God’s Guidance 6 - Bowling

Each one of us has our own relationship with God. I love that. My relationship with God is going to look a tiny bit different from your relationship with him.

And yours is going to be different from any other Findable.

God relates to us on a personal level. What other religion could possibly say that?! Not Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, New Age, etc.

God knows us as individuals and relates to each of us…individually. His character remains the same. He doesn’t change. But he relates to us in personal ways.

I’d like to share with you one aspect of my relationship with God–how clearly God has guided me. I am hoping that it will encourage you to see God in bigger ways, believe God more.

This will likely take me a few emails to share with you.

Here’s one example, from years ago.

As a young mom that it seemed all my friends were Christians. I wanted to connect with people in the community who were not already Christian. But I didn’t want to just look at the options out there and “pick” my ministry in the community.

I wanted to have God lead me to what he wanted me to do. I wanted him to initiate.

Some Christians would view this as putting too much responsibility on God. I view it as necessary. I don’t want to merely find some way to serve God—I wanted him to choose it.

It’s more exciting, more meaningful when you know God led you to do something, than to simply do something for God.

So I prayed that God would lead me into regular contact with nonbelievers.

A couple of weeks later, I was bowling with a friend. (I grew up bowling, and I still like it. I’m not all that great. My highest score at the time was 170.)

Well that day, with my friend, I bowled a perfect game – all strikes! A perfect 300. When I took my score sheet up to the counter to pay, the woman behind the counter said, “Too bad you didn’t do this in a league. There’s prize money for this.”

The mention of prize money didn’t matter to me. I immediately focused on the word “league.” And I asked, “Tell me about your bowling leagues.”

I joined one, and each week I was with women who didn’t yet know Jesus. One day, after getting to know many of them, I invited a few of them to my home for lunch, and shared with them how I came to know God and how they could also.

If EveryStudent.com had been built by then, I would have ended by encouraging them to go to it!

Sharing the gospel with them was not my only goal. I got involved in their lives. I was able to help some. We became friends.

In the midst of getting to know them, I had quite the experience joining one bowling partner at a Bingo night!! I didn’t realize that people buy bingo cards and then win money if they get Bingo. So, in essence…yeah it’s gambling. But what really surprised me is when they announced, “Lock the back door!” When I asked about that, my friend said, “In this part of town, it’s easy to get robbed.”

So…you never know what adventures you might find yourself in, when you ask God to guide you!