OCT 23, 2023
In 1997 I was in a serious car accident. I was trying to get home from college for Thanksgiving break and misjudged traffic as I was crossing a busy highway just 15 minutes from home. It was just getting dark and the lights became blurry. Cars zoomed in front of me at 60 mph. I felt pressured to cross as the line of cars behind me built up by the minute.
Less than a few minutes later, I was upside down in my car on the shoulder. I had rolled more than once but, almost like a dream, I had no idea what was going on. A young man reached through the passenger window that now was above me and began asking me if I was okay. Before I knew it, he was holding me in his arms as we stood there on the highway, crying and in shock of what had just happened.
When the EMS arrived, they couldn’t believe my condition. I sat on the tailgate of a Texas truck. One medic looked down at my feet and asked, “Are you sure you are okay? You don’t even have both shoes on!” I felt fine. I felt nothing.
“We are going to take you in for tests, if you are okay with that. You could be in shock right now and just don’t feel the pain yet, so we want to run some x-rays on your neck and back,” the medic clarified. I agreed and they laid me on a stretcher and began to secure my body for the worst case scenario.
Just then, my mom and sister arrived to the scene. As they saw me being put on the stretcher and my neck and body secured in straps and braces, they broke down in tears. They saw me there looking as though I was so close to my end! I couldn’t, from my perspective, see what they could see.
I was taken to the hospital by ambulance, which bypassed the now bumper to bumper traffic by way of the shoulder of the highway. Thanksgiving traffic was now intensified as cars had come to a complete halt on both sides of the highway, waiting for the accident to be cleared. My car was totaled.
After arriving at the hospital, multiple x-rays were taken of my neck and back. Not a single broken bone could be found. The seatbelt, which had kept me from going through the front windshield multiple times, had ripped an exact imprint into the skin of my shoulder. Other than that, they could find no indication of injury and I was sent home.
The weeks and months after that left me in a life I could not recognize. I was not the same person. It was as though I had died on that road and was now someone else. I quickly found that my body didn’t come away unaffected. For months, my ears would ring and I would cringe at the sound of noises too strong for my now traumatized mind to process. My neck was constantly sore and regaining mobility took time. Still, I couldn't shake the evident feeling that I had been given a new life! The words that constantly arrived in my mind were this: “I could have died in that accident. Lord, why am I still here?” His answer came in the form of consistent pursuit of my heart in the months proceeding my accident. Countless study sessions turned into deep dives into Scripture and hours and hours of taking notes, not on class lectures, but on what I was hearing Him say. When I graduated from college just a year later, the Lord had birthed in my heart a deep relationship with Him and the beginnings of a personal calling to serve Him in full time missions.
When life begins again, we suddenly come to realize what we have been given so freely. The essentials are clear and priorities are held tightly more than ever. The car accident I was in now became a reference point in life for me. It is a moment in time when I recognized I had been given a new start by the Lord. There was a purpose for me and it wasn’t in my old life, it was in my new one – one that He created and filled with Himself. We call this the Gospel.
2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” Romans 6:3-4 also says, “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.”
It is so incredible, that the moment of we receive new life, God gives us all new things! That includes access to Him 24-7 in a personal relationship. I have learned many things over the years that have renewed my heart and helped me become more whole. None has impacted me more than this one. Becoming more aware of God’s presence in me and with me has been my mainstay in all areas of life.
“For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.” 1 Corinthians 2:11-12
When I was given new life in Christ, I was given this gift fully and freely. I need to remember that daily! You need to remember that daily, too! If you are a born again believer, you have a relationship with Jesus Christ that gives you perfect confidence that He will speak to you and help you! He will NEVER leave you. You are now IN Christ and Christ is in you!
This is the first truth you need to take inventory of every day. How well are you aware of this? Can you grow in this more? If you are recovering from sexual betrayal or sexual addiction, you are going to need this more than any other resource you discover along the way. Nothing else is going to bring you into wholeness like this will and this one will help every other resource reach maximum benefit in your life.
So, examine yourself daily (2 Corinthians 13:5) and see what is true. Test yourself and see if you are living as though His Presence is in you and like He is relating to you constantly and freely!
“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you – unless, of course, you fail the test?” (2 Corinthians 13:5)
This is our focus this month. Take this month to focus on #1 in the Daily Self Accountability worksheet. If you do NOT have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and do not know what it means to have received a new life in Him, please reach out to me through my email below. This is where it all begins for anyone on a journey to wholeness!
Beginsathome22@gmail.com
#1. Confidence With God
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