering Jesus Christ has been an utterly disruptive yet exquisitely beautiful thing.

Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty expanse. Praise Him for His mighty deeds. Praise Him according to His excellent greatness.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

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