Until I was eleven, my family did not go to church. My parents believed in God, of that there was no doubt, but there was no evidence other than our nightly prayers asking God to, ”Please God bless……” .
I was away from school quite a lot because of illness and this, out of boredom, caused me to read a lot. I must have read every book in the house.
Somewhere along the line, my older brother was given a picture book of bible stories. I don’t know if it interested him at all, but I read it on one of my days off school. I liked the hero stories in the Old Testament such as Samuel, Gideon or David. However the New Testament didn’t have the same grip because the hero, that Jesus guy, ended up being killed, and that left me feeling bad. I liked stories with happy endings!
At this point, don’t forget that I was not in a professing Christian family, nor was I going to church. I was reading Old Testament stories in a children’s picture book, and what little I had read of the New Testament I did not like or understand. To me Jesus was nothing more than one of the characters of the nativity scene.
From my later experience with the Lord, I can use the right language to describe what happened to me next, when I read the story of Samuel being called by God.
In my book, the third time God called out to Samuel, the picture alongside the story showed him on his knees, looking up to heaven as he responded to God with the words, “Speak Lord for thy servant heareth.”
As I read it, the Holy Spirit came upon me. In my heart, I WANTED WHAT SAMUEL HAD GOT. I got out of bed, onto my knees and said, “Don’t forget me God”. That’s all.
I knew in my heart that it was for real, the burning feeling inside was like something had happened, but I got back into bed and continued reading the story, telling no one of the experience. I only recalled it much later in life when I heard the gospel for the first time.
When I was about eleven years old, my parents started taking us all to the local Anglican church for the first time. I can’t remember much of what was taught, except that the sermons were exceptionally boring to a young boy. However I did enjoy singing old fashioned hymns.
One sermon, however, stands out above all others. It is the only one I remember and was all about the crucifixion. The vicar explained at great length why the particular death of Jesus was more significant than any one else’s death. According to the vicar, crucifixion was the most barbarious and cruel torture invented by man, therefore Jesus’s death was set apart and high above all other deaths, (presumably giving him power to take the punishment for ALL sin).
I listened to this and totally rejected it. Even in my young naivety I knew that the likes of Hitler’s Gestapo torturers enjoyed the ability to keep their victims alive for weeks or months, refreshing their torture daily, whereas Jesus was dead in a few hours. I therefore dismissed the Easter story as irrelevant.
One day, a little older, I was hanging around across the road from the church with a bunch of church children, when, out loud, someone voiced the question, “Ok then, who goes to heaven and who goes to hell?”
For me, the memory of that brief event is like one of those times in a film when it suddenly starts to run very slow, deliberately making a very poignant moment. As soon as he finished the question, everyone turned towards Tony, who was the altar boy and a little older than the rest. He always stood at the altar nearer the vicar, and handed him the wine chalice and was therefore closer God. Tony would know the answer!
His answer was straightforward. “That’s easy, good people go to heaven, and bad people go to hell!”
As he was answering, I was turning around in what seemed incredibly slow motion to face him. As I did so my eyes panned over the church building. It was as if something descended upon me, an understanding which did not come from within, but from above.
With that descending presence came the words, “He is totally wrong, everybody is bad, I am bad, but GOD has made a way.”
And as I gazed at the buildings of church, ”and I do not live in that church, I live in your heart”
These few but significant words became an integral part of me as I grew up. I continued with my parents attending church but was aware of God within me, rather than in the church. However I was still proud and arrogant, knowing nothing of repentance or humility.
Later, in my mid twenties, after working for eight years in engineering, I decided to go to college to learn to be a teacher. I only did this because I wanted the long school holidays for the purpose of going mountaineering and rock climbing, my passion at the time.
Shortly after arriving at college I was, to my irritation, harrassed by over-enthusiastic members of the college God Squad. On the pretext of a cup of coffee for a newcomer I was tempted into their lair. Over a period of a few weeks there ensued many heated discussions, but there was no way I was willing to let go of my freedom and join this crowd of wierdos.
I had a special resistance within. This was because God had said quite clearly to me that He did not live in the church, but in my heart. I showed no outward evidence of such truth, but in no way was I going follow this Christianity stuff. I didn’t need church. Besides God had clearly said to me that he did not dwell in the church. To me that meant any church, any denomination, even any religion!
However, they didn’t play fair, they prayed. In the course of conversations, one of them told me that God had shown her that I had given my life to the Lord as a child! That finally got my attention. It was slowly dawning on me that the God they were talking about was the one I had already known for years. Even if I had backed Him into a corner in my life, and certainly didn’t heed Him much, I still knew Him!
I was having trouble counting the cost of commitment. For me, my mountaineering was like a god. Now The One True God was challenging me to the core of my being. WHO was going to reign in me? I knew that the cost of surrender would be the dropping of my first love of the mountains and also of the company I was keeping. I knew that my old climbing friends were heading entirely in the opposite direction, and I could not have both.
Finally, after much soul searching, I relented, I repented, and surrendered my life back to the Lord, the prodigal effectively coming home. My climbing equipment went into store, and I turned to face the opposite direction, much to the disgust of all those who knew me before. There were many things I knew I could not continue.
Since that time, in the mid seventies, much water has passed under the bridge, but looking back several things can be noted about my little saga.
Firstly, I came to know the Lord long before anyone preached Jesus to me.
Secondly, and more amazingly, when the church I attended as a teenager had totally abdicated its call to spread the word of truth, God gave me a direct heavenly download of the very basics of life.
God’s message was that we are all fallen/bad, that man’s efforts at goodness are futile (good people also go to hell!), that God himself has made a way, that he dwells in our hearts.
All this is confirmed in scripture.
My cry for eternity was simply, “GOD DON’T FORGET ME”. For me, this is where it all started.
It must have been ten or twelve years later that I heard that it was Jesus who did it for me, even though I did not know his name!
Work your church theology around that!
I write this because I know that there are many Christians who meet the Lord well before Gospel theology hits them. Sometimes the preacher of that gospel does his utmost to trash what has happened before, because it simply threatens their production-line evangelism.
Also, if someone can receive the Gospel without being told by an evangelistic christian, what is the point of evangelism, or churches for that matter.
The answer to these last points I will try to post in the future. In the mean time I would welcome comments from those who have had similar experiences of meeting God well before they hear the Gospel.
