I traveled to Liverpool yesterday to attend the funeral of a lady who I've known my whole life.
It took place in the Salvation Army Hall where I attended for the years between me being born and me leaving to marry Dawn.
I only just made it to the service two minutes before it was about to start. It was standing room only as the church was packed.
So I ended up standing near the front against a radiator that was so hot it wasn't funny.
As the service progressed, My mind focused on the years I spent coming to this Church.
Faces from the past flooded in to my mind.
I scanned my eyes over the congregation and felt a warm feeling envelope me as I stood face to face with old familiarity.
I saw aspects of the building that brought memories flooding back.
As I glanced sideways, my eye fixed on a pair of double doors. I was standing right next to them.
As I looked at them, I had a major flashback.
I remembered the many times that I had headed for these doors during meetings when I Was a teenager and into my twenties. If I felt emotional or under any kind of conviction, although I didn't understand those feelings back then, I would take the opportunity to" Go to the toilet" that lay just beyond these double doors.
In other words get out of the situation.
I used to" go to the toilet" an awful lot!
I think people were worried I had some extreme bladder disease or something!
I then began to realise as I reflected on those days that this hall had been a battle ground for a large part of my life.
I had, without realising it, been the subject of a battle for my very soul, and a battle for my life .
A battle that is ongoing in the heavens.
In the days spent in that hall I was a different Gary.
I was losing that battle back then.
But the real battleground wasn't the hall.
It was my mind.
This morning when I got back into Durham, the first thing I heard on the street, was that yet another student had fell into the River Wear that flows through the city centre, and had been pulled out dead at 3 am this morning. Drunkenness was at work in the lives of bright young people once again. I felt a real pain in my heart for this young man and his family.
I believe he was under the same battle for souls that I am under, that we are all under.
This tragic scene made me think this morning.
It made me think back to the funeral yesterday. It made me think about the battle ground, the hall I am talking about.
I can see it now.
God was constantly trying to get through to me. I was choosing to walk away from the intense spiritual heat that God poured on me. I was choosing to literally walk away through those double doors to pretend to go the toilet.
But walking away from conviction, only led me further and further into oblivion, into emptiness and a purposeless existence.
Getting out of the heat of God led me into the hand of darkness.
The land of nowhere.
It wasn't until my thirties that I stopped choosing to walk through that door.
I stopped running away from God and made the choice to run towards him instead.
That choice transformed my whole existence.
The young guy who died in tragic circumstances last night made a choice that led to death.
That's really what the double doors I was transfixed on yesterday led to. They didn't lead to an imaginary toilet.
They led to death.
A dead life.
I'm glad I chose to allow the rescuing hand of Jesus to save me from death.
I chose life.
There is a battle for our souls that will rage until Jesus returns.
But the battle has been won.
At the cross.
Which means we have the amazing power to choose life.
The blessing of choosing life is a powerful weapon in the selection of weapons God has graced us with.
So today if there is someone out there who is reading this right now and is feeling the heat of the battle for your soul and you feel like your losing.
Choose life.
Don't run from God anymore.
Run towards him instead.
Whatever you think, however you are now, whatever you have done.
His arms are open.
Massive blessings
