I grew up in a great family. We went to church regularly and I had a heart for spiritual things as a child. I remember being frightened of hell as a small child because I knew that I was a handful and frustrating to my mother and teachers. I instinctively knew that I was a person who deserved hell. I was thoroughly and contentedly selfish and there was real no cure as far as I was concerned or really cared to know.
One significant event in my development happened in Kindergarten when I was chewed out by my teacher in front of the class. I had pushed her too far and she said that I was the worst kid she had ever had. This was not new information to me, but I turned a corner and realized that I had to hide the real beast within. I became a “nice” boy, the kind parents tell their children to emulate, the kind teachers praise in front of the class. But, I was hiding from God and everyone else. The truth is that I knew from an early age that I had “control” issues with God. I felt from my earliest memories that Jesus wanted me to walk closely with him and to follow him wherever he would lead me. But I instinctively reserved the right to make the big decisions for myself. By middle school, I could probably articulate that my biggest fears were that if I took Jesus seriously he would want me to be a missionary and to marry some strange young woman. Instead I offered up my “niceness” to God, imagining that my work ethic and good grades were somehow good enough. I knew they weren’t, and I carried a world of secret guilt. Every night I said my prayers in bed, but I knew that the unspoken part of my prayers was for Jesus to stay on his side of the road and not to threaten my carefully laid plans. I wanted Jesus to be my Saviour and my well-satisfied employer, but I didn’t trust him to be my friend and my King.
In university I finally got to something difficult. My studies were hard and not fitted to my abilities. I failed some classes and I put my chin down to work harder and climb the mountain alone. I began to date a beautiful and charming young woman who did not have a personal faith in Jesus Christ. Suddenly when I lay down in bed at night to talk with Jesus, I couldn’t escape the truth that I was living for myself and really wasn’t following him at all. What followed were months of pain. I could no longer hide from the fact that nothing had changed in my orientation to live for myself. I felt like God slowly stripped away my artificial sense of goodness and left me without skin. I was 6 years old in front of my Kindergarten teacher and it hurt like hell. I finished the fight with God somewhere in the spring of my 19th year. I think He finally decided to subdue me and I was beat. I stopped hiding. I began reading my Bible for hours a day. Suddenly, I wasn’t carrying a mountain of secret guilt. The truth of passages like II Corinthians 5:21, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”, came home to me. God wasn’t impressed with anything I could ever do, the only righteousness that he could ever accept was that which Jesus offered me as a gift. I found that my affections changed and I wanted to walk closely with Jesus. I suddenly cared for other people in ways that I hadn’t before. I wasn’t so afraid of where Jesus would lead me. I’m still a “sinner”, and still notice my selfishness and my tendencies to hide from God or treat him like an employer, but it is always the simple truth of the gospel, that Jesus died for my sins and gives me his perfect righteousness that has accomplished any real change in my heart and life. It is my hope that in sharing some of my story with you, that you will be encouraged to explore the historic truths of the Christian faith, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
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