I didn’t believe in God for a long time. I had a lot of good reasons not to, I thought. Christians were hypocritical, judgmental, church was uptight, out of touch and not relevant.
But life has a way of changing you. After a long stint of hard-to-answer dilemmas, I started searching for real answers to difficult questions everywhere I looked. ‘Religiously’, I searched. From dynamic self-improvement seminars to traditional religious forms, from quirky philosophies to new age type gimmicks, nothing seemed right.
Finally, I got desperate enough to try church. And yes, the first two I visited were everything I expected and nothing satisfying. Then, I visited a third place…a little different than the rest. Coffee and common sense were served. I felt welcomed, not weirded-out.
And the music was cool. The message made sense. I even responded at the end of the message when the preacher invited people to ‘pray and ask God to be real.’
That week I approached a man I had worked with for years. This guy I hated and verbally abused, regularly, because he was a self-proclaimed Christian.
I found him late one night, alone, on the graveyard shift.
I asked him to forgive me for mistreating him…it seemed like the right thing to do. His name was Mike.
He told me his story about God. The day his young son was struck on his bicycle by a car in their neighborhood. Mike arrived home in just enough time to rush his boy to the hospital.
Mike’s brother came. He told Mike that whether his son lived or died, he should trust God, pray and ‘get his life right’.
Mike prayed with his brother and asked God to forgive him and help him get right. Mike’s son died shortly thereafter.
Mike explained to me that he had learned the hard truth that God’s Son had died, too, thus making it possible for people to ‘get right with God’ again. That night standing in the warehouse on the graveyard shift– seven years after Mike lost his own son and began trusting the God who had sacrificed Jesus —and crying with Mike about life, loss and getting right with God, I realized something:
I believed in God…for real, this time. And I was going to believe in him for a long time.
Ever had an encounter that totally changed your life?
For more information, contact PastorJimCPC@hughes.net or visit our website at www.centrepointe.org .