Santa Cruz Testimony

In a heart-to-heart conversation, my new friend, who lived 2200 miles away, told me the hardest thing for her to hear me say was, “I don’t believe in God!”  Hmmm…I had been saying that my whole life, yet all the while I was singing hymns every Sunday and obeying a voice in my head that from time to time gave me clear instructions.

Having a “radical for Jesus” friend who had an intimate relationship with God was a new experience for me.  What could we possibly have to say to one another?  Well, plenty as it turned out.

We became best friends, but I secretly said, “Those Christians, they always want to convert you - that’s not gonna happen to me!”

She never tried to convert me.  She lived a life that demonstrated Christ’s love.  I was fascinated that the love of God could and would be a part of everything she did or said.  I was curious…we started talking about God, reading the bible, and even praying!

I invited her to California for the first time ever and we planned a trip to Santa Cruz where my daughter goes to school.  A month before she came, she texted and said “You have to listen to the last ten minutes of a sermon by Joan Pearce.”  She wouldn’t say why.

I listened to the story of an amazing encounter with God on a beach in Santa Cruz, near a lifeguard stand.  I was stunned - I spent my childhood summers visiting that beach and sheltering in the shade of that life guard stand.  And we were going to Santa Cruz together the next month!  I listened to the entire sermon several times.  I was inexplicably drawn to Joan’s story.  A month later, at the same spot on the beach Joan described in her story, my friend and I knelt and prayed together.  We asked God to help us hear His voice like Joan did.  I wasn’t sure why or to whom exactly I was praying.  We also prayed for my mind and my heart to be open to God, and for our friendship to be strengthened for whatever God wanted us to do.

From that moment on, things began to accelerate.  I realized the voice I had heard in my head so many times was God’s voice.  Hearing from Him more frequently wore down my resistance.  “Here is the proof you have been asking for,” he seemed to say!

I didn’t fall down on the beach in Santa Cruz and repent, but it was the beginning of a journey in which I was carried by my best friend straight to Jesus.