The alternate title to this article is, “How did God finally get hold of me?”
I can drive towards answering this question from two basic points of view, the first one I can speak of some of how I formed many of my life attitudes which resisted God’s call and the second I can answer with some help from Scripture. I have written along these lines before, especially in my first articles, however, revisiting allows to reflect and different aspects can be considered, some of which you can possibly related to,
Dominance of secular life
Through most of my life I would tell myself and others, if I was prompted, I always accepted the existence of Jesus Christ. I grew up attending church and I understood academically that Jesus Christ was a real person, who was God, who died on a cross for the sins of the world.
I took some confidence that going to a Christian church made me a Christian and that not denying the existence of Jesus Christ was a positive thing. I believed that somehow that was enough to receive salvation though I was never pressed to prove it.
At home, we rarely spoke about the Bible or theology, so in this instance, we were a pretty secular family with secular (though often altruistic) interests. As much as I love my parents and my family, the things we did and were interested in did not directly lead me to seek the connection to God or Jesus. My dad was the hard working stoic, a veteran with a heart to bring together scattered communities. My sister, my eldest sibling, was the 1960’s rebel marching to her own drummer. My two brothers, who were closer to my sister’s age, had lots of friends and were athletic, with partying and adventure stories that captured my young imagination. I was too young to do what my brothers did, but I idolized them. The stuff my brothers did had little to do with being a Christian.
Our family always regarded my mom as the spiritual one. She was the one who attended church regularly and her personal generosity, volunteerism, support for my dad, sense of humor, and easy going philosophy was what most endeared her to us children as her being the most spiritual one.
Back in the early 1970’s, the one time my mom tried to get us to have a home bible study. I remember, once we got to the story involving Samson and a “jaw-bone of an ass” my brothers went into a fit of laughter and that, somehow, unfortunately, lead to the end of my mom’s determination to have home bible study. Dad didn’t seem to mind, he was busy running his businesses and volunteer organizations. One of his philosophies was “God helps those who help themselves.” (which is commonly mistaken to be Scriptural).
At church, every month we would take Communion and we did it with the command to do this in remembrance of Jesus Christ, that His body and blood were symbolically represented by a piece of bread and some grape juice, that His blood was shed and his body was broken for the sins of the the world.
When most people got married, they did it in church with a vow before God.
I was never Baptized in a ritual ceremony and when in 1989 when I visited my friend in Vienna, Austria who was the pastor of the Methodist Church there, he told me that it wasn’t necessary if I had accepted Christ. I know that not being ritually Baptized would make some of my Catholic and Reformed Christian friends raise an eyebrow, but that put an end to my desire to be Baptized (though I’ve since have been reconsidering it).
Whether I was to be ceremonially Baptized or not (it symbolically represents the receiving the Holy Spirit), I think there should have been some uncomfortable questions asked to my then younger self about my faith, because looking back and based on what I know now, there were some really gaping holes in my theology, truck sized holes, specifically my understanding of what it means to be a Christian and a follower of Christ. In other words, what did I know about “saving faith”?
In around 1992, I began attending a very good non-denominational Bible Study (Bible Study Fellowship, aka BSF), the same one I am re-involved with beginning two years ago but I had no real concept how deep my spiritual waywardness was before two years ago. I found BSF to be a good conservative balance to the fairly liberal stance of the Methodist Church, but in the 1990s, I valued taking an open minded approach to both, causing me not to be confronted by the crucial conflict of the two.
The secular reason I started attending BSF in the 1990s was I was dating a girl at the time who also started in a class. Although she attended a women’s group and I attending a men’s group in a different city, I thought it would be a good way to build some common ties with her. I was tentative about attending the group, thinking that Bible believing Christians could be like the stereotypical tele-evangelists, but I was pleasantly surprised that, despite my Methodist upbringing, BSF resonated with good people and was making sense out of much of the Bible that the Methodist Church seemed to avoid.
Even so, looking back comparing myself now to then, my learning the Bible was by and large an academic exercise and always trying to reconcile what I was learning from BSF and learning from the pulpit at the Methodist church was more philosophical than a pursuit of the truth.
Surrendering to the Call
In retrospect, I believe, had my spirituality and my relationship with Jesus been at the forefront of my introspections in younger life, there were several events, beginning in high school, that could have led to a conversion to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. But, I think, my secularism was so ingrained in my attitudes and beliefs, that it required several events where I was delivered from either potentially deadly accidents or experiencing miracle-like transformations to begin chiseling away at the secular fortresses that had been built in my mind and dominating my soul.
Because I was not maintaining a journal at the time, I cannot recall a specific date of when I accepted the call to faith in the form of surrendering to the Lord, but I can say it was strongly impressed upon me during the Spring of 2022, when I was suffering from despair. In humble desperation to seek a peace that a life of idolatry had no intention of producing. I surrendered with a contrite heart and a commitment to immerse myself into the Bible and to read it from cover to cover, beginning with the Gospel of John.
Surrendering to Christ is also surrendering to the truth. My mind began to process what I was reading in Scripture in a different light. Before, many teachings that are recorded in the Gospels were hard to understand the practical and meaningful connections, but afterwards, I could start seeing how high of a moral and ethical bar Christ was illustrating and how many of His teachings were to represent what the kingdom of God is like, in other words, ones begins to learn about holy righteousness and warnings required to change ones way of thinking in preparation to become a person of God’s kingdom. Not only do these teachings provide a high bar of righteousness, but they also very humbling indicating how far we are as humans are from being able to attain the requisite holiness to face God on the day of judgment.
I began to see how God is reaching out, most clearly through the life of Jesus, to build a stronger relationship with everyone who is called to be a follower of Christ. It is unspeakably moving to learn how Christ sacrificed, suffered and died for all who are called. Salvation by God’s grace is a gift we can receive by Him though we have zero merit to receive such mercy and kindness. All you need to do is believe in Christ’s and His work and to remain open to God’s transforming your heart away from sin and more into Christ’s likeness.
How amazing it is to be one like a brother to Christ, and a son in the Family of God.
Then Jesus said to them (two of His principle women followers), “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.” – Matthew 28:10
God’s Calling
Is this “God’s Calling” or “God is Calling (you)”? You make the call.
Here is a sampling of some passages that speak to the predestination of the call to believers. Given God’s infinite nature, the Bible teaches that those who believe have been called to be come brothers and sisters with Christ even before the beginning of time. This means that the call to every believer has been set to ring since before the Creation. The questions becomes, when does each person pickup the phone to answer the call?
I would not get hung-up on the predestination versus free will debate in this case. As mortal humans, we are unable to truly wrap our minds around how the two can co-exist. Although we are all made in the image of God, our abilities are severely handicapped by sin and a limited or non-existent ability to perceive the dimensions and reach of an infinite holy being.
In Jesus’s high priestly prayer in the garden the night before His crucifixion, He prayed, “…I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. – John 17:20-24
The Apostle Paul wrote, 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. – Ephesians 1:3-4
11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. – Ephesians 1:11-12
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. – Romans 8:28-30
Salvation is a matter of God’s grace. Have you received the call?
For a detailed explanation of who Jesus Christ is from the Bible’s perspective go to the video in this website , “Who is Jesus Christ?”
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
CKY
typos and all, I do not use AI. I can only write so much every week and I have to limit myself.
Phone booth Image is from Pexels free photos or Jesus and the disciples on the water is from Openverse. Sunset photo is from my personal stock.
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