It might seem outrageous that the one and only Jesus Christ would notice a nobody like myself to do anything specifically targeting me and I think so too. I too was often hypocritical in portraying my Christian faith and I was a teenager with a habit of making things up to impress peers and unable to stop doing so. I got baptised but that didn't stop the way I behaved - it might have added to the preaching but not perhaps to practice of faith in sanctification as it is called. I kept to the teachings of Jesus but added spurious things like saying that Thomas in the gospel account of Jesus after the resurrection was calling Jesus his 'God' by exclaiming "My Lord and my God" when I had no idea if it meant that at all - now I know Jesus is Son of the God who is the Father and Thomas knew and believed this, despite my dubious attenpts to impress with my theology at an early age. So then Jesus let me be led to a place where nobody knew my background as a pastor's eldest and there I heard the gospel anew and was able to respond to it honestly and admit it cut me to the heart like I never before heard that Jesus Christ died for me. The Holy Spirit entered and gave life to my spirit and power surged within but it taught me truth. The only way for God and the Spirit from God is truth without lies. I found that out there and then and was able to quit the lies having a reason to tell the truth as it was in my conscience - my truth. The years went by and later I learned to obey the teachings Jesus taught and the commands in the gospel scriptures and then it was God spoke to me in a dream and days later Jesus met me in the street telling me in a storm to put down my umbrella and immediately the torrentisl rain stopped and I knew it was Jesus. I asked for confirmation by asking that at that night while I slept a dressing gown on a nail on the wall would be off the nail by the morning. In the night He woke me up compelling me so strongly in my deepest thoughts to get up - and immediately I took thr dressing gown I never normally used off that nail to wear it. I know it was Jesus. He is alive today. Days or weeks later the Holy Spirit came upon me at a church and there was s message in tongues which I effectively heard by the Spirit in English with accompanying vision - telling me Jesus' name of Lordship makes trees grow. I knew it was the Holy Spirit. I knew God is real and Jesus is real and alive and the Spirit is real and here. But the words in Revelation - scripture - saying "I am He that lives and was dead and behold I am alive for ever and I hold the keys of death and hades" those words cut it even more to say to my innermost being that Jesus Christ lives having died - having been crucified. It is true and I believe it. I have to pinch myself at the thought He showed Himself to me, nobody, but I believe it.
