I "went to church" my whole childhood and NEVER ONCE heard the gospel.
I was never told the good news, or what I needed to do to experience it.
I heard sermons I did not understand and sang songs I didn't like.
But no one proclaimed to me what the Lord Jesus proclaimed in His day.
But one day, as I sat in a Bible Study, at the age of 17, for the first time, I heard these words:
"Did you know that by believing in Jesus, you have a guarantee of heaven?"
I experienced what people mean then they say "a light bulb lit in their heads."
This was literally a revelation to me! A real epiphany!
I asked my mother and another pastor if it was true. I read the Bible to see if it was true. It was really good news to me! And I wanted to literally tell everybody! I wanted to open the phone book and tell everybody how easy it was to go to heaven! I didn't even know I had this desire for a guarantee of heaven. But I knew that nothing could be better than this guarantee.
Yet I still struggled with sinning, with a particular sin that I could not overcome. One night I gave in to this sin, and it devastated me to the point of wanting to commit suicide.
(I wanted to remain a virgin. I did, but barely. And this fear of losing my virginity led me to want death. For me, virginity meant never repeating my families history of broken marriages. For me, marriage was the only hope of never being lonely. When I thought I would lose my virginity inevitably, it devastated me. This was the sin I struggled with, the particular sin I thought I could not overcome.)
For no reason I can think of, on this night when I felt like dying, out of the blue, I said these words, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that He died for my sins."
I felt peace cover me like a blanket.
I no longer wanted to die.
But I still hadn't heard the good news that Jesus proclaimed, the good news about the kingdom of God.
I had not been told to repent.
I had been told to believe.
Though peace covered me like a blanket, and though I felt a new life, eternal life, I did not know I needed to repent, to turn from my self centered assumptions. Even my desire to remain a virgin was self-centered. I didn't seek this for God's honor, nor the honor of my future wife. I wanted the intensity of marital intimacy, expressed and experienced in sexuality. I was alone and lonely. I wanted my wife to be to me what I didn't believe God could be: A constant companion, giving constant affection, in constant connection.
Now that I am happily married, I know that marriage was and is the answer to my desire for lifelong companionship on earth. But my wife is not the Holy Spirit, who is in me constantly. Nor is the good news of God's kingdom my marriage to her.
This is the good news:
I am free from the tyranny of living selfishly!
I am free from ME!
Free to live for God and not me!
I have a purpose that negates self-centeredness, the TRUE AND REAL SOURCE OF UNHAPPINESS!
But I did, finally, have to repent.
One day, when my first marriage ended, when my first wife forsook me and divorced me, which was THE worst thing that could have happened to me, I came to the end of myself. I was nothing and had nothing, because everything I was and had was summed up in my desire to be married.
So I yielded control of my life to God's Spirit.
I repented.
I changed my outlook on life.
I no longer lived for myself, but for God, and decided I would literally follow the Spirit wherever He led.
My life was never the same.
I repented. I changed my mind, assumptions, and actions.
I believed the good news: That the Kingdom of God had come, because the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ has come.
But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Matthew 12:28
No comments:
Post a Comment