Marcus Redding Worships God

Twenty people must have come up to him between the time he walked in the building and the moment he took his seat in the auditorium. It was a little embarrassing, but he appreciated it. Mrs. Jones gave him a hug and asked how work was going. Mr. Allen, who worked with his dad for years, shook his hand and talked about playing the guitar. His friend Kevin—they had gone to church together since they were three years old—always gave him the handshake-with-one-arm-half-hug-with-the-other-arm that guys do. It had been almost a year now since he regained his faith, since he held Lauren’s hand as he walked down to aisle to stand in front of his brothers and sisters—and his own mother and father—to express his repentance for four years of rejecting the Lord and letting Satan rule his life.

Bill Chancko stood in the pulpit to call everyone to worship. Marcus was glad to be there.

Blyn Dalltin led a mix of older hymns and newer songs of praise. Marcus didn’t sing loud, but he focused on the words. He loved the poetry of the second song:

The sands of time are sinking/The dawn of heaven breaks;
The summer morn I’ve sighed for/The fair, sweet morn awakes:
Dark, dark had been the midnight/But dayspring is at hand,
And glory, glory dwelleth/In Emmanuel’s land.

Marcus knew “midnight.” He lived four years in darkness. Then he met Lauren. She showed him the Jesus he had forgotten. The dawn of heaven broke.

John Humble got up to preach. The sermon was on Mark 14:22-24. He encouraged everyone to consider that, by rights, it should have been our bodies that were broken and our blood that was poured out. But we were forgiven because Jesus was forsaken. We were accepted because he was condemned. We were alive because he died and rose again.

After the sermon the gentlemen prayed before distributing the bread for the Lord’s Supper. Marcus held Lauren’s hand and closed his eyes. “This is my body,” Jesus said. But Marcus thought about his own body, four straight years of sins that he committed in his body. A four-year blur in his memory, an alcohol-soaked mixture of resentment, fighting, and waking up in strange places and not knowing how he got there or who that was next to him. He took a piece of the bread. “This is my body,” Jesus said. “He died for me,” Marcus thought. He squeezed Lauren’s hand. She leaned over and whispered one word to him, “Grace.”

The gentlemen prayed before passing around the cups. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” Jesus said. Marcus repeated that verse in his mind but substituted his own name for “many.” Then he thought about the passage from Hebrews, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin.” He looked at the scars on his forearms, his knuckles, his wrists. The ones he could see anyway. He had covered most of them with tatoos. He had bled a lot and made others bleed. He took a little cup and drank it down. “This is my blood,” Jesus said, “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

“Thank you.” Marcus almost said it out loud.

More about Marcus Redding’s journey of faith next week.