Without the sovereign grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ we would not have access to the Holy Spirit who convicts us of our need for forgiveness and plants the seed of faith in our heart.
I was not born with faith, nor did I receive it by growing up in a Christian home. When I was old enough to reason I dismissed the existence of God based on my ignorance and the deception of the enemy. I even rebelled against God during a summer golf camp, run by Christians who wanted me to accept Jesus.
This skepticism grew in my early high-school years, in spite of friends reaching out to me and inviting me to church and fellowships. My analytical mind could not grasp the concept of an invisible God and his supernatural influence on people around me. The Bible seemed to be written in a foreign language that I could not understand. (Actually it WAS foreign in more ways than I knew).
All that began to change later in high school when a friend on my high school golf team began to question me about my eternal destiny. "Do you know what will happen to you when you die?" he would ask me on the tee box while we waited to tee off. I had no good answer, but this did provoke much concern in my adolescent mind. I was beginning to think long-term and the thought of mortality could not be satisfied by parties and shallow relationships.
Though I never stopped going to church with my parents, I began to accept invitations to fellowship and Bible study meetings with friends. I listened to Christian music and tapes by evangelists and teachers at my friends' churches and houses. During this time I began to sense the presence of the Holy Spirit, and the warm love of believers in fellowship with each other.
The conviction of the Holy Spirit and the word of faith was breaking down the walls of skepticism and leading me to repentance. I had to accept a lot of things I didn't understand, but felt that I had found the source of life and hope. The truth of this matter is that He found me! I remember having to tell some of my old friends I was moving into a new life and leaving some of their ways behind. Of course, I wanted them to come along but had to accept their own decisions to delay or deny the way I had found.
In college I was baptized for the first time and began to seriously study the Bible and spend time with new Christian friends I met in school. This was not the end of my struggles with skepticism and sin, but the Holy Spirit was teaching me by the word of faith that He was planting in my heart. That faith grew through my college years to form dear friendships, including my wife whom I married toward the end of college.
Marriage and career presented me with the most fundamental challenge of my life - how to deal with people that I worked with, ate lunch with and rarely went to parties with, who didn't know God and were following a more sinful lifestyle. My first job was with a team of young college graduates like myself in the field of Information Processing and Computer Science. I enjoyed the work and even the office humor, but attempting to be a light in this spiritual darkness proved my faith to be immature and fragile. Marriage and the five years I spent in college had left me disconnected when we moved back to the Houston area, and we initially failed to settle into a Christian fellowship that would provide any meaningful support.
After several years of wandering I began the much longer experience of learning to walk out of the wilderness of Sin and to let the old nature die. We found a church in our neighborhood and Christian friends to share our faith and fellowship. Through the years that followed we have been involved in a few churches in the Houston area and harvested much fruit from our fellowship. These were not years without struggles with family and the cares of the world, but we have been learning endurance through the testing of our faith. These were also years filled with the blessings and joy of the Holy Spirit that kept our marriage strong and our family safe. I can testify that my own experience with the God of the Bible has proven Him to be faithful, merciful, and exceedingly gracious when I need Him the most.
Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,” Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You. For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You. Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.
