"Just Me and Jesus"

It’s always good to visit with Evangel Home graduates, and I was recently challenged by a conversation with a young woman who graduated in 2002.

She seemed to do well, and kept up appearances, for several years after she left us – worked, maintained a home, attended church; seemed to be doing the right things. However, she was drawn back to the destructive lifestyle she had escaped and slowly began to lose everything again.

Everything that is except a flicker of faith, and God fanned the flicker into a flame. Once again she looks great, is working, has her relationships back in order and keeps her hand locked in God’s grip.

I asked what got her back on track since she had admitted to being "really way out there." She recalled that one night she was on her way to getting loaded again -- ready to do drugs and watch TV. The program was a Christian show and she heard someone read the verse James 5:14. It became her rebounding point. “Is any one of you sick? He shall call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.”

Only problem she said, “I didn’t have any elders. I wasn’t in church. It was just me. Just me and Jesus.”

So she walked to the corner liquor store, bought a bottle of olive oil, took it home, anointed herself and prayed to be free of her addiction. She said she felt His presence then as never before and prayed that she would be delivered from the dark world she had slipped back into.

It has been four years since that night, and this woman is now pretty solid. Her life is not only a testimony to Christ's power, it is a warning to all of us about how easily we can lose everything; how quickly we can become ensnared in our own dark habits.

We in the Christian world may disagree about such things as music styles, church politics, evangelism, who's a sinner and who is saved. These things might affect how we worship and what church we attend, but they should never diminish whom we worship and what we do for Him.

After all, it really does come down to just you and Jesus. "Just me and Jesus.”