The Highlight of My Life
Rather than going straight back into the Bible, I think it would be appropriate to get a portrait of one young man's born-again experience(mine, in fact). I will do my best to retell the story as accurately as I can. In short, I was Nicodemus. Even more, I was "The Rich Young Man" in Matthew 19.
I had grown up going to Sunday School. I always believed in God. I always believed in Jesus. I went to Youth Group. I played in the worship band. I prayed. There even was a few occasions I read the bible. If you asked me if I was a Christian, I would have thought it a stupid question. "Of course! I've always been a Christian" I'd say...
Unfortunately, it was only because I didn't know what a "Christian" really was. If you asked me to articulate the gospel message, I might have told you it was whatever Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John said. When asked what I would say on the day of judgement if God asked me why I should be let into heaven, I would have told Him that I was a pretty good person and that I believed in God.
Birthing Pains
When I got to college alot of this started to change. I started to hear the gospel in its real, raw form. I started to understand sin as not just stealing and killing but setting up anything other than God as god. It's easy to picture the old testament idolatry of bowing before a physical idol. It's easy to say that's not us.
American Idol
But where does your time go? Where does your energy go? Where does your money go? Show me your schedule, show me your internet history, and show me your credit card bills and I'll tell you (I will SHOW you) who your god really is. It's where you go for comfort, for identity, for satisfaction. For many, it's alcohol. For many men, it's pornography. For many, it's a good thing made bad by worshiping it. Like a spouse, children, a job, or money.
For me it was freedom. There was just alot of things I didn't want to do- I didn't want to give God my time or money. I didn't want to wait for marriage to have sex. I didn't want to limit my ability to get drunk when I wanted to. So I didn't...
Sin and Love
This idolatry is the ultimate transgression. To willingly turn your back on your loving creator and the relationship he wants with you, worship the gift he's given you, and, in turn, forget about him. Sin is ugly. God hates it. BUT... He loves you. And that's when the story gets crazy
While we humans were doing everything we could to run away from the God who is crazy about us, God sent his son who He loved deeply, Jesus, down in the form of a human. Jesus lived the perfect life that we hadn't lived and finally, he fulfilled his mission and took the punishment that we deserved (separation from God, death, hell, wrath, etc.) and died bloody on a cross.
What was the purpose? So that we might return to God and have relationship again (this wouldn't be possible with sin in the way). This is the greatest news ever. He didn't have to save anyone, but He did because He loves you and wants to be with you.
Back to the U of M
There's only one real response to this: A complete reorientation of your life around this truth. Here I was, knowing that God demanded all of me, the words of Christ echoing in my head, "Those who would save his life must lose it..." For the first time, I started to realize that I was... not a Christian. A Christian is one who has put up the white flag and let God be God in their life. Praying a prayer, going to church on Sundays, etc. meant nothing unless you really mean to give God the rightful place in your life- to say, "Yes, Lord- YOU are the arbiter of my destiny. Do with me what you want and make me who you want."
And so, one day, after God had effectively destroyed my idol, I surrendered. I repented of my false, shallow, pseudo-Christianity, and God moved. He had saved me.
I opened my eyes for the first time.
Alive from the dead
I was a spiritual baby with different eyes and a new heart. One of the first things I remembered was a brand new desire for holiness. I no longer asked other Christians about what gray-areas I could get away with. I hated sin! I didn't want to sit around and watch TV. I wanted to read the Bible! I wanted to learn everything I could about Jesus and philosophy and other religions. My apathy had been replaced by a deep, deep, thirst for truth that consumed me. Bible study was no longer this uncomfortable place where I'd zone out for an hour. I looked forward to it more than any other hour in the week. I COULDN'T get enough of it. All of a sudden I was praying constantly, the Spirit for the first time making his home in my body.
It was not that I had made a resolution to become more religious and try to read the bible. It was that, for the first time, I WANTED to read the bible.
It wasn't that I made a resolution not to go get smashed at parties. It was that my appetite for that stuff was nearly gone.
It was not that I willed myself to talk about Jesus, it was that for the first time he wasn't boring but he was life itself, the very air I breathed. He was the mighty King of Kings who the universe was made through come down to be with me. It was a reflex to talk about Jesus.
It was an experience. It was wild.
It has only been in the last year that I have started to understand exactly what happened to me that February.
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