“I think I saw angels coming up from the lake.” We were a group of girls huddled together in our cabin at a rustic summer camp. Thinking back on it, I’m not sure there were angels there that night since it was highly likely it was another group of campers with flashlights. But God was doing a work in and among our group that night. We had just come back from a powerful Friday night devotional service that left a lot of us in tears, and we were staying up late into the night talking about supernatural things and placing our faith in Jesus. For me, it was during that week that I first placed my faith in God in a more real and honest way than I had ever done before.
I grew up in and out of the church, because in the family I grew up in, church was something we did. When I was younger, we didn’t do it a lot. My parents got burnt out on church during the preschool years. We were usually there at Christmas and Easter but not much in between. When I was seven, a cousin of my dad’s asked if I was singing with the choir at Christmas service. I responded that we didn’t go to church because we didn’t have time. My parents were so embarrassed by my response, so much so that we went to church the next week, and the week after, and most weeks from then on.
I liked church fine, especially the kids programs, but it wasn’t making me a better person. At school, I felt like an outsider, and I struggled to make friends. I was lonely, and it came out in unkind ways. I kept to myself a lot and struggled to find my identity and my place in the world.
Every winter, our denomination sent out promo materials for the regional summer camp offerings, and my mom would let us look through the catalog and pick out a camp. By the time I was in upper elementary school, I had picked horse camp. I loved horse camp so much that I went back for four years. Something about being at horse camp opened me up to connection.
On one particular year, I can’t even tell you when or how old I was, I made a great group of friends at summer camp. The theme was Christmas in July that week, and we did a Secret Santa where we exchanged handmade gifts. The camp also hosted a Friday night devotional service on the last night of camp. The lights were turned out in the dining hall and they lit candles. They read us stories and told us about how Jesus loved us. I don’t remember anything they said, but I remember exactly how I felt. At the Friday night service, a feeling washed over me, and I suddenly knew all the stories in the Bible were real, really real, and that Jesus was really real.
Later, when I grew up and went to evangelical college, people told me that was the moment when I was saved. I used that language for awhile because it made sense to people. But in the Methodist founder John Wesley’s story of transformation, he described it as his heart being “strangely warmed” which brought him an assurance that his faith was real. These are the words that resonate with me, and it’s that feeling of being “strangely warmed” that I now call the assurance of faith I received from the Holy Spirit.
I can’t tell you my faith has never wavered from that initial moment, but I can tell you that I had a supernatural encounter with God that week. It was a moment in which God became real to me, and it felt like warmth and love. It means that as I continue to share my faith through my work now as a minister, everything I know about God began in an experience of God’s warmth and love.
As I’ve matured, that warmth and love at work in my life has continued to look like healing through therapy and deep spiritual community. My ministry has grown into creating and cultivating communities of fath that prioritize loving community and spiritual and relational health for those who are longing to be a part of God’s kingdom work.
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