Testimony In Full

I can't tell you the first time I prayed a sinner's prayer.  Every time time someone did an altar call, I guess.  I still do it, privately.  Getting up in front of the church a few times is a few times but once too many.  That's nobody's business anyway.

I was baptized in seventh grade--twelve years old, the age of accountability.  Now I wonder if I did it prematurely.  Did I understand it then?  Probably not.  Not that I'm stupid.  Most people can tell I'm bright.  It's just I never really thought about it.

In seventh grade, I was still very much afraid of going to hell.  It's a bunch of rules and regulations.  I didn't hear sermons on For God so loved the world.  I heard "this is the end times," "hell is hot," "God loves a cheerful giver," and things like that.

I don't remember much about the Love of God.  I heard it in music.  I even may have written about it a time or two.  But, really, I didn't get it.

I'm a fan of Rich Mullins.  He sang about the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God.  I got into his music when I was six or seven, some time after my family moved from Louisiana to South Mississippi.

Some time in my senior year in high school, I saw a book in LifeWay called The Ragamuffin Gospel.  Rich Mullins had his Ragamuffin Band, and he was on the cover.  But it was by a man named Brennan Manning, who died recently.

Rich Mullins had done the testimony.  A few weeks later, I purchased it and read it.

By this point, I understood God loved people.  Loved me.  But it had never been presented in that way.  Few have topped Manning in teaching about Abba's love.

Overall, it's a very confusing place.  Here's the God of my youth, this vengeful, dictatorial God who will strike me if I do wrong.  And then here's this God who loved the world enough to die for it.

This is the part I struggle with.  This is also the problem with going with the flow.  How do you reconcile the Gods of the Old and New Testaments?