From the earliest time I can remember, I have had a curiosity and hunger for learning that continues even now in my senior years. I would follow my mother around the house and help her with her chores just to listen to her talk and teach me about what she was doing. I would copy her, as well as my older sister, because I was interested in what they were doing. Some of the things I learned from them were cooking, sewing, art, and being detail minded. This love of learning continued through my school years, and I was very academically minded. I would often pursue things on my own that I was curious about, like the constellations in the night sky. I learned to identify most of them in the summer sky, the winter in my area being too cold to spend time outside at night.
I was brought up in a Christian church and considered myself a good Christian, but I didn’t have a good knowledge of the Bible, and although I was curious about it and tried reading it starting from Genesis, I didn’t get very far. So, one day during my college years, I decided to try reading it again. This time I started with Matthew. Up until then, I had only heard bits and pieces of scripture verses. I had never seen anything in context. How eye-opening it was to see the bigger picture of the life of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross and his resurrection! For the first time, I really believed what the Bible says, and I know that was when I got born again.
After that, I knew something was different about me, and I wanted to know more but didn’t know where to turn. Eventually I graduated from college and moved to another city to be out on my own. During that time, I tried several different churches, one of which operated speaking in tongues. That was new to me! It was clearly something supernatural, and with the help of leadership in that church, I tried to speak in tongues. But nothing happened. They assured me that it would come over me, but it didn’t. This was probably because I didn’t want to lose control and look foolish like many of the people in that church looked to me.
Then one day I heard a group of people singing songs outside near the apartment where I was living. I went out to see who they were, and they told me they were from The Way Ministry. They invited me to fellowship, and my first fellowship was so different from any church I had ever attended. They were all young adults like myself, and although the setting was casual and in an apartment near mine, when they taught the Word, it was with authority and certainty like I had never heard before. And when they spoke in tongues and interpreted, it was clear that they were in control. There was no foolishness, just wonderful, inspiring messages.
I continued going to fellowship, and one day I told someone that I wanted to speak in tongues. She loaned me the Receiving the Holy Spirit Today book, and I was so excited that I went home and read it that night and spoke in tongues for the first time! I just needed to know that it was up to me to do the speaking. I didn’t need to wait to be pushed into it. I was so thankful to receive my answer about how to speak in tongues. I then sat through the Foundational Class, and it opened to me the accuracy of the Word of God, enabling me to read the Bible and understand it.
Since that time over forty years ago, my curiosity has never abated. I still love learning and reading, especially when it comes to the Word of God. I love seeing the Word fit together so that there is no guessing about what it means. God’s Word is His will, and He never changes.