Immanuel — God with us — is the Biblical revelation that in Christ we have a traveling companion on our journey Who is with us wherever we go. We had a good run with that aspect of the Christian faith in the last installment of this series, but this time, I would like to diverge a bit from Scripture and share my personal testimony, as it pertains to today’s topic which is direction.

You may think things are just cruising along in your life, but it doesn’t do you any good to be making tracks and moving along at a rapid pace if you are pointed in the wrong direction. You’ll just end up in the wrong place faster. Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop, sit down, and wait until you find out just where the heck you’re supposed to be heading toward.

My mind’s a bit hazy as I try to remember all the details, but the 2002-2004 timeframe was very difficult for me. Oddly enough, due to my eccentric upbringing, the bulk of my teen years in the 90’s went by smoothly, and I had a heap of fun. I was learning all sorts of things through my home schooling, I ran my own freelance Web design business, I performed music and toured with our family Celtic band “Distant Oaks”, I had a good amount of free time to explore different ideas and hobbies…it was a good time.

But as I headed into my early 20’s, my comfortable little bubble began to burst. We spent an extremely difficult couple of years on several creative projects that were like those “projects from hell” you hear about in artists’ circles. At the end of it all, we didn’t feel like our musical career was hitting its stride but rather we were going nowhere fast. In addition, this was the time when my mom started feeling unwell (it would be a while yet before we found out just how sick she was), and it impacted the frequency of our performances and our marketing campaign.

Beyond this, however, was a deeper sense of loneliness that was fast creeping up on me. For a long time, I hadn’t spent any effort trying to cultivate any lasting friendships with anyone, certainly not someone of the opposite sex in my age group. For one, I thought I was having plenty of fun doing family stuff (and sure, it was fun), and secondly, we were so busy touring around California and hanging out with musical acquaintances that I didn’t think I needed to “go out” with personal buddies. But suddenly, a case of artistic burnout coupled with a winding down of our career momentum left me reeling without any earth beneath my feet. I wasn’t in tune with God. I wasn’t going to church. I didn’t have any close friends. I didn’t even know any girls. I was in my 20’s and I felt like a looser, like one of those pimply-faced geeks they make fun of in tech cartoons. I was fat (really, I was). And, to top it all off, I had been dabbling in some sinful behavior that I knew was wrong and that I had been hiding from everyone else for a long time. All at once, what had often seemed like some innocent fun became the mark of a lost soul.

It all came to a head in (I believe it was) 2004 when I developed a severe case of colitis. I was out of shape, overweight, and now my digestive system was shot. I started not feeling like I could go anywhere because I’d have to run to the bathroom at any moment. I started having bouts of intense pain and felt like my body was breaking down. How could this be happening to me? It was only yesterday when I was young, carefree, and jolly, and now I’m a wreck. I thought I was having a nervous breakdown or had gotten “chronic fatigue syndrome” or some horrible disease.

But then something amazing happened. My mom, brother, and I were shopping at Whole Foods one day when one of us noticed this book called The Maker’s Diet by Jordan Rubin. With a title like that and a cover showing a rendition of the famous “Adam and God” painting by Michelangelo, it immediately grabbed our attention. After reading through it a bit and seeing Jordan’s amazing testimony of God’s healing through a Biblically-based diet, I immediately knew I had to try this diet as a way of saving my health. My mom agreed to do it with me to see if it’d make her feel better as well (and it really did for quite a while), and the rest of my family joined in as well simply because we weren’t going to cook two separate meals every time we sat down to eat!

I was astonished. In only a couple of weeks, I had lost at least 15 pounds, my colitis was nearly gone, and I felt more energetic than I had felt in months — even years. During the course of that summer, I ended up loosing over 30 pounds, and I’ve generally kept my weight and fitness in decent standing ever since. Oh, and my digestive system is working perfectly fine now, thank you very much.

But that’s really not the best part. The best part is that, when I first went on The Maker’s Diet, I also realized that I would need to go on a “spiritual” diet as well if I would at all be able to get out of the miserable hole I had fallen into. So I began to repent. I began to seek God again. I began to ask Him, beg Him to show me the way, to give my life meaning and purpose and direction again. I started reading the Bible more as well as Christian books filled with sound wisdom and revelation. It was a time of rapid transformation for both body and soul. As the months went by and I headed into 2005, I literally found myself rising up out of the darkness and loneliness that had ensnared me, and I began to catch a glimpse of the weighty prophetic destiny that God had placed on my life. It would be some time before that hazy picture became more clear — even now I’m still learning more about what God would have me do — but at least I knew I was finally headed in the right direction. Instead of moving to the beat of my own drum, I was following in the footsteps of my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

God is the ultimate travel agent. When I trusted Him with my life, He took me on a trip of excitement, adventure, and romance that is only just beginning and can only get better from here on out. If you haven’t yet taken that leap of faith and stepped out in a quest to seek new horizons, heroic deeds, and chivalrous acts of nobility, I pray that God will bless you with the courage and the daring to begin a new journey that will take you to the edge of eternity and beyond.

In the next part of this series, we will discuss ways of hearing from God in the Spirit in order to understand the next leg of our journey. ‘Till then, may God’s face shine upon you as He holds you in the palm of His hand!