Why I Believe Part II

So how did I get from God to Jesus? That is what I want to try and answer here. The last thing that I said in part one was that I knew God was real but I didn’t know who God was or even what God was but I knew that He was and I knew because of my experience that the Bible held some “power” or influence. I began telling everyone that God was real and looking for opportunity to share what had happened and to share this new revelation in my life. But I only spoke of God in the most generic vague sense because that is all that I had. What I knew was that God had delivered me in a mighty way and that He had given testimony to creation and the Bible by using those things in my deliverance.
\ What do I mean by deliverance? Within one week, actually 5 days, I had been freed from addiction. Addiction to everything. My language changed. The actual words that I spoke with changed. I stopped cursing and swearing and being profane, nobody told me to, I just knew that it was right. It wasn’t hard to stop cursing, I wasn’t even mindful of it, I just stopped because it was as if God said stop, not in an asking way but authoritatively and commanding way. It was as if He said stop, and there was nothing I could do but stop. I stopped using drugs. Not just illegal drugs but all drugs: Tylenol, Sudafed, caffeine, even cigarettes. The last is probably the most amazing. I had been smoking since 7th grade and was now smoking a pack a day for two years. On the fifth morning I sat down to smoke my first cigarette of the day. I lit it, took the first drag, and coughed. I coughed like the first time I had ever smoked. I heard that still small voice say to me, you no longer smoke. Again, the voice was not asking or suggesting, but commanding as if making a statement. I put the cigarette out, threw the rest of the pack away (even threw the rest of the carton away) and never smoked again. No cravings, no withdrawals. Just stopped. It wasn’t as if I quit smoking but more like God quit for me. His voice was definitive and irresistible. I was delivered from addiction including the need for acceptance. I now knew what I knew and knew it more certainly than I had ever known anything. I was at peace.
I was at peace. I had been summoned by God. I had been called to His revelation. I knew what life was all about and why everything else had failed. I had a message to share and that message was “God is real!” It didn’t matter now what other people thought of me. I understood why I existed and without having to be told, I understood what I was created for; namely, God.
I talked about God all the time but when Jesus would come up my answer was always the same, “I know God but I’m not sure about Jesus.” What changed. I started reading the Bible and attending a church. This is when the Lord began confirming and explaining things to me. Again, as before, people at church were talking to me but I wasn’t hearing them, I was hearing their voice and their words, but they were impacting the depths of me, their words were not their own, but the Lord’s speaking through them. I began growing in my understanding of God and Jesus but I was still not sure why I needed this Jesus.
I joined a discipleship group with two other people. This group was designed to get us into the Bible and allowed for more personal discussion. Every week I would attend and listen, but in the back of my mind I always felt like I had the inside track. I felt that I was a little closer to God, a little more special because of the way that He had called me to Himself. These other people needed Jesus to get them to God, I didn’t, God by-passed Jesus and had gotten me Himself, or so I thought.
I felt so special, there were very few people that had my kind of experience that alters life so radically and drastically, I must be very special indeed. One night, while sitting in our group, the Lord began to impress something upon, something that I had yet to grasp. He began impressing upon me the knowledge that if all I had was my experience then I had nothing. He began showing me my need of a savior. That I had been truly delivered from drugs and addiction but that I still had a bigger issue, an eternal issue. Just because I was now free from what had been my sin doesn’t mean that I hadn’t still sinned and that a consequence, a punishment, wasn’t still right. I began to see, sitting there on that sofa, that I was doomed, or better, damned. I had sinned in abundant and gross ways, I had blasphemed God and rejected Him for years, nearly all my years, and worse, I was still sinning. What was I going to do with my sin, again, I needed deliverance, but this time not earthly and physical but spiritual and eternal. I needed God to forgive me for my life not just free me from addiction. Addiction was merely a symptom of a larger problem: sin. I needed a Savior: Jesus.
That was the night that I remember embracing Jesus as my only hope. I remember sitting there in almost disbelief, dumbfounded. I have no idea what we were talking about because I wasn’t listening. I understood now Who delivered me from addiction and Who would deliver me from sin: Jesus.
I understood that Jesus was God, that He had been the one that had set me free. I understood that as important and as good as my physical deliverance had been it paled in comparison to what had actually taken place. Jesus forgave me my sins. He was the only way to God. Jesus had come two thousand years ago and lived as a man in my place, keeping the law that I could not keep. After living a perfect life in my place, He died a perfect death in my place. How was His death perfect? He, being holy and righteous, without sin, sacrificed Himself in my place. I justly and rightly had merited wrath and judgment but Jesus took that wrath and judgment upon Himself in my place. The Perfect dying for the imperfect. The Holy and Righteous dying for the wicked and depraved. His death was perfect, the perfect sacrifice. I could never pay for my sin, there is nothing I could ever do to justify or excuse my sin. I had sinned not against man, or a great man or even a ruler or country but against God. Hell is just because sin against an Eternal Holy God deserves an eternal consequence. Sin is much more wicked then we imagine and a far greater offense to God then we admit. It is cosmic treason of the worse degree. I could never pay for my sin, no one could, for all men are just like me, but a perfect Man, a Holy Man, a God Man, could, and only He could. The Perfect in the place of the imperfect. I was shaken to my core, again.
I could have trusted in my experience and my thoughts of uniqueness and still perished. I could have lived the rest of my life proclaiming the reality of God and gone straight to hell. I was no better than anybody else, in fact, I was worse. I actually in my wickedness looked down upon those who trusted Christ, who trusted the True God to save them. I now knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt why Christ had come and what it was that He had accomplished. He was my Savior and my God. He was my Deliverer and my Refuge and my Ever Present Help. He was my Hope, my only Hope, and as I have grown as a Christian, He has grown as my Savior. My need for forgiveness and grace are as great as they have ever been and it is only in His sacrifice upon the cross, in my place, that I have peace and reconciliation with God, with the One True God, Jesus Christ.
And how do I know what Jesus did upon that cross accomplished what I believe that it did? Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Three days after his crucifixion He rose. He rose because His sacrifice had been accepted. If He had stayed in the grave He would be no different then any other religious figure or idea. Mohammed, Buddha, Smith, they are all dead, there is no testimony to their lives. They came and taught and died. Jesus came and taught and lives. He is God and has shown and proved beyond any doubt that He is who He taught Himself to be. The resurrection is the hope and confidence that Jesus is God.
And I cannot leave this section without inviting you to know Him also. Not an idea or way of thinking or a belief code to live by, but a Person. Real, personal and knowable. Jesus lives and Jesus saves and Jesus offers His salvation to any that will trust in Him and His work upon the cross. The Gospel is simple: God in His grace sent Jesus to live and die in the place of sinners and He freely offers His salvation to any that repent of their sin and trust Him. He forgives our sins upon the basis of Jesus’ work and sacrifice, and in Jesus we have reconciliation with God. Jesus taught that He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. To the lost, He is the Way to God. To the deceived, He is the Truth of God. And to the dead, He is eternal life with God. And we are all, all three.
I hope that answers “why Jesus?” I called this section “my hope,” because I wanted you to see why I hope in Jesus and not in anything else. The third section is “my rock,” and I will be writing about the confirmations of God in my life that have grounded me and assured me of truth. Thanks for reading, I have prayed for you as I have written.