I became a believer in Christ when God changed my heart about five years ago. I was 27, and life was going by quicker and quicker, and I was confused about my place in life, and what I was going to do with it.
One question led me on the path I am on now, and it was this - “I know there is a God - that’s always been obvious - and if He is perfect and good, then I why am I so confused and unsure in this life He gave me. Certainly, a good and loving God would not want me confused and unclear about life. Where is He?” I guess it was at that very moment that I set out to find Him. I knew that He had to reveal Himself to me if I only looked for Him.
A good God wouldn’t hide if I was looking for Him. He is also a God who will never violate the gift of free will that He gave all of us. So, it was up to me to look for Him and invite Him to be a part of my life. It’s funny how evident it was to me that I knew I had never really looked for Him before. My entire life was going well. I was the quarterback of my high school.
I played for the University of Miami. I was part of a fraternity and always had a bunch of friends. I never thought I needed God. I was self sufficient, and life was a big party. All of a sudden, it was time to grow up. I guess I knew it without recognizing it, that I was living life without acknowledging the very One who gave it to me, but now I was seeking Him for some clarity.
I was raised Roman Catholic, and always respected the church and was proud of my “beliefs”. As I went through high school, and then college, I drifted away from practicing Catholicism. So, now, at 26, and in my initial search for the Creator of all things, I realized that I was being a hypocrite as a Catholic, claiming to be one, but not even going to church.
Looking back now, I can see that it wasn’t me, but the truth of God that revealed to me that I was being a hypocrite. Still in my carnal quest to be a “good person”, I realized that good people are not hypocrites, so to develop some kind of core of integrity, I had to straighten that out first. I said “if I don’t want to be a hypocrite, then I either need to start being the best Catholic I know how to be, or do not profess to be a Catholic at all.”
Now, I was not too excited about being a zealous Catholic, and certainly God wouldn’t want me to be and do something that made me feel imprisoned in this life by dogmatic rules. Besides, didn’t Christ die to set us free? So, it led me to this next crossroad – “if Jesus is God, as Catholicism teaches, then I need to be convinced of it, otherwise I am walking away from this religion and looking elsewhere for God.”
I began going to a bible teaching church, not to be a good person, or to do my good deed for the week, but to get to the bottom of why people believe that Jesus is God, and why should I. I went in with a critical mind, and looking to pounce on anything that contradicted itself, or violated the goodness of the God I believed to be all good. After all, if this was true, that would mean I’d have to go to church every week, and at this point, I really didn’t want to do that. I was hoping to find a way out.
I was amazed at some of the things I read in the very Book that Catholicism is based on. It was a perfect scenario to learn what the Bible says, while at the same time not forsaking my Catholicism. Then the pastor read Ephesians 2:8-9, which says, “for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.” What? The Bible says that? I didn’t have to do anything?? No rituals, no fasting, no stations of the cross, no rosary meditation?? I am saved by grace! Now this is a good God!
“Why does Catholicism teach salvation by faith and works,” I wondered. I read yet another verse in Matthew 6:7, spoken by Jesus Himself, “And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions like the heathen do…” Immediately the first thing that popped into my mind was the Rosary – built on the model of…vain repetition! Not only that, but they are prayers said to Mary, the blessed virgin mother, when 1 Timothy 2:5 says, “For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.”
And what about purgatory? A place I was told where I would go to serve time for my sins…which basically means that Christ’s sacrifice was not “enough”. I began to seriously question how Catholicism can teach things contrary to what the very Bible teaches. If I had to make a decision, I was taking the words of Christ over what the church taught. I was slowly but surely leaving the Catholic church and running into the arms of God. I guess I was simultaneously learning what the Bible taught and discovering the freedom that Christ’s death and resurrection offered me that religion never did.
I had begun my search and had been examining the claims of Jesus for maybe a year, weighing them against history, pondering whether there was a way to determine what was true and what wasn’t, etc. There was another crossroad that I came to, and this was a difficult one, for this got to the core and tested what I thought I was coming to believe. Jesus said for us to deny ourselves, and live for Him. Now…this is where I had to be completely beyond the shadow of a doubt be 100% convinced that Jesus was in fact God.
Giving up my own life for something I only kinda believed just wasn’t going to happen. In a way, I was still on the search for a crack in this Christianity stuff, because the last thing I wanted to do was give up my life, my plans, my trust in my own philosophy, for something that wasn’t sound and concrete. Again, just as my plan to develop integrity by being 100% catholic, that thread still remained true if I was going to be born-again (as Jesus says one MUST be in order to see the kingdom of God).
All this did was make me search deeper. I knew that if I dug deeper, I would either find my loophole out, or continue to be amazed at the truth of God. In all of my reading and searching and weighing biblical “truth” against what I personally felt was true, I slowly became a believer, in my mind. For example, the first verse I remember telling myself that it was true was Acts 4:12 – “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” I tried to think of other names offering salvation, and there wasn’t any.
This was a true statement! Light bulbs began to go off, then I stumbled across this verse, spoken by Jesus Himself, in John 15:13 – “The greatest way to show love for his friends is to die for them.” Again, I thought about that, tried to think of greater ways to express love for someone, and determined that this, too, was true. You can’t express love any better than to die for someone. You can’t top it. You can’t buy anything for them, do anything for them, say anything that would express a deeper love than dying for them. God Himself demonstrated that in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us…even prayed to the Father to forgive those nailing Him to the cross, while they were doing it. What human would act in such a way?
It was maybe 6 months that went by until I was actually convinced of Jesus and His claims as the Lord. The Old Testament prophecies that were fulfilled through the life of Christ hundreds of years later was a huge catalyst to my faith. Mathematics claims that one person fulfilling just 8 prophecies written about him before his birth has a 1 x 10 to the 157th power of happening, or as mathematics call it, “basically impossible”. Christ fulfilled over 300. From place of birth to how he would die, and everything else in between.
I never made a public profession of faith up until this point, and didn’t feel the need to, since God knew I “believed”. Then on Easter Sunday, 2001, at our church service, as people made their way to the altar to accept Christ as their personal Savior, I broke down in tears. God took away my pride, and at that moment, my heart fell into His hands. I asked my sisters if they would walk up to the altar with me. I have been witness to these altar calls many times during the past year, and always felt no need to go up there. At first, because I wasn’t sure of my faith yet, and later, because I was too proud to walk up in front of hundreds of people looking on. Pride, as I now know, has no place in the presence of God.
I can honestly tell you that I didn’t even feel like I had the strength to walk up there. My legs felt weak. I didn’t walk up there on my own strength…I had none. He carried me up there.
The peace of God entered my heart that day. I can’t explain it, but He pulled me up by my heart and led me to receive Him as my God and Savior. Only God can change your heart. As I said, I had already resolved it in my mind. It was all true. But it was that day that I learned the difference between believing with my mind, and believing with my heart.
This led to another biblical claim that I personally learned to absolutely be true. Jeremiah 29:13 – “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for me with all your heart.” Romans 10:9 states that when you believe in your heart (not your mind), then you will be saved. I didn’t believe it because the Bible said it. I believed it because it happened! The Bible simply confirmed it after the fact.
Baptism followed a while afterwards, and I have been born again by the spirit of God. Someone said to me, “Being a Christian is both the easiest thing and the hardest thing at the same time.” Easy because faith alone saves you. Difficult because your barometer is no longer what society thinks of you, but what Christ thinks of you. Humility is what God delights in, and when you look to Christ as your measuring stick, you’ll surely find it.
I still fall, but God picks me up every time, always reminding me that I am forgiven. How can anyone deny that kind of love?