I remember when I first started seeking God.  I was in my second year of my masters program.  I was becoming more and more afraid and mentally imbalanced.  I was studying St. Thomas’s Summa and reading literature having to do with God.  I started reading a Gideon’s New Testament and meditating.  I signed the back of the Gideon’s bible and gave myself to God.  I wrote a letter to my sister Elaine confirming the event and went about my business as usual.  Two weeks later on the road to my home I encountered God.  It was the Alpha experience.  Words cannot quite capture the experience of God, having your sins forgiven and experiencing the presence of God in your life.  Faith was truly born when I knew there was a God and that God knew me personally.  Not unlike the first high of an addiction, no experience I have had up to this time has compared to that experience.  God has been patient with me for over thirty years to get me to the place where I can experience Him in a way that truly compares with that experience; the Omega experience.  

    Entire sanctification is the prerequisite for the Omega experience.  It is dealing with the flesh, the self, and the world and coming to a place where I am completely alone, alone with God.  That is the journey that God has taken me on, that is the journey I did not recognize until today.  Rather than an experience that jolts and rivets all the senses like a drug, the Omega experience is one of complete peace and joy and freedom in the Spirit where the senses are not electrified but find a home in God.  I did not know nor did I perceive where God was taking me nor the cost it would require.  From sickness and hospitals and institutions, to religion and rules and regulations, to jail and loss of reputation, to separation from wife and routine, the journey has taken me from Alpha to Omega.  From the heights of heavens to the abyss of hell back to God.  I have found the Omega God after a long journey in the desert.  I have found that nothing this world promises can compare to being with God, alone but in his presence.

Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega.  He wants to be your all in all.  He wants you to desire Him above everything else including his gifts. He wants to take you full circle so that the Omega experience is the Alpha experience, but without the lack of spirituality and holiness to enjoy it that the initial experience had.    He wants you to enjoy Him in His fullness not on occasion, but always and all ways.  He wants to be your Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, a life of endless joy in His presence, now and forever. 

Amen