I have come in contact with so many lost souls, who wanted the peace and joy I have spoken of, but still they wanted no part of religion. My answer to that objection is always the same. Of course you don't want religion. Neither do I. Religion is a set of rules and regulations. I am not into religion either! What I have is a relationship with a man...and that man is Jesus Christ, the son of God, who died for the sins of the world. Once they recover from the stunned shock of that statement, they haul out the real hurdle, the real objection. Well, they say, I am not ready to give up all the things I enjoy. It is a valid argument. Nobody likes the notion that in order to be acceptable to God they must turn their backs and quit doing all those wonderful things that passes for fun in the adult world.But they are so busy thinking of nights on the town and the music, lights and laughter as they dance dizzily around with admirers, their comprehension of what I am telling them stops right there. I think it is a combination of the fact that what I have said attracts them, and fear that they might actually try to have that contact with God, and fail. In their innermost being, they know they don't measure up,and God is going to reject them.In short, they put the cart before the horse.Somewhere in the recesses of their mind, they are planning that someday they will have become good enough to be acceptable to God, and then they will make that connection,and in the meantime, they have just short changed themselves.If only they were patient enough to come to the understanding the no one is able to be good enough to come to God, but he has made a way for them to come to him just as they are, just where they are, and it all starts with Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God.
I'll never forget the night it happened for me. I wasn't in church, or listening to a preacher. I was researching a book I was writing, and it was necessary for me to understand certain aspects of Eastern religions.I had been reading a large reference work called" The religions of the world" which had taken me several days to devour, and taken copious notes. It was late at night, and I was all alone in my study. Everyone else in the house was asleep. I sat back in my comfy desk chair, listening to some music, laid my pen and pad aside, and flipped to the last section of the book.I thought I knew all about this one. It was Christianity.But, to be fair, I thought, I should really read this one, too. I don't remember how long it took me to read it, only that it took me longer than I had anticipated.But time didn't matter, because there were such stark differences in Christianity from all the other religions of the world...and now I could compare with some authority, that in spite of my original casual air, I became engrossed in what this book was telling me that I had never heard or understood before, and I kept turning pages until the end.Now, I had been raised in a certain church, who for reasons of their own, discouraged the reading of the Bible.We were taught certain prayers, and given snippets of the gospel every Sunday morning, but after years and years and years of attending church, it turned out that other than his birth, death, and Resurrection, I really didn't know anything about Jesus at all! Until then! I sat back, with my mind reeling from all I had learned, with the book in my lap, and said, " Jesus Christ really is the Son Of God!" Right out loud...I was so stunned, because I knew it was true! And when I said those words, I was no longer alone in that room! There was a presence there, that hadn't been there before. It was the presence of God, and he was all over me. His love washed through me, goosebumps broke out all over me, all weariness and pain was gone, and my bones felt so light, and he spoke to my heart. I will never forget that feeling, and I never want to be without it again! Now, I hadn't said a prayer. All I had done was to accept Jesus Christ as the son of God, but after a while of seeking a preacher who could tell me what had happened, I now know that that is when I got saved! I got up, left my study, went straight to the television and turned it on and started channel surfing until the spirit that made me get up and go there said, there it is! It turned out to be a preacher whom I had gone past hundreds of times before, and never stopped to listen to, but God had said, THERE IT IS! It took me a while to figure out who this preacher was, but from then on, whenever he was on the air, I was sitting there with my bible, listening, learning, and when he gave an altar call, I said the sinners prayer every time. I looked up every point he made, just to make sure he was right...and he was. From that night on, I was a different person. I didn't go the places that I used to go...I wasn't interested. Things I used to love, I no longer cared anything about.There was no struggle, no conscious decision to stop doing this or that, I just didn't want to do that anymore. My tastes had changed.Like leaves off the trees in autumn, things just fell away from me.Certain books and movies, gone. Booze, gone.Dancing, gone.Running the bars, gone.Cussing and swearing, gone. And I didn't miss any of it. I had a new love. I was completely sold out to the Lord Jesus Christ.My family went into a tailspin.They thought I had lost my mind.Even my best friend thought I was nuts.But it didn't matter. I had finally found him, the one thing I had unknowingly been looking for all my life.I had found God. I had him, and he had me, and that was the only important thing to hang on to.I knew that God would restore to me anything I lost, for his sake...and he did.Yon son came around, Mom came around and even my best friend came around, after a while, once they realized I wasn't just a kook.
And to think, I might have missed my chance at Salvation, if I had gone past that last chapter, thinking I knew it all, already, and amused myself with something else instead!
OUI?
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