Somebody once said you don’t have to be the best, just be the one who shows up, and that is how I view my writings. I know many in my own family who are far and away better writers than I am, but I am the one doing it. And to clarify, I do not want to be seen as one who pontificates to others; almost all of what I write, I write first to myself, and I have found my thoughts mature as I write them down, and I don’t want to write anything I haven’t first experienced. All of my learning has come through expensive lessons.
In 1972, after sternly resisting my mother’s endless efforts to “convert me” to Christianity, and after yelling at her over the phone and saying I didn’t need anybody and didn’t want to hear any more of her evangelizing, I slammed the phone down. Then, in total surprise, I fell to my knees in my empty apartment, and begged Jesus to forgive me my sins and be my Lord! To this day I’m still in shock, I did not see that coming, and I’m not sure how it did, but thank God, it did! And truth be told, I teared up writing that paragraph. I didn’t see that coming either. Of course, the first thing I felt compelled to do was phone my mother, and with some embarrassment tell her what had happened. She had well-earned the confession.
As a new believer, I felt an urgency to read the Bible cover to cover, simply to begin furnishing God with something he could use; I knew my “storehouse” was empty. I was in my twenties, yet I had never read the book, even though I had been “confirmed” as a member of a prestigious Presbyterian church ten years earlier. I was ignorant of its contents, and I figured that would not be a good beginning into this new life I had chosen. I also realized that I would not understand very much of what I would read at first, but I wanted to absorb as much as I could. I was also ignorant about my ability to commit myself totally to God, for I somehow knew He would except nothing less than 100%. I told Him I would give the 10% I felt confident in and trust Him to expand my ability to more fully commit as I matured.
Throughout my Christian infancy I found God totally faithful, never failing to exceed my expectations. He was a gentle father, guiding me carefully over rough spots and carefully putting the exact right mentors in my path at the exact right times, but I didn’t clearly see it while it was happening; it was only visible in my spiritual rear view mirror. In my case, I was immediately thrown into a group of very ardent, some would even say radical Christians, by today’s prevailing lukewarm standards, and I thrived in their fellowship and guidance.
Probably the very first lesson God taught me was to choose to believe. While that may sound elementary, I assure you it is not, and many, if not most of today’s crop of believers would do better if they learned it. We know that God created us with free will, and much has been made of this teaching from our pulpits in America; what has not been taught is that everything in our spiritual lives comes through purposeful and persistent choices.
When I began to read through the Bible for the first time, I consciously chose to believe everything I read, and I also made the choice to trust God to open His Word to me at my right time. God deals with us as individuals…fathers do that or should. God has one family, but it is composed of individuals who are all different from each other, but they all have a place at the same table, and they all arrive in need of repair.
Perhaps my most difficult lesson has been learning to love others, specifically God’s people. Many people just seem to love easily; I do not. It is a choice I have to make nearly every day. It reminds me of grade school when on the first day the teachers would always ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Too dumb to lie like many others, I was stuck with embarrassment as I had to say that I had no idea. I hated those first days, and perhaps someone should ask the teachers what they want to be if they ever grow up! Loving others is like that for me. It is not natural to my human nature, probably because loving myself is natural, and it is a sacrifice to replace it on the throne.
My first real Christian best friend and mentor had a healing and demonic delivery ministry. Just a few years before I met him, he had been sent home from the hospital to die of incurable cancer. His doctors gave up on being able to do anything for him, and they probably needed the bed. When he had 24 hours of life left, God miraculously healed him. (His testimony is detailed in his book, Alive Again, by Bill Banks, Impact Books in Kirkwood, Missouri). When Bill ministered to the sick, he would very often ask them 2 questions: “Do you want God to heal you?” and “Do you think He can do so right now?”, and believe me, those are very important questions! Almost everyone Bill asked stumbled over those questions. Not many people want to be sick, but nearly all of them have almost no faith believing God can, or wants to heal them. They have hope, not faith. You see, one of the critical issues Bill was bringing out in the open was the issue of choice. Deficient answers to those questions gave him an opening to show them in the Bible that God wants to be our Healer.
I often say that God is ‘simply complex’. He knows who and what we are, and He also knows our propensity in making everything difficult. He presents us with a simple gospel message, but we usually manage to bugger it up with complications. We don’t want simple, we want to earn it, and we layer it with programs and spiritual checklists. With the exception of Christianity, all of the religions in the world have sets of “works” one must do to arrive at their brand of Salvation. It’s easier by far to just (choose to) believe in Christianity’s God.
I have found God’s way is always very simple and uncomplicated by contrast. It is easier to have faith in the real Gospel of Jesus Christ than to have faith in any other religion; the problem occurs as we experience this consistent fact: by our human nature we are almost always exactly backwards from God’s nature. To be like God, we must consciously choose to do so…it will not ever just happen. That’s what Paul meant when he admonished us to ‘die daily’, and that takes purposeful and persistent choices.
Choose to believe God’s Word as it is written. If that is not the way it should be understood, God will make it clear. It is the Holy Spirit’s job to lead us into all truth, and He’s very good at it, if we let Him. As an aside, I personally believe the Holy Spirit prefers to home-school, but we have to make time for Him.
For Christians, both infants and mature, every day with God is full of choices, but He will never force us to make them. He is totally and always faithful and trustworthy. He is the best Teacher, Confidant, Friend, Lover, our one and only God and is always completely complete and perfectly perfect…but it is always up to us to choose to believe it.
John Miltenberger
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