So close!

It is SOOO exciting to see God working in people's hearts! I have a friend who I don't see very often (maybe even once a year, which is ridiculous, because she onle lives a few blocks away), but every time we hang out we end up talking about Christianity. We used to talk more, cause we were in school together, and it was never me who brought up the conversation! I could really tell that she was searching back then, too, but she was more stand-offish. Last year we got together for coffee, and had a really cool conversation, and she was a little more open, but then we hung out last night.

WOW.

Almost immediately she was telling me about where she was feeling she was at spiritually. She went on to tell me a lot about the stuff she's been wrestling with lately, and it was SO amazing to hear how God has been speaking to her, even though she may not realize it yet. As we talked, I just told her some of the stuff in my life lately, cause I've been asking some very similar questions. We talked a bit about asking God to speak to us, which is great, becasue God wanted to make himself known - I really beleive that when someone askes for God to make himslef known, he always answers! I was telling her kind of the way I see God talking to me a lot of times is through hearing the same message from all kinds of different sources, and finally I just go, "Ok, ok, God, I got it!" God got her attention in that somehow, because she stopped me and told me that that had given her goosebumps. She told me that she knew I had called her last week for more than jsut to say happy birthday (that's all *I* had planned, obviously God had other plans!). Just the way she was descibing how she felt right then, about there being a bigger purpose for us being friends, and for hanging out that night, etc etc, I was able to tell her, "What you're feeling rght now, that's GOD!" She's the one who can see some higher purpose at work, and all I had to do was name it for her! It made me think of when Paul said to the men of Athens, "Now what you worship as something unknown I'm going to proclaim to you." (Acts 17:23) I told her, too, how we think we're the ones who go out seeking God, but how really he's been seeking us for far longer.

It was SUCH an amazing conversation! In my enthusiasm, I hope I'm not giving too many personal details. I've tried to keep it very general. But it's just SO COOL, cause I can see so clearly how God is getting her attention, how he's wooing her and drawing her to himself. And she is beginning to see it, too. I've heard it said that so many stories of people coming to Christ are not at all like Paul's "road to Damascus" conversion: the bright light, the sudden 180 degree turn around - but more like the road to Emmaus conversion (Luke 24:13-35) : people are walking along in their life, and sense the presence of something else, someone else there with them, but they don't know what it is until one day the Holy Spirit opens their eyes to see clearly. "Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him..."

God is opening my friends eyes. What she has been looking for for so long, what she has been sensing is there for so long is finally becoming clear to her. And I am SOO honoured and amazed that God is using ME - despite all my crap! - to help do that. I'm praying so hard that she continues to respond, and that her search is guarded from the all the resistance and opposition that could be thrown in her way.

But mostly I'm praying that the Holy Spirit continues to give her understanding and opens her eyes to see Jesus, and see that because of his GREAT love for her, he's been seeking her all along.