Author: William Vana

The Moment of Truth

My salvation experience was not something you would call textbook by any means, but it worked for me.

It was the fall of 1990, sometime in November.  I had been living with my parents at their home in Walton Hills Ohio.  I had recently moved out from my wife that I was living with because our marriage wasn’t working.  We had married in April of 1989, not even 2 years earlier, and it wasn’t working.  I married her with a son she had from a few years earlier.  He was great, I loved being an instant father to him!  I was 26 years old.

I was so torn up by the separation and possible divorce if things didn’t work out that I wanted to kill myself… check out… quit, the pain was so terrible, I didn’t know what else to do!  I had thought about getting a gun and shooting myself, though I never owned a gun or even shot one, but I figured I could find a way to get one.  I thought about cutting my wrist, hanging myself, overdosing on drugs, jumping off the 480 bridge; a bridge that is 212 feet high.  But every one of these thoughts left me thinking… what if something goes wrong and I don’t die, and I’m left all screwed up like a veg or something… crazy thinking right?!!  I mean come on!!  Jump off a 200 foot bridge and live ??  I was so screwed up.

I grew up as a Catholic, was even an altar boy at the church/school in our neighborhood, St. Wenceslas School and church.  It’s hard to find old pictures of it since it closed down and was sold some years ago, but this was the altar in the church.

 

I used to sneak around in the back and eat the host and drink some of the wine.  The wine was pretty good!  Maybe that’s why I like wine today.  My favorite was the funerals as an altar boy because we got to fire up the incense.  We would have to go in the back room and put it in what’s called a thurible.

At a certain point in the the service we would bring it out to the priest with a small container of some powder or something that the priest would put on the incense and make it really smoke up.  Then he would walk around the casket and say some prayers and shake it towards the casket and when he was done he would give it back to me and I would take it out of the church; actually have to take it outside the back of the church and dump it on the ground in some dirt; but even that was fun because I had another chance to get outside for a little while.

I take side journeys some time… I’m always good for a few extra stories.

Back to the story… so even my Catholic upbringing couldn’t help me in my current nightmare of a life, it seemed my family couldn’t help me, my friends couldn’t help me, I knew about marijuana and drinking, and those couldn’t help me.  It was an awful time!!

To make matters worse, my brother Mark had become a “Christian” I’d guess about a year before all this happened and he started getting in my head a few months earlier.  He knew I was hurting bad because of my family situation and he started to talk to me about God.  I don’t remember if I told him I was thinking about killing myself or maybe he just saw the pain I was in, I’ll have to ask him about that.  I think I told him I wanted to die.  I remember him saying stuff like, “So if you die where are you going to go?”  I said I’ll go to heaven, I’m done with this lousy life on earth, everything sucks!”  He said something like, “Are you sure you’d go to heaven?”  I said, “Yea, I’ll go to heaven, all that Catholic stuff I did my whole life, I know all that Jesus died for us stuff.”  The whole time, an angry and bitter disposition to everything I said and did!  And Mark went on and on and on and on and on… questioning my salvation and apparent assurance that I would be in a better place.

He created enough doubt in my “salvation” and my planned trip out of this world and into heaven, that now in the worst misery I had ever experienced, I couldn’t kill myself and die… and the pain of living was so bad… I FOUND MYSELF TOTALLY STUCK IN THE MIDDLE… I COULDN’T DIE… AND I COULDN’T LIVE!!!

So I gave up… right there in that backyard of my parents home at 7060 Hickory Lane in Walton Hills Ohio.

It was a beautiful setting… in the backyard of this home where the property in the back went up against the metorparks, lot’s of trees, though it was November and they were all bare except for a few pine trees… the sun was setting behind the trees, it had a nice orange glow to it, it wasn’t that cold for northern Ohio, I sat there and in all my mess, and pain, and stink… I gave up!

I said to God, “I QUIT… I GIVE UP… I HATE MY LIFE… I can’t live anymore like this… I can’t die because my brother screwed me up and I’m not 100% sure I’ll get to heaven… It hurts so bad, I don’t know how to keep on living… so I quit… I know your out there somewhere God, in heaven or somewhere… but I’m done… here’s my life… if you want it you can have it… I know it’s a mess and it’s ugly, but I don’t want it anymore… if you want it, here it is, you can have it… I’m done.”  And I sat there and looked up and stopped talking… and stopped thinking… and got a little quiet… and cried one tear… the first and only emotional tear I could remember ever crying up to that point of my life… and that was it… I sat there for another 10 or 15 minutes and just looked up at the sunset on the horizon between the trees… then I walked in the house and went to bed.

The next day I woke up I had this thought… “Well, maybe I can make it through this.”  It still hurts, it hurts a lot, but maybe… just maybe I don’t have to die, maybe I can figure out what’s wrong with my marriage, maybe even go back and fix it, and maybe not have to die.

Now it’s interesting as I look back that I tried to think of ways to fix my life problems but not try to fix myself!!  You see I didn’t have the courage to want to fix me, just fix my problems… typical man huh?!

That was my moment of salvation, right there in a quiet back yard, all by myself, I was born again!  I knew that evening on that porch, looking up at that sunset and saying all that stuff to God about quitting, and here’s my mess of a life, and if you want it you can have it… Well, He took it!  He looked down at me and said, “Thank you very much, I certainly will take that mess of a life you made, I’ll be glad to have it, just the way it is, I love making something out of nothing”  And believe me it sure seemed like there was a lot of nothing that I gave Him, but this I know… He did take my life, just the way it was, all dirty and stinky and messy from the pigpen of life I was in… and He said, “I know just what to do with this”, and He got His son Jesus to carry me home so I could get a good spiritual bath, and put some new clothes on, and get some new shoes on, and get to becoming part of Dad’s family again… and well, before long at all, I actually started to enjoy life… like I never had before!!  I actually came to my senses and found my way back down that road on my way back home and my Dad was right there to meet me… that was a very good day to be alive!

To be continued…

Was the Father the true prodigal?

The definition of prodigal is one who spends freely or recklessly; wastefully extravagant; having or giving something on a lavish scale.  There is no doubt that the arrogant son who demanded his inheritance was a prodigal in his own right.  He truly did spend his money recklessly and was quite wasteful with it.  But, consider how the Father spent His love on His son when he returned home?  Did the Father not give His love to His son on a lavish scale?

What if the message we give our children was the same one as this Father? But what if we never heard that message ourselves from our own fathers and mothers?  How then could we give something to our children that we never experienced ourselves?  You can’t give what you don’t have!

What if we all knew we had a dad to come home to that was not going to condemn us?… or punish us?… or yell at us? … or verbally, mentally, or even physically abuse us? … Is it possible… that the true God of the universe is patiently and eagerly looking down the road for you to come home to His safe and peaceful home where you can rest and be at peace in Him?

John 5:22  The Father judges no one…

Hebrews 11:6  But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Have you ever heard those words from your heavenly daddy tell you… “Hey William, I am not ashamed to be called your dad!”  I have… and I have felt his touch as He embraced me and told me, “I’m glad your home, everything is going to be all right!!”

Can you honestly say you feel no shame from your heavenly Father when you are in His presence?  You should… and if you have, you can’t possibly be the same person you were before it happened.

Is it possible for us to link Hebrews 11:6 to the moment the son in the pigpen “came to his senses?”  Did the son remember his dad’s house and the goodness of his dad and did he not desire that place over the current stinky mess he was in?  He even practiced what he was going to tell his dad when he got home.  He said in Luke 15:17-20 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.  But what is so moving to my heart is the fact that when he met his father on the road and attempted to say the words he prepared, his father wouldn’t even let him finish talking!  He cut him off and began to proclaim his joy that his son that was lost is now found!!

I had my pigpen experience, just like this rebellious son, I was in some stinky muddy mess and it was awful.  I won’t share the entire story at this moment, but enough to get you excited.

Side note:  My desire on this website as well as all the information or conversations or whatever I do to advance the Kingdom through this avenue turns out to be… is to always relate scripture to my real life and something I have personally experienced and lived through.  I was given clear instructions that I was to always share a time in my life and to match it with something from God’s word in the Bible, and anytime I share a scripture I am to match it to something I have personally encountered as well.

It was the summer of 2011, I was living in Charlotte NC.  I was married with 2 small boys, Caleb was 6 at the time and Jonathan was 3.  I was married for almost 7 years at the time, but it wasn’t going good.  Nothing crazy bad like some may think, but my wife and I weren’t close personally like a “Christian” couple should be.  I didn’t realize how poor a husband I had been, but I was about to find out.  My wife decided to take our two sons back to Ohio (where we were originally from) for a “trial separation”.  She told me to get my crap together, but not in those exact words.  She would be gone for 7 weeks.  I was about to experience the greatest transformation I had ever seen in 47 years on this earth.

For the first couple weeks my family was gone I did some odd jobs around the house and I had to keep working at my job at Toyota of Concord where I was employed.  One day when I was in a closet at home straightening up I came across an old cd set of a preacher we had seen while we lived in Ohio.  His name was Jack Frost, but he wasn’t about to be nippin at my nose, It was going to be a direct hit on the jugular.  The recording was done by a local church in Ohio that he was visiting and we had gone to see him there.  The quality of the tape was not that good, so it made listening to it rather challenging.  But I briefly remembered the type of preacher Jack was so I put the disc in and tried to listen to him again.  I wasn’t sure how many days after I listened to these messages the transformation began, but it was fairly soon.

It started with a moment when I was sitting outside in the backyard of my home at 5934 Hidden Meadow Lane, a nice community called Highland Creek near the Concord Mills outlet mall.

I had a nice backyard with a couple of trees and descent view of the sky.  I can still see almost every detail of the backyard, from the 2 trees we had cut down but tried to save the base to build a tree house, to the garden I put in to grow some vegetables, and the sandbox in the back corner under some trees for shade, and the small slope of grass that we actually did a little sled riding on with the boys.  Looking back on it I can understand why this moment turned out to be so special.  You see I was in a pigpen that was already familiar to me.  I had found myself in a place that I had already been in before.  I was married once before, about 20 years earlier, and that marriage didn’t work out and ended in divorce.  And I found myself in another marriage that wasn’t going well, and this time with 2 small children!  I couldn’t believe I was taking this test again… AND FAILING AGAIN!!  This from a man that had been a “Christian” now for over 20 years!  A christian who went to bible college and earned a bachelors degree in Divinity, a licensed minister!  Yet, everything in my life for 47 years up to this point seemed worthless.  I looked back at my life and could not find anything to be proud of, it actually all became quite embarrassing.  I had hit rock bottom so hard that everything inside of me just broke, I cracked… I couldn’t find anything of value or worth about myself at all.  As I sat in that chair in that backyard I realized what an absolute mess of a life I had made for myself and the trail of broken relationships I had left behind everywhere I went.  I ruined my marriage, hurt my wife and kids, had no good career, had no savings, had no great relationships, had ruined my family business back in Ohio and left many family and friends wounded and hurt.

I had attempted to run off to the Carolina’s because I was so “spiritual” and I was following God.  I had thought my intentions were good, but I now realized what a lost orphan I had turned into.

It was at this lowest point of despair that something very surprising happened to me.  So I’m in the back yard looking up at the sky and attempting to pray to God, and I was saying something like, “I’m so sorry for the mess I made, I can’t believe my life is this bad and I’ve done so many wrong things”  I was truly humbled, and now experiencing true repentance for the very first time… I began to realize in my spirit man how I had let down my God and what it made Him feel like.  I used to relate to God in ways I related to my earthly father, but this time something was very different.  As I sat there and began to confess my failures and really begin to feel the grief I caused God and so very many people… God came down from heaven and met me right there in that backyard in Charlotte NC.  I could sense the very person of God MY father for the first time in a way I never had before… and I felt him put his arm around me and look me in the eyes and say to me, “William, I’m not mad at you…it’s going to be all right, I’m here for you.”  I questioned what I just heard, thinking and saying in my spirit man, “God, do you see this mess I made (like He didn’t know)?  And for the first time I began to see my entire life unravel right in front of me, and everything I thought I did right in my life just fell apart right before my very eyes.  I realized I had 2 bad marriages, ruined 2 family business’s, no family members walking with the Lord because of me, nothing much of anything.  And God my Father was right there next to me with His arm around me saying, “Son, I love you, I’m not mad at you, I’m here for you.”

I couldn’t believe what I just heard and felt.  I was blown away!  In all my experiences with a father on earth, I never had anything close to that; and now I’m hearing another Father put His arm around me and tell me it’s going to be okay?!!”  But it was true as true could be.  And after shedding only one tear my whole life; about 20 years earlier when I got saved I got so emotional I had one tear come out of me; the waterworks burst forth and I cried and I cried and I cried… much of it with such joy over what just happened to me… and other times with much sadness and grief at the 47 years of failure, sin, and disappointment that I lived and presented my heavenly Father with as a life lived for HIm.

I cried for 7 straight weeks!  And then I cried most days of the week for about 2 years!

To be continued…