During my younger years prior to knowing Jesus, I frequented nightclubs with my small entourage of friends and danced the night away on raised lit-up disco floors. Platform shoes and halter tops were the trend, and I paraded around outfitted in glitz and glamour, turning heads and devouring any attention I could bring my way.

The music gave way to get lost in the beat, as though I had a story to express through my own personal movements. The rush of energy allowed my steps to fall into a routine. Yes, this was a liberating slice of my life, to whirl around and feel the immense fun. Surely, I concluded, whoever thought of this concept of disco music was a genius.

One night after leaving a club to go visit another venue, my friend Kathy realized she had enjoyed too many Cosmopolitans, so I offered to drive, rationalizing that because I drank less than she did, I was qualified to take the wheel. What deception. I drove her car right into a brick wall. We all sat there and laughed. Even Kathy.

When I reflect on the past and how I craved something with meaning and purpose, I’m ashamed to admit disco dancing was the best I could come up with. How pathetic. The canyon of emptiness inside my soul sought out the little pleasure its shallow satisfaction brought.

My quest to find purpose for being alive through wordly promises came to a screeching halt the night I gave my heart to Jesus.

In the days and months that followed, I became acutely aware of how deplorable I had been, and still was, without God's forgiveness - deceived and manipulated by a false perception of the meaning of life. The shame and disgrace attached to my life was indescribable.

The words from Francis Frangipane’s In Christ's Image training materials describe it best:

“The flaws in my life became unbearably vivid and utterly sinful. My iniquity was not as something I occasionally committed but as something I perpetually was. I saw many times when I could have been more loving or kind or sensitive. I also saw how selfish nearly all of my actions were. I abhorred myself.”

As Jesus began the process of stripping away the falsehoods that had suffocated my ability to commit my every waking moment to him, I noticed incremental changes within my thinking, liberating me from my old identity which was trapped in sin with no way out. God’s redemption plan was at work. I needed to remain on my knees in thanksgiving while wholeheartedly walking in the newness of the life he gave me.

God brings a lost soul into the place where he/she begins to perceive their identity through the lens of forgiveness of sin, extended to him by his creator on the cross. Redemption is God's plan to make us pleasing to him, even when we falter and fail. Apart from God we can do no good thing (John 15:5).

Everyone has a story, how they journeyed from the past to the present, and what defeats God took hold of and exchanged them for victories. The depravity of man leads a person into patterns of thinking where they are at the center of the universe, and the future depends on their efforts to succeed. But salvation removes that yoke and replaces it with a promises of unconditional love, unchanging grace, immeasurable forgiveness, and unspeakable joy.

Take heart beloved, that if you are struggling with past hurts, defeats, unmet expectations, or confusion about your identity or future, Jesus stands at the door and knocks. Will you allow him in to look at you, where you've been, and where you are going?

Do not be hesitant to know the Savior who died for you and longs to have fellowship with you if you let him. He longs to be your future.

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