I began coming to a saving knowledge of Christ during my first year of University. Reading Psalm 22, the words started to carry weight, which I had never experienced from the Bible before. Of course, I did not understand the words much at first, but I continued to be drawn to them like a magnet and began studying them to discover their meaning. Martin Luther once described his experience of understanding the letter of Romans like savagely beating on its doors until it opened up its meaning.
Similarly, I applied myself to Psalm 22, and it was during this time God began drawing me to Himself. However, I continued to live for myself, but my religious facade had begun to show its cracks. A series of seemingly insignificant circumstances of rejection proved to be like a hammer to my pride.
God was making me sensible of my sinful nature. This gracious wounding of my pride made me miserable as I continued to cling to my self-righteous life. God kept exposing my arrogance, and I kept quickly trying to cover it up. I would go to bed bothered why such thoughts had entered my mind and where they came from, yet I couldn’t deny their truthfulness. Other times, I would go to bed exhausted of my spiritual restlessness. I was tired of being bound to my empty, self-centred life and desired freedom. Many nights, I would go to bed determined to turn over the proverbial leaf only to find it just as dirty on the other side.
Over the next few months, I began attending church, thinking I should try cleaning up my life a bit more. However, I was merely using Christ as a means to an end. Yet, I still remember a growing spiritual hunger during this time, but I didn’t know what for. The following year I attended a series of meetings that proved to be monumental in setting my feet toward the cross of Christ. I had never heard preaching as I had at these meetings and recalled inwardly trembling on my way to the meetings. It seemed that the preacher knew God personally and not merely about God. I remember becoming jealous to know the God he knew. This desire staggered me because I already thought I knew God. But I could not deny that the God I knew was lifeless and his God was living.
These convictions led me to seek out this preacher. He advised me to meditate on Isaiah 66:1-2. Verse 2 says, “This is the one to whom I will look he who is humble and contrite and trembles at My Word.” I clung to these words as they revealed to me something of my condition. I eventually left University and began living with friends and began to devour the Scriptures. I would lock myself away and spend hours reading and crying out to God. I felt like a man looking at a shadowy world at dawn. I could see something, but much was unclear.
The following summer, I moved to West Memphis, Arkansas and received some more advice that God would remind me of months later. I was a seeker after God but had not rested in Christ. I began to learn about the doctrines of grace, but Christ was not All in all. So a wise minister encouraged me to worship Christ and not merely the doctrines of Christ. At these words, dormant pride welled up in me.
I hated to hear it but knew it was true. I strove to prove my innocence but could not. He was right. By the following autumn, I recognised God was stripping me of everything I held dear. My church, my friends, my little knowledge of truth all proved insufficient to give me rest with God. I was almost entirely alone, except for a godly elderly couple who gave me a job working at their bookshop. The conversations with these Christians were priceless. They were so gentle with me and continued pointing me to Christ.
A few months later, I moved to New Albany, Mississippi, to attend a church faithfully preaching the Bible. The first couple of months were overwhelming. However, a few months after moving, the Lord continued to expose more of my hellish pride. I began attending a men’s meeting at the church. They were reading through a book called The Glory of Christ by a 300-year-old dead guy, and it was during one of these meetings that God brought me to an end of myself. A godly Welsh preacher once said that conversion is like crossing a chasm. It doesn’t mean that it is the end of the journey, but only the beginning. It was during this meeting I was converted.
One of the men attending began speaking about Christ in such a way that led me to say in the secret of my heart, “Enough about Christ already.” God arrested me on the spot. “What was I saying?! It is all about Christ! Worship Christ, not merely the doctrines of Christ!” I realised I must have Christ as my ALL in ALL because He IS All in All! So, it was as God in Christ flooded my soul. At the mention of Christ’s name, my soul was delivered, and I rested simply, fully and happily in Christ alone. I praise God that for eternity I have the privilege of saying that it was at the mention of my Saviour’s name that my soul found rest in the Beloved. A saving knowledge of Christ is a joy unspeakable and full of glory.
Try God.
Also Read:
- Men in the Bible: A Man of Considerable Goodwill
- The Myth of Omnipresence (1): The 5 Places God Always Is
- Overwhelmed
- Great Truths Adults Learned
- I Passed a Professional Exam and Got a Job After 10 Years
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