Stories: Knowing God is Real

I’ll never forget one of the first times I truly realized God was real. I had known He was real in my heart and in my mind, but He seemed real and…far off? It wasn’t until this one day, perhaps, that I actually realized that not only was God real, but that He knew me! And not only did He know me, but He cared about me and what was going on in my life! One day changed my life forever, because I realized that this God I had been taught about was real, and that He saw me.

I was in the seventh grade at Faith Christian Academy in Orlando, Florida. For at least two weeks, I seemed to have a horrible nightmare each and every night. It disturbed my spirit and interrupted my sleep. I was greatly bothered by it, but I didn’t tell anyone that it was going on. I figured eventually it would just stop. You can imagine my dropped jaw then, when my Bible teacher, the sweet and loving Alice Stephens, came into class one day and handed us little pieces of paper entitled, “Peaceful Sleep.” On the page was a prayer for peaceful sleep and against bad dreams. She also then gave us several Scripture verses to mark down that coincided with the prayer. One of them is Proverbs 3:24:

When you lie down, you will not be afraid; Yes, you will lie down and your sleep will be sweet.

That little slip of paper sits next to me as I write this, even now, sixteen years later. I can’t get rid of it. It’s precious to me. It sits in my Bible as a reminder of the day that a little girl’s eyes were opened to a God that not only existed, but also cared enough to know what was going on in my young, seemingly insignificant life.

Take heart. Wherever you are today, He sees you. He knows what you need. He’s concerned with you and what it is that troubles you. He is really real.