God Answers Our Prayers

For quite some time, I have been emailing back and forth with a self proclaimed atheist. Why he reached out to me via my personal email or how he obtained my email address has to be completely a God thing in my opinion. We first encountered one another on a friend's Facebook page with the discussion of religion and whether God truly exists or not. My poor friend had to eventually delete the post when the thread simply grew too long for the "debate" to continue.

Now for the last thirty days, I have tried in vain to remain calm and pass along the message I felt God wanted me to convey, despite the numerous name callings laced with profanity, that all Christians believe is the fairy tale book of the Bible. I attempted to find out just where his issue was with the labels of "Christians" or anything that referred to referencing the Bible as our source for the true.

The "debate" continued despite my repeated attempts to remind him that I was more than willing to carry on our "conversations" as long as they remained civil. I'm not sure now, looking back, that he was able to do just that. He repeatedly insulted me with profanity, referencing my lack of intelligence to respond to him without using the Bible as my source, and continued his assault. I continued to pray for him, that God will intervene in some way, and hopefully He has.

With each email, I could gain some small tidbits of what he issues were. He hated that at the end of life, it's going to be a choice between heaven or hell. He refuses to believe that either of these places exists and believes we will all just come to the ends of our lives and simply be buried to become a worm buffet. He believes in the science of the world and got to the point of arguing about the science behind the creation resulting from a band of light that ushered the world into that "big bang" theory most like to default to. I pointed out that from the very beginning the first part of creation according the Genesis was the reference to God creating light as the first part of God's creation of the world on the first day. "Let there be light!"

He had an issue with that one. Why? Because I referenced the Bible and the theory behind my beliefs in a creator and intelligent design. At some point he actually admitted that if he wrote the Bible, it would simply say it was created, people lived, the end. At least I got him to admit in a "Creator" which he later tried to dispute.

I explained that no one at the end of their life will wind up in heaven or hell because of God's judgment but due to our own choices when given free will. If we fail to accept the sacrifices God provided when He sent His only Son, Jesus to die for our sins, was raised on the third day, and now sits at the right hand of God waiting for the precise moment when God will simply have enough of sin running rampant on the world and unleash the final judgment on the earth after the rapture of the believers. I told him that no one winds up in hell without their own decision. He didn't like that.

Just yesterday, the final email was laced with more hate that I thought possible and I questioned why God would allow these conversations to continue. I prayed for a decisive answer before blocking any further email attempts. During a lunch with my husband I opened up to him what I was struggling with. I shared I didn't want to get to heaven and have God ask me why I simply gave up. I told him I need God to tell me what to do about this. I explained the name calling didn't bother me, because none of the things are true. I know the enemy is simply using him to get at my faith and I should be able to defend what I believe. Knowing that persecution is a sign, I'm doing something right. Any outside influence from friends of his, simply advised me to end our conversations. For some reason, it didn't sit well in my spirit that I could simply "block" or "unfriend" someone simply because our conversations weren't going anywhere and I was watching someone send themselves to hell without any further intervention.

I continued to pray for wisdom and answers.

In fact one of his emails stated I was mentally unfit because I believe I " heard" from God. No matter of explanation was enough for him. He wasn't budging on his beliefs.

During my morning devotion today, God answered me.

Want to know what He said?

And no, for those of you that want to know if I "heard" the voice of God audibly, the answer is no.

Here is what my morning devotion said,

"Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned." Titus 3:10-11 (NIV).

I even love the Message's version, "Warn a quarrelsome person once or twice, but then be done with him. It’s obvious that such a person is out of line, rebellious against God. By persisting in divisiveness he cuts himself off."

Can you believe that? Yes, God provided me with the exact words I needed to "hear" from Him.

So this one is closed on my end.

I will continue to pray for a individual known as MJ and if you want to add him to your prayers, please pray for revelation and for someone to come along in his life that will truly show him that God is as real as the Bible I hold in my hands.

For now, I will go on my "fairy-tale" beliefs according to some and I love that fact that I am sold out as crazy for Jesus in my body, mind and soul. I love the Lord with all my being and I can't wait for the day when I spend an eternity in Heaven, a very real place, for all eternity.