Nathan James Norman
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Nathan James Norman

Husband. Father. Pastor.
Storyteller. Reader. Comic Fan.
Slave of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Orchard Church

Personal Evidence of God

12/4/2013

2 Comments

 
Picture
Today was particularly terrible.

I can't go into all the details... I need to protect the guilty parties.

In a nutshell my day was characterized by doing favors for people taking advantage of me. Having my time disregarded. Having my work dismissed. Being shown incredible disrespect. And a bunch of financial craziness to top it all off.

Then I came home.

Actually, I couldn't come home because the private road I live on was a sheet of four inch thick ice.

So I spent nearly four hours with a coal shovel digging out my road enough to get the cars into the driveway.

When I came home and got stuck I was furious. Fuming. Frustrated. Other f-words. I was already exhausted and then I had to deal with this.

I was probably boiling for about an hour into my shoveling "adventure." I was wet (it started to rain), hungry (I barely ate anything all day) and upset (all I wanted to do was come home and read Amish Vampires in Space).

I started praying.

Not those nice, precious, sentimental prayers. No sir. It was one of those davidic, complain to God about everything that's going on sort of prayers.

I think I already mentioned... I was really angry.

Somewhere in my rabid ranting to the Living God of the universe he brought to mind a lyric from an older O.C. Supertones song, Jury Duty:

The chorus specifically came to mind:
You know I haven’t had the best of days
But I want to stop and thank you anyway

Cuz every single moment whether sleeping or awake
Is your creation
And what you’ve made is good
I don’t always thank you for the rough days and
The hard times in my life
Even though I should
And this just made me angrier.

But I said (still in my furious prayer-mode), "I am flaming-mad. I know I'm going to have to keep shoveling for hours. And I'm going to be angry the whole time, and I'm going to be angry when I come inside to my family. I don't want to be angry... I don't want to be furious, but I can't change. If you don't want me a ball of rage, you're going to have to change me." I shoveled a bit more, then added, "Please help me."

And I'm not sure when it happened. But at some point I started singing that O.C. Supertones song. Then I transitioned to sing the doxology . . . out loud: 
I'm exhausted.

Nothing has changed. All the drama and problems still exist. God didn't take away any of the circumstances.

He changed me.

So, while there's plenty of great philosophical evidences for the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus . . . here is a simple personal evidence.

God changed me.
2 Comments
Jane
12/4/2013 03:58:02 pm

Thank you for sharing your day. Years ago Evelyn Christianson wrote a book called "Change me" The essence of the book is Lord change me, not my kids, not my husband, or my curcumstances, change me, Lord.

Reply
Nathan J. Norman link
12/5/2013 11:42:32 am

Thanks Jane! Amen to all that!!!!!!

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