"You're crazy!!!"

As some have recently asked how I became a Christian, I've decided to share my personal testimony here. The pattern I'll follow is the one the apostle Paul used when he addressed the crowd in Jerusalem from the steps of the army barracks where he was going to be held pending examination (Acts 22:1-21). Like Paul, I'll describe what kind of person I used to be, how I met God, and what happened afterwards. That last part I'll cover only briefly as I could fill many books telling what it's been like over the years following the one who came that we might have life — and have it abundantly! (see John 10:10)

I was born into a middle-class family living in Winnipeg, Canada. My parents were essentially pagans: my father was a worldly man and an agnostic of the type "I don't know if there is a God, and I don't believe anyone *can* know." My mother was educated by Catholic nuns who caned her, so she strongly disliked anything to do with religion. As a result of their influence, I had no knowledge of or interest in God during my teenage years. But they were good parents, they provided for all my needs and never physically disciplined me. So I grew up to be a good boy — at least outwardly. I was also very smart and ended up winning almost all the academic awards in my final year of high-school. 

Inwardly however, I was sliding down towards hell. By the time I entered university and modelling myself after my father, I had become a thief, though not the ordinary kind: I stole library books and pilfered vast quantities of office supplies from places I worked during the summer. I had also become heavily addicted to pornography and trapped in destructive behaviors of self-harm, and my reading of Nietzsche, Colin Wilson and other occult authors was rapidly drawing me into darkness. But by my final undergraduate year of Honors Physics, I was riding high and my future seemed bright. I had been accepted by the University of Toronto to pursue graduate studies in Astrophysics and been offered a four-year scholarship by the National Research Council. I had also been offered summer's employment for a second time at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, which at the time was Canada's most prestigious centre for astronomy. And my astronomy professor at the University of Manitoba even talked about having me take over his classes the following year when he went on sabbatical even though I was still only an undergraduate. So life was good — outwardly, at least. But inside my mind was dark and my heart had grown hard. 

And then I met a Christian — the real kind, the kind that talks like they personally know God, like He is really there. And our conversations awakened something in me, and eventually I decided if God is really there then I want to meet Him and know Him. 

So I tried reading parts of the Bible, but I couldn't make heads or tails of any of it. I joined an enquirer's class led by an Anglican priest, but I couldn't understand what they were talking about. I started taking long solitary walks at night, looking up into the sky and asking out loud if anyone was there. On one of these walks it actually seemed like someone *was* up there, but that his back was towards me. "Turn around, I want to see your face," I shouted. Afterwards I felt like a fool, but I kept on seeking Him. In the meantime however, I had been neglecting my studies and fallen behind to the point where I was in danger of failing my final undergraduate year. But I didn't care: finding out if there was a God or not had become my all-consuming passion. 

Meeting God

Then one evening I attended a meeting of a campus Christian organization called The Navigators. After coffee and snacks and a brief time of singing some songs, the leader of the group stood up and started speaking. He began by reading the story in Luke 18:18-23 about the rich man who asked Jesus what he had to do to gain eternal life:

A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: 'You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.' "

"All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy.

When the Nav leader finished his brief explanation of the passage, he asked if any of us had any questions. I raised my hand timidly and said, "Does this mean that if we want God to reveal Himself to us, we have to give up everything we have?" "Hmm, well, not necessarily, but..." and he continued responding to my question. But I was no longer listening, because my mind had become fixated on what Jesus said:

"Sell everything you have..."

And at that moment I conceived a plan: if I offer God everything that's valuable to me as a kind of sacrifice, then He must *certainly* reveal Himself to me. So that night I wrote a letter to the University of Toronto telling them I wouldn't be doing graduate studies with them. And I wrote to the NRC declining the scholarship they had offered me. And I wrote to the DAO telling them to give their summer job to someone else. And I thought, the moment I drop these letters in the mailbox, God is going to reveal Himself to me!

So the next morning I got on the bus with the letters in my hand. I figured the mailbox outside the student centre at the university would be the right place to mail them. My heart was pounding as the bus rolled down the highway. Suddenly I heard a horn honk and tires squeal, and I thought" "Oh no, Satan's going to try and kill me before I can mail these letters!" But the bus kept on rolling down the highway as tension continued to rise in my heart. When it arrived at the university, I hurried to the student center and opened the flap on the mailbox and slipped my letters through the slot, expecting God to suddenly reveal Himself to me.

But nothing happened. 

Feeling numb and confused, I slowly walked back to the bus stop and went home. I don't know what I did for the rest of the day, but when evening came I phoned my Christian friend and described what I had done.

"What?!? You're crazy!!!"

I asked what I should do next, and my friend replied: "Ask Christ into your life."

So I hung up the phone, lay down on my bed and turned off the light. And I quietly said: "Christ, come into my life."

I kept repeating this for a while, but then I began to think: What if there is no God? What if I'm all alone in this universe? And I started thinking that if I was indeed alone, then my life was my own to choose and rule over, that I could be God as far as my life in this world was concerned. And as I was thinking these thoughts, my heart began to grow hard. And then I saw a light over my head, and I thought: "If I can only grasp that light above me, I can become God." And I stretched my arm upwards to take hold of the light.

But I couldn't quite reach it. 

Then I felt myself falling, falling downwards into the darkness. And I heard words coming out of my mouth, like someone else was using my mouth to speak. And the words were: "Christ, come into my life. I don't know if you're there or whether you can hear me, but if you do hear me then please help me. I've just thrown away my whole future and I don't know what to do now, so if you're there please help me by coming into my life"

And suddenly in the darkness I saw a man hanging on a cross on top of a hill, and I heard a loud voice saying:

"Hah! You've just taken everything that's important and valuable to you, your entire future, and you've sacrificed it on an hoping I would reveal myself to you. But the sacrifice that I have made for you is infinitely more than you could ever do for me!"

And hearing this, I laughed out loud and said, "Hah! I have eternal life!" and rolled over and went to sleep.

When I awoke the next morning, everything was new. I could write volumes about what it's like to know the living God, but I'll restrict myself to sharing a few stories to illustrate what life in Christ is like. 

New heart

In Jeremiah 31:31-34 the Lord talks about a time coming when the old covenant of the Mosaic law would be replaced by a new covenant that promised two things: our sins would be forgiven and God's law would be written on our hearts:

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

The first promise was fulfilled when Jesus died on the cross for our sins. The second has to do with the promised Holy Spirit who is given to those who believe in Jesus. It's the Spirit of God living within us that gives us this new heart. Let me share a couple of stories to illustrate how this works.

When I heard God's voice and saw Christ hanging on the cross, I knew I now had eternal life. I knew this with absolute certainty because my salvation wasn't based on what I could do for God, but on what God had done for me: giving his only Son as a sacrifice for sin so that those who believe in Jesus will have eternal life (John 3:16). And if you remember only one thing from reading my testimony, remember this: that being a Christian isn't what you do for God, it's what He has done for you. 

At the moment I believed in Jesus, the Holy Spirit began writing God's law upon my heart. I first became aware of this a few days after my conversion when suddenly I was filled with an absolute loathing of my ungodly attitudes and behaviors. My conviction of sin arose because of the new heart God had given me, and it's just what God promised would happen in Ezekiel 36:26-27,31:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws... Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices.

This awareness of the inward change that had taken place in me was driven home a few months later when I spent six weeks living communally with other Christians in a discipleship program run by The Navigators. I had been assigned a roommate, which was a new experience for me, and on the first day when my roommate was out I wanted to wash my clothes but didn't have any laundry detergent. Seeing a box of powdered detergent beside my roommate's bed, I took a scoop and went to the laundry room. As I was sitting there waiting for washing machine to finish, I suddenly felt convicted that I had stolen the detergent, and I ran out looking for my roommate. When I found him, I anxiously confessed what I had done and asked his forgiveness. He was puzzled and told me it was no problem and not to worry, but for me it felt like I had committed a monumental sin. But that's how great a change God's Spirit was working in me, changing my hard heart that had previously felt no guilt over stealing to having an inward awareness of God's law that says "Do not steal" (Exodus 20:15). My dead conscience had come back to life when I believed in Jesus and received the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

New life

Although I was still living with my earthly parents, I soon learned that I now had a new father: God. Paul says in Galatians 3:26 that those who believe in Jesus are sons of God, and Jesus says in Mark 10:29-30 that those who have left everything for him will receive a hundred times as much in this age, and eternal life. My new life began one morning when my heavenly Father spoke to me as I was waking up. I dressed and went upstairs to inform my parents:

"Mom, dad, God told me I have to move out."

They stared at each other in disbelief and said, "What?!? That's ridiculous! God didn't tell you to move out!"

"Ye-yes he did, he did!" I replied nervously . "I'm going to move out."

"You're crazy!!!" 

But that same day I started looking in the classified ads for a place to rent, and a week later I had moved out of my parents' home and was living on my own. And that's when my heavenly Father started fathering me, training me for this life and the life to come. And when I look back over my lifetime of walking with God, all I can say is that His promise in Mark 10:30 is true: over the years God has truly given me a hundred times more than I would have had  if I had not come to Him through Jesus. 

But like most things in life, growth can be challenging and takes time. Spiritual growth is no different as I explain in this parable.  So I'm still a work of progress as God's fatherly love and discipline continues to work on renovating my life.

For more stories about what it's like to be fathered by the living God, see our blog series on The Father's Love. 

Ask, seek, knock

In Romans 10:17 Paul says faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. So if you want to know God, to meet Him and enter into a personal relationship with Him, you can start by reading the Gospels. It was by hearing the words of Jesus that I surrendered my life to the Lord and was born again as a child of God. And if you listen with your heart to the words of Jesus, you too will find the door to the narrow way that leads to life. For as Jesus says in Luke 11:9-13:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

Blessings in Christ,

—Mitch