Spiritual Heroin (Part 2)

Gonna do a series in the AM of this week to re-introduce myself and my blog to new readers. Something new in the afternoon each day…

The rest of the day I couldn’t stop thinking about what the old guy on TV had said. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you need to read yesterday’s post.)

So that night I borrowed a Bible from my girlfriend. It was sitting on her shelf, wrapper still on. Now I had never before so much as touched a Bible. This was a “Student Bible,” which have reading plans in the front. When I opened it I saw it said a reading plan through Abraham’s life, through Moses life, and then I saw one to read through Jesus’ life. I thought, “I’ll do that one.” I just wanted to see where this guy got the audacity to say what he did. I expected the Bible to be set up like the TV Guide, by day and time, you know because of the whole Tuesday or Wednesday debate that was apparently tearing up Christianity. I also assumed the Bible would read like a fable, “Once upon a time there lived a man named Jesus, who walked on water, and had a blue ox named Babe, and he could lasso a tornado.” But I was surprised by what I found. Over and over the Bible said, “At this time, in this place, this happened.” “At this time, in this place, Jesus did this.” And I realized that there would be evidence to determine if these events really happened. That I could study the evidence to determine if this was true or not. And so I kept reading, just out of curiosity. And I learned for the first time that the Bible claimed that there was a God who loved me, and that He had sent His Son to live and die for me, so that I could live my life in a relationship with Him, and so that I could go to Heaven. And I knew I had to find out if that was true or not. If it was true, I would become a Christian. If it wasn’t true, I would spend the rest of my life making fun of Christians for believing in something I could prove was false.

Fortunately I was a pre-law major, I ended up going to Law School, so I was into evidence, and for several months I studied the Bible and the evidence for and against it. I didn’t want it to be true, I didn’t want to become a Christian, but eventually I had no room left for doubt, and I decided to start following Jesus.

Well, that’s an understatement. During that time, Jesus just totally invaded my heart. I had a grace explosion. I realized: My whole life I’ve thought I’ve been doing life right, but I’ve been doing life wrong. My whole life has been a rebellion against God, a spit in God’s face. God should hate me. I deserve punishment from him. I deserve hell. But here’s Jesus, telling me that God wants to forgive me, and that God loves me, and that he wants a relationship with me, and that I can go to heaven. And it was like … boom! I was wrecked. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t stop talking about it. Jesus totally invaded my heart. It was like spiritual heroin. And I became addicted – to God, to Jesus, to His Kingdom. It became my passion. It became all I cared about.

And I still had never, to my knowledge, met a Christian and had never been to church. But that’s for next time. Until then … don’t overuse exclamation points!!!

– featured on newchurches.com