Last week I shared that I didn’t like the emphasis that was placed on the word ‘believe’ when used with Christianity.  Believe connotates that something is true even without any evidence.  Although my religious faith is a combination of biblical history and scientific fact, it still leads me to one conclusion, I don’t just ‘believe’, I know there is a God.

As a child, I struggled with the concept of God but as a Catholic, that was taboo.  I didn’t go to church when I was supposed to and didn’t actively participate in church events.  Then as a teenager, a nun in our church brought a number of us together to discuss God conceptually;  toss in the musical ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and my interest in God became a little more alive.

Then I married Lucinda Nolin, a strong Christian Believer and the one who brought me back to church on a regular basis, which wasn’t a hard thing to do because of where my head was at.   Time progressed, graduated from college, lived in the big city, then moved to the farm, and had the perfect family; a boy and a girl.   Life’s plans included a new home and raising our children with the faith we both had.

It was a busy time in our lives.  Farming with Cindy’s dad paid most of the bills but I still worked off the farm.  That job took me to Memphis in February of 1985 where my ‘Belief’ in God took a dramatic turn because of a dream.  A dream so real, that I can still see it today as clear today as if it happened in real life.  This is what I saw:

It was that next day, February 18, 1985, my life changed forever as I received the phone call that my daughter Cassie had been killed in a car accident. During that call, waves of emotion flooded my mind but the one thing I can still remember is how I recalled the dream from the night before. I have no other explanation than God was trying to prepare me for what, at that point in time, was the most traumatic experience I had ever had. It was at that moment that I knew there was a God.

Knowing that fact has impacted my life in ways I can’t explain. It has made me look at religion differently and altered my approach to life. It has brought a calming effect to the tragedies I have faced since then. It has made me communicate with God and his angels more often and realize that everything we ask for in prayer is answered in some fashion, even if we don’t like the results. I am fortunate for being able to know there is a God, it is the best thing that has ever happened to me, everything else in life is just the icing on the cake.

And he said, “Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream.
Numbers 12:6