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Testimony
Thanks for letting me share what has personally impacted the trajectory of my life, what has redefined my understanding of being human and connected me to a group of very different people who have discovered "community" by knowing God through His Son Jesus, the Christ. When I was 19 years old I heard a man say, "If there is no God then you don't have to worry about anything; you can live your life however you please on your own terms. But if there is a God, then you have to contend with Him. And if He really is "God", then you have to deal with Him on His terms, and not your own."
The logic of what he said that day got beneath the surface of my thoughts and stayed there. As if I were looking at a chessboard, I could suddenly hear the words "check mate" resonating in my mind. The very idea that there really was a real God had never actually penetrated the daydream of my life, but suddenly within his statement I was jolted awake into a universe that actually had a God at the center of it. I was also suddenly aware that this meant I was no longer at the center of my universe any more. Through some friends and a couple of Bible studies, I also came to understand that Jesus Christ was this God, and that He was actually connected to every aspect of real existence, including, and especially, my own.
New truth has a way of creating an internal argument against everything inside you that has existed up until that point. Although I was excited to actually have this light about Christ in my understanding for the first time, I also realized that to acknowledge Christ as being God over my own personal life was something very different than simply realizing that He existed as God in the flesh. This meant that there was going to be a cost involved in knowing Him personally. It meant I could no longer be autonomous over my own life, which was something I was silently unwilling to fork over at that time. I was unwilling to hand over the authority in my life to someone else, even if that "someone else" was actually God Himself.
To know God means that you relate to Him as He is, as having the right over all reality. I was very used to creating my own reality each day as I went along, sort of being my own god. Now, to suddenly entrust my life and death to Christ would mean that I could no longer simply make up my own personal reality. There was now a reality beyond me that would have the ultimate say in my affairs. To be in "community" with God means that He has authority in your life to establish "true truth," not just your own version of it. In God's reality you can only have a relationship established with Him through His Son Jesus Christ.
The issue here is that God is perfect, what we call "holy." As humans, we are not perfect, we are not "holy." God will not join with us to become imperfect and be unholy like us in order to know us. God decided that in order for us to be in community with Him, He would have to make us perfect and holy just like He is. He had to make us acceptable for His real perfection, He had to remove our imperfection and remake our version of reality perfect. This is what Christ does; Christ takes away the sin and imperfection of people, making them holy and perfect in God's eyes by his death and resurrection in order to get them into acceptable community with Himself. He sees reality even if we don't. Someone else had to take away my sin; someone else had to make me acceptable, honestly holy.
Unfortunately, I rejected this act of real love from God at the time and spent twelve more years avoiding fellowship and reality with God, basically designing my own existence. To know Him meant that I had to turn over the authority of my own reality to Christ in order to be acceptable in God's eyes. The atonement of Christ on the cross two thousand years ago was the only thing that would remove the guilt of imperfection from my life. You've heard of the rebel without a cause? Well, I was a rebel who found a cause! My cause was the tug of war over truth, reality and authority in my life against God's love. My version of reality was contrary to His real love.
When I was 31, God's reality caught up with me, and it won. The parameters of my life had grown so far out of bounds that God basically had to use the ministry of the Drug Enforcement Agency to wake me up again. I was arrested for trafficking marijuana and now real authority had crashed into my self-defined world declaring it to be null and void and an enemy of society. Likewise, spiritually, God was speaking in my heart again. He showed me that my spiritual existence was also null and void, even more so than my earthly lifestyle. I had made myself an enemy of God's reality. And if I continued turning away from Him spiritually, I would eventually come face to face with his ultimate authority when I passed into his final judgment at death. Hell and more separation were awaiting me.
It was through this event that I finally came to entrust the universe back over to God; I received from Him at that very moment a pardon for my rebellion against his authority. Instead of imprisonment and alienation, God lifted me up to Himself. Instead of being a 2nd class citizen, Christ remade me into a child of God by taking away my personal moral and spiritual guilt. I received a sentence of eternal life instead of eternal death. God received me into his community of love and perfection as I acknowledged His Son Jesus Christ as the one true God and savior of this world, especially my own world. I received the love of Christ when I handed over the authority of my life to Him. Love, authority and reality are all defined by Him.
As I've been in His community now for ten years and among other Christians who have received the love of His forgiveness, He has been exceedingly kind to me. He has also been exceedingly real. God has taken an imperfect man like me, removed the moral guilt of my sin and restored me into personal relationship with Him. As God has brought me to Himself in His word, which we call the Bible, He has also brought me into His community of believers, which we call the church. I've been learning just how false the dark thoughts I had against Him really were, back when I was avoiding Him.
Today, as you've let me share with you briefly, I encourage you to consider for a moment the nature of the life, and the world you have created for yourself. Is it perfect? What will be its end? How does it seem against the backdrop of Christ's sacrificial love extended to you? How does your personal world contend with the Christ, who extends the person and community of God to you through the authority of the Son, in order to remove the imperfection of your existence and make you perfect in the eyes of God? How does your heart respond to God's perfect reality, and to the authority he has to pardon you, the imperfect one? How would your version of reality be altered if you were to receive the perfect reality of Christ's love and cleansing? Who is the final authority on what you have believed is real? Thanks for listening.Greg Bowen
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