…I dreamed I was driving through Springfield, and I stopped at a major intersection. I got out of my car and pulled out a road map, and a man walked up to me to help me.

?¢‚Ǩ?ìYou look lost,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù the man said.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìYeah, that?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s an understatement,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù I replied.
?¢‚Ǩ?ìHow can you be lost when you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re already home??¢‚Ǩ¬ù the man asked.

Have you ever done something so wrong — something that you knew you couldn’t possibly be capable of doing, but somehow did it — that you just can’t come to terms with it and forgive yourself?

That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling since I arrived here in Springfield. I knew for a fact that I was meant to be here and God had some great things in store, yet I couldn’t put the past behind me the way the Lord would have wanted me to.

The way I tried to deal with the past was to forget everything I did to create my situation and put it on a shelf in the back of my head, where I would revisit it later and beat myself up over it continually. And every time I revisited what I had done, it kept eating at me.

Eating at me so much that it began to cripple my walk with Christ. I couldn’t think with a clear spiritual perspective, I had no direction and no future. I was completely lost.

I figured I did something so bad, yet Jesus stood there and gave me a second chance and I didn’t deserve it so I pulled myself away from it, withdrew from it and began to continually beat myself up over my gross mistake day by day.

Enter tonight’s prayer meeting at Crimson House. The Holy Spirit spoke a clear word to the church to bind together and bear each other’s burdens, and after that we prayed for people one by one.

I was the second person that requested prayer. I felt a huge heaviness in my spirit and I knew I just needed to pray. I shared with the church that I had been picking myself apart and I couldn’t forgive myself for the decision I made to chase a girl instead of God. I needed HELP.

And it was help, that I received. I don’t remember many details, but everyone prayed for me and I heard my mom and aunt Benita speak a good word to me.

Who am I to not forgive myself, when Christ has already forgiven me?

Wow. I had told a friend in the recent past “If Jesus forgave you, that’s all you need,” but I didn’t believe it myself. What a hypocrite Chris Brewer was.

No sooner had Aunt Benita spoken that, than I received a spiritual vision and it was the second part of a dream I had the other night, and I referenced at the very beginning of this post. Here’s how it went:

“How can you be lost when you’re already home?” the man asked.
“I’m confused. I don’t know where to go from here,” I said.

The man yelled out to the distance, and soon a decent sized crowd of people lined up next to him. They proceeded one by one to come over to my car and hand me pages of a small book.

After the last person handed me their pages, I looked back up at the man who had been speaking to me previously. He looked at me with a smile as he got back into his car.

“These pages contain everything you need to know. Where to go, what to do, when to do it. Now you know your way.”

He started the car engine, and before he left took one look at me, straight in the eye. And he spoke his final words:

“There are others like you. Help them find their way.”

It’s worth noting that the people who were handing me the pages while I was in my car, was each and every person that was in the room for the prayer meeting tonight. I could draw a few spiritual parallels but for now I’ll refrain as that’s not important to this posting.

After I received that vision I began to thank the Lord and praise him for it, and no sooner than I began praising the Lord than I began to physically feel a heaviness removed from my head. It felt like pressure on my brain just suddenly left, and I could think again.

And for a fleeting moment, if not for very long, I began to think of myself as I imagine God would have thought of me. I pictured myself having fallen down in a cross country race and unable to get up myself, and Him reaching down and offering a hand to pull me up, and exhort me to the finish line.

That finish line is a great distance away, but with an improved clarity and direction of where spiritually to go from here, I now know where I need to go, what I need to do, and when I need to do it.

I’m not going to beat myself up any longer, but instead I resolve to live for today, each moment as critical and important as if it were my last.

I’m going to foster good relationships with everyone I know. I’m going to be more honest and transparent. And I’m going to do the best I can, through God, to help other people who were lost as I was before tonight.

God has truly forgiven me of what I’ve done, and now I can honestly say I forgive myself of everything.

There’s a song that was recorded by contemporary Christian artist Larnelle Harris, that sums everything up perfectly in its chorus:

I can begin again with the passion of a child
My heart has caught a vision of a life that’s still worthwhile
I can reach out again far beyond what I have done
Like a dreamer who’s awakened to a life that’s yet to come
Because new beginnings are not just for the young

I had my new beginning tonight. Here comes Chris Brewer 2.0.