Like many Americans, I was raised in a Christian environment and was taken to church as a child, but I never really became a Christian until I was age 26. At age 13 I had been baptized in water, but I remember thinking that I wished someone could give me a “bottle of faith” that I could drink so that I would believe all of the things I was supposed to believe. As I later left my family and went off to college, for the first time I met a lot of people who did not believe in God, or had a different idea of “God”, or just didn’t care. This caused me to reconsider and think more about what I did believe. For me, my search included these three questions: 

1) Is there really a God? Do I have good reasons to believe there is?
2) If there is a God, what is God like? What is His character, His nature? 
3) If I conclude that there must be a God, and I have some idea what that God is like, then what does this God expect from me? How should I respond to God?

 

During my college years, and for the next few years afterward, as I studied and considered different religions, philosophies, and ideas, I gradually came to the conclusion that there must be a God, because there is lots of evidence pointing in that direction – not that I had total proof, but that I had lots of evidence pointing in that direction. I concluded that nothing in this world ultimately makes sense without God; that our very existence, any judgment of right and wrong, abstract concepts like beauty and love, the awesome complexity of the world around us, and any hope of ultimate meaning and purpose for our lives – all this leads us toward God. I also concluded that the kind of God described in the Bible better fits the world as we know it than the other ideas of “God” – as an impersonal force, or many “gods”, or a dualism of good and bad “gods”, or “God is all; all is God”. The Biblical picture fits our world best, of one God, perfect in love and justice, who allows us free moral choice, even when terrible evil results, and who then lovingly provides a way to rescue us from our sins, through Jesus, in a way that doesn’t compromise His perfect justice.

 

When I was 26 I went to a Christian conference that a girlfriend of mine was attending. Beyond the speakers and other activities at that conference, it gave me an opportunity to be alone and undistracted by all those things that normally do distract us, like TV, radio, friends, and work. I was able to be alone with myself and to mentally wrestle through those questions of whether there was a God, what He was like, and what He wanted from me. One day I had the distinct impression that up until that point in time I had considered myself intellectually honest by not responding, not making any kind of commitment to a God, until I had enough evidence, but that now I had enough evidence on which to believe, on which to respond, if I really wanted to. For the first time I had the sense that the question had become: Was I willing to respond? And, if so, how should I respond?

 

At that point I realized that one of the things I had to wrestle with was the matter of Jesus’ resurrection. If that were believable….. So I went back to my dormitory room and read through the Bible accounts of the Resurrection. I concluded that, if God wanted to do that, He certainly could. The question was not what He is able to do, but what He would want to do. And I could understand why He would want to do that.    

 

That was really the last stumbling block for me to trust myself to God. I knelt down (it seemed the proper posture if I was coming before God) and said, “God, though I can’t see you, I believe that you must be here. I’m going to give You my life and I don’t know what that will mean. I can’t expect that You will answer every prayer that I will ever pray, but regardless of how You respond, I’m giving my life to You now and I want Your will for my life. I can’t promise to be perfect, but I do promise that when I sin, I’ll pick myself up and continue on in trying to follow you and do your will.” I realized that I was not perfect, and I didn’t feel particularly sinful, but at the same time I now realized that just to ignore God day after day had been sin. So I added “Please forgive me. You say in the Bible that I needed to have Jesus die for me, so I thank you for that.”

 

At that moment the thought struck me that, though I was single, I was very much hoping to someday be married and have a family (and I already knew that I was not going to be marrying the girl friend that I had come with to this conference). So it was the hardest thing at that moment of time for me to add that, “Yes, even this, the question of whether I’ll be married and a father, I give to you, sight unseen, whatever the future might be, and I’ll trust in Your character, God, that You love me and that You’ll do what’s best for me.”

 

When I had finished that prayer, nothing spectacular happened, though I had a deep sense of peace that I had finally done that which I had come to realize needed to be done – to surrender myself irrevocably to God with all my talents and abilities, my strengths and weaknesses, my time, money, energy, hopes and dreams; all of me.

 

But the changes that I found taking place inside me in the next few days were, to me, spectacular. As I now read the Bible, it was alive to me in a way that it never had been before. When I heard people tell about what God had done in their lives, it was like an electric shock going through me as the Holy Spirit would say, “Yes, that was My work in that person’s life just as in yours.” I also began to, in a sense, see the world through God’s eyes, such as blossoms on the trees in the spring – things I had never noticed much before. I also began to see people differently. When I returned from that conference and went back to my job, I was overwhelmed emotionally as I realized God’s love for the people I worked with, loved and cared about, most of whom seemed to care little about Him. It broke my heart and I left work early, went home, and wept in prayer for them.

 

I knew that God, the Holy Spirit, had come to give me a new, spiritual life, just as Jesus had promised.

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The Next Chapter:
Hitch-hiking Adventures (Learning to Walk by Faith)

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