I was bad #3

In my sophomore year, this guy came by preaching the AAA commitment. You had to be willing to do Anything for God at Anytime Anywhere (like go to Africa as a missionary). When you answered the altar call, he had an AAA card to give you that you could sign as an physical expression of your inner consecration to God.

I had this idea come into my mind as I was preparing to go forward. It was as if I could see the path down to the front of the church covered with broken glass. Thick, sharp broken glass, like pop bottle broken glass. If God called you to crawl across broken glass on your hands and knees, that would take quite a commitment, wouldn’t it? That would require Anything, Anytime, Anywhere commitment.

I am really, really glad there was no broken glass on the floor. As God is my witness I truly believe that I would have crawled through it. Fortunately there was no broken glass. I was able to walk up and sign the card. And as far as I could tell, I really, really, really meant it.

And it had absolutely no effect on my life whatsoever. Something was wrong here. Maybe I wasn’t really surrendering hard enough. Maybe it was all my fault. But after two years of answering virtually every altar call to surrender your life to God that was offered (and there were many) I decided that I wasn’t going to go forward any more until God helped me to understand what I was doing wrong.

I also made a vow to God that I wouldn’t do too much teaching on holiness until I understood how to enter in and until I had a message that others could understand and apply. I wasn’t going to offer altar calls that didn’t work. This thread in the blog is the answer to the vow I took over 30 years ago. I know, I’m slow—sinful—unconsecrated (pick one). I won’t even try to defend myself. Forgiven sinners shouldn’t go around defending themselves anyway. It shouldn’t have taken this long to understand these things.

But it did.

Better late than never.

(To be continued)