As a Lord's Day post I chose the following from 2009. I can still say...."I know whom I have believed......and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day."
I walked into a Christian book store for the very first time early in 1982. God had already at that time been working upon both my heart and my mind, and after browsing the shelves for a little while I wound up buying a book that peeked my interest. It was Evidence That Demands A Verdict by Josh McDowell.
I had just finished reading the Pulitzer Prize winning book (general non-fiction 1974) The Denial Of Death by Ernest Becker that made a good case against religion. Before that I had read Eric Hoffer's small classic The True Believer, that since its first publication in 1951 has been a powerful argument against anyone that believed anything....passionately. I was so enamored with The Denial Of Death as I was reading it that I tore it in half so that I could carry some of it in my back pocket at all times. Then came Evidence That Demands A Verdict.
It wasn't McDowell's intellect that effected me, nor even the truths in the book, for surely others had read it and not been affected. I probably would have fallen for any powerful philosophy at the time for I was a man with a void in my life who wondered if there were any true purposes in this life? I was altruistic, or so I thought, for it hadn't been that long since as a volunteer for Ted Kennedy's campaign for the Democrat nomination for president that I phoned an entire community of Democrats, urging them to go to the polls and vote for Ted.
God had other plans as He had taken a layer of veil off of my eyes and I had a glimpse of His majesty. I saw my immediate purpose in life which was to become but one more person to bathe in the sin cleansing blood of Calvary. Had I known the long path that I would have to take to even understand this glorious gospel I had embraced, I'm sure that I would have been very discouraged. If I knew even now my specific limitations and the errors in my thinking, I might be saddened but not discouraged, for I more fully understand that we indeed are but pilgrims, and that His promises are true or I would not have made it this far....35 years later.
This may sound odd, but when I see an elderly person, feeble and wrinkled, a person who was young and attractive at one time, it consoles me greatly, for although in man I see the reality of a quickly passing life, I can agree with Paul who wrote in his second epistle to Timothy I know whom I have believed...!
Take a peek at your watch. You cannot stop what that second hand, moving right before your eyes, represents. Do you have arguments against God or even His existence? Let me tell you that there is hope, that hope is that there is a veil over your eyes that can be lifted, and that hope is in Him who will lift that veil... and who said..."I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall. never thirst..... (and) whoever comes to me I will never cast out."
I walked into a Christian book store for the very first time early in 1982. God had already at that time been working upon both my heart and my mind, and after browsing the shelves for a little while I wound up buying a book that peeked my interest. It was Evidence That Demands A Verdict by Josh McDowell.
I had just finished reading the Pulitzer Prize winning book (general non-fiction 1974) The Denial Of Death by Ernest Becker that made a good case against religion. Before that I had read Eric Hoffer's small classic The True Believer, that since its first publication in 1951 has been a powerful argument against anyone that believed anything....passionately. I was so enamored with The Denial Of Death as I was reading it that I tore it in half so that I could carry some of it in my back pocket at all times. Then came Evidence That Demands A Verdict.
It wasn't McDowell's intellect that effected me, nor even the truths in the book, for surely others had read it and not been affected. I probably would have fallen for any powerful philosophy at the time for I was a man with a void in my life who wondered if there were any true purposes in this life? I was altruistic, or so I thought, for it hadn't been that long since as a volunteer for Ted Kennedy's campaign for the Democrat nomination for president that I phoned an entire community of Democrats, urging them to go to the polls and vote for Ted.
God had other plans as He had taken a layer of veil off of my eyes and I had a glimpse of His majesty. I saw my immediate purpose in life which was to become but one more person to bathe in the sin cleansing blood of Calvary. Had I known the long path that I would have to take to even understand this glorious gospel I had embraced, I'm sure that I would have been very discouraged. If I knew even now my specific limitations and the errors in my thinking, I might be saddened but not discouraged, for I more fully understand that we indeed are but pilgrims, and that His promises are true or I would not have made it this far....35 years later.
This may sound odd, but when I see an elderly person, feeble and wrinkled, a person who was young and attractive at one time, it consoles me greatly, for although in man I see the reality of a quickly passing life, I can agree with Paul who wrote in his second epistle to Timothy I know whom I have believed...!
Take a peek at your watch. You cannot stop what that second hand, moving right before your eyes, represents. Do you have arguments against God or even His existence? Let me tell you that there is hope, that hope is that there is a veil over your eyes that can be lifted, and that hope is in Him who will lift that veil... and who said..."I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall. never thirst..... (and) whoever comes to me I will never cast out."
