My eyes had been opened and my life had changed. By His grace and His grace alone, I am here today.
And though I had been through a rough time in the past, my life was coming together after I had finally turned my entire life, not just part of it, over to God. One thing to keep in mind, is that God never says in the Bible that a Christian’s life would be easy. On the contrary, as His word so clearly says in Hebrews:
Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. — Hebrews 12:4-6 (KJV)
The relationship of a Christian to God can be likened to that of a Father / Son relationship. As a Christian, we’ve been adopted into the family of God with Him being our Heavenly Father. And as the passage in Hebrews says, He will rebuke or criticize us and he will chasten or correct us. Scourgeth or scourge, as defined by Webster, is a tough word meaning “someone or something that causes a great amount of trouble or suffering”. God never said it would be easy folks and like many Christians who still believe this today, I had sorely missed that part when I had turned away from Him.