The following post is from February of 2014 and I bring it back as my Lord's Day post:
I cannot remember what it feels like not to know Jesus Christ as my Savior, my Lord and King. Oh I remember what it is like to trample underfoot the grace that He bestowed upon me, sinner that I am, for I would only have to go back hours if not minutes for that, but I cannot remember how I thought prior to 1982. I know what wasn't in my mind but cannot remember what was there. I can recall my fourth birthday party where my older cousin Buzzy hid behind a door to scare me. I remember putting a full carton of my lunch milk into the milk crate, spilling it all over the kindergarten floor at North Hill Elementary School, and then not owning up to it as Mrs. Martin had us circle the crate until until the guilty party fessed up. It's not for lack of memory powers, it's for lack of something else.
I remember what it was like to be....religious. I remember sitting in the pew before grade school, holding my daily missal in my hands almost entranced by the Latin words coming from the altar. I remember trying to converse with God on long walks in the rain while in my teens. I remember attending Mass in Vietnam on those Sunday mornings when I didn't have a hangover. I remember walking over to St. Paul's Cathedral for evening Mass after finishing work at Hillman Library at Pitt. I just cannot remember the name of Jesus as anything more than a distant personage who must surely be revered as someone very important but for reasons as distant in understanding as the heavens themselves where Jesus lived.
Someone won over $400 million dollars in the Powerball yesterday but that experience cannot possibly rival receiving the grace poured from the cross of Calvary. I have a Bible hanging on the side of my locker at work all of the time for anyone to read. I doubt that it is picked up very often. Here in this book is something that should make that $400 million jackpot appear as a worn penny on the street in value but it goes unrecognized. Bibles are everywhere in America but can't compete with an iPhone in perceived value.
Arminianism is the dominant theology in evangelicalism today. In this doctrine, man responds positively to the Gospel and is then born again. But this is not what Scripture describes. In the Gospel according to Jesus Christ a dead person (spiritually) is made alive!!! He then responds to the Gospel that he truly hears for the first time. For ten years I thought that I made a decision and God responded by pouring His grace out upon me, that I wasn't as dumb as I look! Then I saw what really happened, that for some reason known only to God, he said..."You....the lowest of the low....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me!" It was He that opened my eyes, that made me see my previous 32 years. I saw the filth and the rebellion, the pride, the hate, the ignorance and the arrogance.....and then I saw a King before me, the King of Kings! My heart stopped beating and a new heart began to beat. My lungs collapsed. I could draw in no air for the majesty I was in the presence of. I yelled as John Bunyan's pilgrim..."Life, life, eternal life!"
If I sit and meditate and try as hard as I can to remember what it what like before God said to me..."You"...I start to tremble. Something wafts through my nostrils...an odious smell...and then it disappears. I perceive that God will not let me return any further then the address. I see the outside of the building but cannot go in. I never want to go into that building but I also never want to forget it for therein is my only remembrance of what I was rescued from, and every time I see it I yell once again...."Life, life, eternal life!'. My desire is that you hear what I heard....the words "You.....the lowest of the low.....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me!" for it makes no sense that God would have had mercy on me but that I could tell you of it!
I cannot remember what it feels like not to know Jesus Christ as my Savior, my Lord and King. Oh I remember what it is like to trample underfoot the grace that He bestowed upon me, sinner that I am, for I would only have to go back hours if not minutes for that, but I cannot remember how I thought prior to 1982. I know what wasn't in my mind but cannot remember what was there. I can recall my fourth birthday party where my older cousin Buzzy hid behind a door to scare me. I remember putting a full carton of my lunch milk into the milk crate, spilling it all over the kindergarten floor at North Hill Elementary School, and then not owning up to it as Mrs. Martin had us circle the crate until until the guilty party fessed up. It's not for lack of memory powers, it's for lack of something else.
I remember what it was like to be....religious. I remember sitting in the pew before grade school, holding my daily missal in my hands almost entranced by the Latin words coming from the altar. I remember trying to converse with God on long walks in the rain while in my teens. I remember attending Mass in Vietnam on those Sunday mornings when I didn't have a hangover. I remember walking over to St. Paul's Cathedral for evening Mass after finishing work at Hillman Library at Pitt. I just cannot remember the name of Jesus as anything more than a distant personage who must surely be revered as someone very important but for reasons as distant in understanding as the heavens themselves where Jesus lived.
Someone won over $400 million dollars in the Powerball yesterday but that experience cannot possibly rival receiving the grace poured from the cross of Calvary. I have a Bible hanging on the side of my locker at work all of the time for anyone to read. I doubt that it is picked up very often. Here in this book is something that should make that $400 million jackpot appear as a worn penny on the street in value but it goes unrecognized. Bibles are everywhere in America but can't compete with an iPhone in perceived value.
Arminianism is the dominant theology in evangelicalism today. In this doctrine, man responds positively to the Gospel and is then born again. But this is not what Scripture describes. In the Gospel according to Jesus Christ a dead person (spiritually) is made alive!!! He then responds to the Gospel that he truly hears for the first time. For ten years I thought that I made a decision and God responded by pouring His grace out upon me, that I wasn't as dumb as I look! Then I saw what really happened, that for some reason known only to God, he said..."You....the lowest of the low....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me!" It was He that opened my eyes, that made me see my previous 32 years. I saw the filth and the rebellion, the pride, the hate, the ignorance and the arrogance.....and then I saw a King before me, the King of Kings! My heart stopped beating and a new heart began to beat. My lungs collapsed. I could draw in no air for the majesty I was in the presence of. I yelled as John Bunyan's pilgrim..."Life, life, eternal life!"
If I sit and meditate and try as hard as I can to remember what it what like before God said to me..."You"...I start to tremble. Something wafts through my nostrils...an odious smell...and then it disappears. I perceive that God will not let me return any further then the address. I see the outside of the building but cannot go in. I never want to go into that building but I also never want to forget it for therein is my only remembrance of what I was rescued from, and every time I see it I yell once again...."Life, life, eternal life!'. My desire is that you hear what I heard....the words "You.....the lowest of the low.....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me!" for it makes no sense that God would have had mercy on me but that I could tell you of it!
