I would like to do something different for this blog post. Normally, I tell a light hearted story from my life or a joke or two, but today, I want to share something deeper and more meaningful, something more spiritual and enlightening, something humorous but altogether beautiful and heartfelt.
I want to go back exactly 25 years and share what I would argue is the biggest turning point of my life.
I grew up in a middle income family in a small town in Kentucky with my father being a Catholic and my mother being a Baptist. So, I basically grew up a Captist. (ba dum bump crash)
My mother didn’t go to church regularly but would take me every so often, usually on Easter when I remember being about 5 or 6 and she made me wear a polyester powder blue suit that I thought was way too hot and itchy. My father was devout and went to Catholic mass almost every Sunday but I never heard much about it in the home, and the few times I went with him, it was a complete snoozefest.
What I did like was Vacation Bible School. It was an awesome time of stories and games, like Red Rover, which now I think is outlawed because kids kept getting their extremities dislocated.
I would go to 2 VBS’s a summer, one was at our church out in the country and another one up the street from my house where my friends and I would ride our bikes.
With my contact with the church, I heard about Jesus and knew that there was a time in everyone’s life that you invited Him into your heart, and He would come in and forgive you of your sins and then you would get to go to Heaven. This was my 12 year old understanding.
When I was about 13, I asked my mom, “How do you know when your time is that you ask Jesus to come into your heart?”
My mother replied with a sort of mystical and perplexing answer. “You will hear God call your name.”
What? Really? God will call my name? I have to tell you folks, I wrestled with that answer for about 2 years! I was seriously listening. “God, are you calling my name? God, I don’t hear you.” The reason I really struggled with it was because I knew that if I didn’t accept Jesus, I wasn’t going to Heaven, I was headed to the everlasting fires of Hell! “God! If you don’t call my name, I can’t accept Jesus, and if I can’t accept Jesus, I can’t go to Heaven! Do you want me to go to Hell?! Is that what you want?!”
It was serious turmoil and the Heaven-Hell debate was the main thing I stressed over. Then, one special night, EXACTLY 25 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH, I hit a turning point.
I was praying to God before I went to bed (and praying is basically just talking to God as the person He is). I was fervently talking to God and saying, “God, I want to know you. I want you in my life. I want to know what you’re about. I want to know what you want me to do. I want you!”
I prayed that for a really long time, repeating the idea of it in as many different ways as I could. Finally, exhausted, I said, “Amen”. As soon as I said amen, a thought struck me like a lightning bolt. I prayed for a very long time and not once had I thought about it being the difference between going to Heaven or Hell. I was solely praying and asking to KNOW God, for Him to be a part of my life. That’s it! It has to be it! You can know God personally! Just like you know your friend or family member, you can know the creator of the universe!
That next Sunday, I went in front of my mom’s church, and said I wanted to know Jesus. The pastor, Bro. John Brandon, was speaking for the very first time at our church. He told me that God’s forgiveness through Jesus was a gift and all we had to do to receive that gift was to take it. I said, yes, I want to take that gift.
I was baptized the following March and the past 25 years have been filled with more stories and adventures with God than I will dare go into now in this blog post.
I learned much later that the Bible actually says what I had learned. John 17:3 says, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know You, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” It spells it right out. Eternal life = knowing God. God is life. If you are in God how can you not live eternally? If you want to get wet, you have to get into the water! If you want to live, you have to get into the one who holds life!