You said Yes.

“Thank you,” I said to the Lord while praying this morning.

“Thank YOU,” he answered.

“For what?” I asked, wondering what he could mean.

“You said Yes. That’s all I needed.”

Suddenly I knew he was referring to the summer day in 1972, when I asked Jesus to be my Manager, Lord of my life. He had been my Savior for many years, but Lord? No, not really.

On that particular day I had told him, “I’ve tried to manage my life my own way for a long time and it’s not working. Please come in and manage it for me.”

Several times over the years I’d heard him call my name, in a small still voice, “Bette.” I would just ignore it, shrug it off to my imagination and not respond. In the very back of my mind somewhere I was probably thinking, “Later.”

But now I was so desperate! So sad, so disappointed, so disillusioned with my life. That afternoon when he called my name, I answered. And in a split-second everything changed… (See https://estherspetition.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/all-things-became-new/.)

Blinking back some tears as I looked through my kitchen window, I had to look again. The grass looked greener! The pine tree was browner, the canna lilies were orangier — nothing was the same!

Amazed, I walked out to my back yard to look at everything up close and slowly recognized that the grass and tree weren’t new. I was new.

Rubbing my hand over the trunk of the pine tree, I realized that verse was true: If anyone be in Christ, he is a new creature. (2 Corinthians 5:17) I was a new creation, with a new life, a new challenge, a new assignment, and a new identity.

Indeed, nothing has ever been the same since that day. Fifty years worth of images ran through my mind this morning, people and places, events and answered prayers. Healings. Deliverances. Callings…

So many things I would never have known or experienced, had Jesus not become Manager that day, Lord of my life.

I’m still thinking about what the Lord told me this morning, “You said Yes. That’s all I needed.” I’m so, so glad I finally did. I wish I’d done it much sooner.

(Also posted today, please see https://estherspetition.wordpress.com/2022/09/20/after-being-delivered-from-fear-of-their-faces/)