My testimony

Christians are evangelical in principle and in practice. Each one of us has a testimony to share and has witnessed God's overwhelming grace and mercy very personally. If someone does you an unexpected kindness such as returning a lost wallet, you will likely tell a number of people, and be expressive of your thankfulness. Your gratefulness will certainly depend on what it cost that person to help you. Our instinct is to repay the cost of the favor or to tender a reward. How infinitely grateful are we, therefore, who been saved from hell into heaven by the death of Jesus upon the cross. We fall into error when try to repay our salvation by doing good things to please God. The only good thing He requires or counts is believing in the death of Jesus as the full and permanent atonement for our sin.

Like so many in this world, I was raised into a world-view that didn't include God, except as a cultural icon; a somewhat important but archaic concept that had a significant impact only in a broad sense, but not at the individual level. I tinkered with the things of God a few times growing up- going to special church services once or twice, especially when we visited relatives on vacation. I briefly joined a youth group, but more as a social activity. Nevertheless into this vacuum came God pursuing me. At the age of 33 I had a transformational experience. I was wrestling one night with dark thoughts. I was scheduled to fly across the country the next day, and I could not get the image out of my mind of dying in a plane crash. My mind would not let up on imagining the terrible final moments, and on what would happen to me after dying. I drifted into a fitful sleep, but then I was suddenly wide awake with a person standing next to me. At first I sensed it was somehow my father who had come into my childhood room; but in a fleeting instant I recalled that I was grown up and he lived far away. The person in the room introduced Himself to me as Jesus and asked why I was rejecting Him constantly. I had no answer. He asked me if I would let Him into my heart and allow Him to become Lord of my life, in return for which I would need to have no fear of death. These were terms and expressions I was not familiar with. My response was "OK - I'll give it a try." I remember nothing further except waking up in the morning with a completely changed heart, and a Spirit within that had previously been vestigial but was now fully alive and in control of all my thoughts and actions. I hungered and thirsted for the Word of God from that day on. While some of the initial exuberance of that first day of my new life has tempered, by no means has there been any abatement of my enthusiasm for the deep things of God. Twenty years later I can truly say that each day I wake with a refreshed soul and spirit, and I look forward to walking with God in the paths that he has prepared.

Many books and articles have been written by the learned ones of our time about how religious experience is a remnant function of a particular part of the brain; sort of a religion appendix. Indeed, experiments have shown that religious ecstasy can be induced repeatably by probing this area. The implication is that experiences like mine are not real- they are just brought about by external triggers that stimulate the brain's religion centers. They argue that there was some as-yet undiscovered evolutionary advantage to this behavior.

I see it very differently. Surely He who created us would endow us with the necessary functionality to commune with him. Is it really any wonder that God would put a "God-phone" in our brains so that we could call on Him and experience closeness with Him at any time?