New Life (How I came to know Jesus)

Spring - New Life

 

 

With Easter come and gone, I began to reflect on my relationship with Jesus. How did I come to know Him and follow Him? Why dedicate my life to this one person who fills the pages of our Bible? At age 30 I cast aside all my doubts, and placed my hopes and dreams on this one person. Twenty one years later, He still has my whole heart.  He died for me! He lives for me! He loves me so much that I can't fully comprehend this love. He is also my friend, and I spend everyday with Him. This is what He did for me:

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." John 15:13.

Somehow I found my way to Jesus. He was with me all along, even though I didn't know Him until age 30. I like to point out that my spiritual birthday was the same age as when Jesus began his earthly ministry. On that day, the angels were rejoicing over me in heaven!

"In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God's angels when even one sinner repents." Luke 15:10.

So how did I manage to get to this place of certainty?

Interestingly, I was not much of a churchgoer throughout my life, despite the fact my grandfather was an Anglican priest. He later became the Archbishop of Rupert's Land, an area that spanned large tracts of land in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, northern Ontario and the Northwest Territories.

I was born in Toronto and did not attend church, as my mom was a distance away from her parents who lived in Regina, Saskatchewan. That all changed when our family packed up and made the move to Regina while I was in grade six. I attended church for about a year  obviously due to the influence of my grandparents. However, I didn't really know anything about faith or the church. It was just head knowledge. By the time the rebellious teen years set in at grade seven, I ditched church as I was way too cool to go. That was the end of that until age 30 except for the odd Christmas and Easter service to please my family.

Fast forward to age 29. My first child was two. Children have a way of changing how you perceive life. After living independently apart from faith, I wanted to know what the truth was about religion. There were so many paths and it all seemed confusing. Now, I am an academic researcher at heart, who does not leave any stone unturned. My favorite topic in journalism school and library technician college was research.  As I child, my favorite pastime was to go the library and check out five books, which I would read in a week.

As an adult I drove myself crazy (and still do!) researching everything before I bought it and I had to know everything about everything. I dedicated myself in this quest for truth with the same enthusiasm and diligence for research I used at school and in life and applied myself to study religions. So I picked up the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon, the Bible, The Vedas and other Hindu texts, various Buddhist texts as well as Watchtower readings of Jehovah's Witness, just as a start. Let me tell you, this is not light everyday reading! But I am not one to believe something just because someone says it is true. I have to know for myself and make my own decisions.

Right at the start some of the readings reminded me of fairy tales, written by questionable characters. Other texts impressed me with teachings on living a moral upright life and working towards eliminating materialism. However, I was just left with more questions. Other readings were just plain confusing, and it was difficult to keep up with all the different gods listed. I began to read the New Testament portion of the Bible, and I was captivated. I guess I was in good company! There is a long list of academics who dedicated their lives to spreading the good news after reading the Bible. Here a just two examples:

Lee Strobel, a journalist with the Chicago Tribune, was a self-proclaimed atheist who set out to test scriptural claims regarding Jesus. After two years of journalistic research he embraced the Christian faith, and wrote many books including, "The Case for Faith," and the "Case for Christ," both of which I read many years later. Author of some 115 books, Josh McDowell once considered himself an agnostic while at university where he intended to study law. While researching a paper to disprove the historical claims of Christianity, Josh became a Christian because the evidence pointed in the opposite direction. He has written many books, including "Evidence That Demands a Verdict," and "More Than a Carpenter. (Yes, I read those too...)

I guess when the lights turn on, they just turn on. This happened while reading the Bible, and well before I read any other books on the subject of Christianity. 

"For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." Hebrews 4:12.

It was like the account of the  Apostle Paul being knocked off his horse, and meeting Jesus in person. That was the power of the Bible for me. I had an empty space in my life that I could never fill, until I heard about what Jesus did on my behalf. He was my living water, and the fulfillment of my spiritual thirst. And how amazing was it that the God of the universe left us instructions! I stopped reading everything else, and focused all my time and energy on the Bible. Unlike other religious writings, the Bible seemed to flow effortlessly. It was written over a period of 1,500 years by some 40 different authors yet has a common theme. The entire old testament with all its rules and regulations foreshadows the coming of Jesus and his death on the cross. There are around sixty old testament prophecies about Jesus, and over 300 references to His coming. Archaeological evidence to support the historical accuracy of the Bible also intrigued me, as well as the some 2,500 plus prophecies, much of which have already been fulfilled.  The Old Testament is also an example of how people fall so far short of Godliness, as not a single person on the face of the earth could possibly follow all those rules and regulations including the ten commandments. Since we are all sinners and we all sin, we needed someone to take care of it all, past present and future. That person was Jesus.

It struck me during my research that the other religions don't address this need to take care of sins.  Instead, other religions seemed filled with a lot of personal effort to be good to get to a certain level or attainment of eternal happiness. At the end of it all, no one could even be sure they would even get to heaven! This was depressing. All the other religions also didn't have someone who sacrificed for me, and died so that I could live forever and who loved me unconditionally. God loved me so much that he reached down from heaven with compassion in order to save me! I had to accept this gift. I immediately understood the enormity of my sin nature and spent several days broken. But then with repentance came joy.  I was guaranteed a place in heaven with no more uncertainty. These days I strive to do good works to please my heavenly Father. I don't do good works to earn entrance into heaven.  I have assurance that my sins are covered. With my choice, I also received the gift of the Holy Spirit and a direct bridge to talk to God. Without Jesus there would have been eternal separation.

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me," Jesus says in John 14:6.

I had questions and I wanted to know the answers. At the beginning of my quest for spiritual answers, I took a chance, and I prayed. I asked God, that if he was out there, that he would show me the truth, when the world had so many paths to choose from. I wanted to know once and for all what was the right path. He answered me and showed me the Straight Path to take. In the book of Matthew 7:7-8 Jesus says:

"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 he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened."

A new phase  began as I switched my intensive research to the Bible and began to categorize verses as they related to topics. (I didn't know there were already topical Bible verse books back then.) Of course with all kinds of debates on scripture I had to know everything Biblical for myself!  I will end this post with my first topic of 21 years ago:

 NEW LIFE IN CHRIST

John 3:16:  For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Romans 3:23:  For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 6:23:  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 10:9: If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

1 Peter 3:18:  For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.

John 3:36:  Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.

John 3:17-18:  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

John 1:12:  Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

Acts 2:38:  Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus  Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Acts 10:43:  All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

2 Corinthians 5:17-21:  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away, behold the new has come!

 

I took this photo March 2015 at Marie Selby Gardens in Sarasota, Florida. I believe God's creation is always speaking about new life in Christ. I felt just like a lowly caterpillar metamorphosing into a beautiful butterfly!