My Road to Emmaus

I still remember my first encounter with the Lord God Almighty.  It was at a home Bible study, and I was 13 years old. I had been interested in the things of God since I was in sixth grade, but I had never really met Jesus.  That was about to change.

It was in late September of 1976 when the call came in--the bi-centenial year, when everyone was celebrating freedom.  How oddly accurate.  A woman whose kids I went to school with asked my mother if I could go to Bible study with her, saying she had learned more at this Bible study in six months than she had learned in her entire life at the liberal, denominational church my family was associated with (but never attended).  My parents were in the processes of buying and fixing up a fancy restaurant at the time.  They were secular people.  God really didn't have a place in their lives. 

I had been to Bible studies before, but this time was different.  Anybody can get a group together and talk about the Bible, but the anointing of God changes things.  A Pentecostal woman had been praying, fasting, and actively seeking God for the town.  And when I walked in to that Bible study, I felt the presence of the Holy Ghost for the first time in my life.

The Bible study was a Road to Emmaus experience for me---my heart burned within as I sat and drank in all that I was being taught.  It seemed like the words--the anointed words--were penetrating my heart.  Soon, it seemed that I lived to get back to another Thursday night Bible study.  Those Bible studies became cottage prayer meetings where people started to pray through to the baptism of the Holy Ghost.  Eventually, a church was spawned from those meetings--and I was a part of that group for twenty years. 

Life went on and circumstances changed.  I married, had a child, graduated from college, started my profession, and ended up in Oklahoma.  But when it came to my walk with God, I was hooked for life.  Nothing that ever happened could shake that anchor that was set early in my first encounters with God when I gave my heart to Jesus.  I'm 47 now...and I'm still amazed...and still in love with Jesus after all these years.  But it all started when I met Jesus at a special little Bible study that became my own, personal Road to Emmaus.