A Brief Account of My Journey of Faith

I have believed in God my entire life. Some of my earliest memories are of staying up late at night praying. I don't remember what I prayed for, but I do recall having a strong sense of the presence of God from a very early age. Despite a few moments of doubt here and there, my conviction in the reality of God has never departed me. When I was younger, I often took comfort in this fact. And, while this comfort was a blessing, it also led me into complacency, and even into pride. More on that later.

Though I had a strong belief in God from childhood, I did not come to faith in Christ until I was in my senior year of college. I didn't enjoy church when I was young, and the Bible seemed very strange to me. More importantly, I didn't believe that Jesus was God, and I couldn't understand anything about the Holy Spirit. So, when the time came for me to make confirmation in eighth grade - I was raised Catholic - I declined. My dad has always been a faithful Catholic, and I thought that I would surely be punished for refusing to be confirmed, but I wasn't. My dad asked why I had decided not to be confirmed, and when I explained it to him, he said that he understood and respected my decision. I think that it helped that I said that I believed in God, and that I prayed, but I know that he was disappointed.

At any rate, the years went by, and I continued to grow in my relationship with God. I prayed regularly, confessed my sins to God, and tried to conduct myself in a holy manner. Although I was not a Christian, I was convinced that God's defining quality was love, and I was convinced that He cared very deeply for all creation.

As I said, I came to faith in Christ during my senior year of college. It was Christmas break, and I was home with my family. I had bought my dad a book on the theology of Thomas Aquinas as a Christmas present; and, one lazy day in late December, I picked up the book and began to read it myself. I had little interest in Thomas as a religious thinker, but I respected him as a philosopher, and I thought that the book deserved my attention. It was late afternoon when I reached the chapter on Thomas's account of the Incarnation. I was reading about some of Thomas's ideas about why God became flesh, and then it happened - I had a powerful religious experience that convinced me that Christ was God. I didn't hear voices, and I didn't see visions. I simply felt the presence of God. It was powerful, exhilarating, and calming all at the same time, and it said to me that God had indeed become flesh in Christ. One idea that rang through my head over and over again was that I had always believed that God was perfect love, and that a God of perfect love would do just what Jesus did.

Well, I mulled over my experience for a few days and then contacted a priest at my old parish to make confession. After finishing the school year, I moved back home and decided to take some time off before grad school. One of the first things I did was to enroll in RCIA (basically Catholic education for adults) at my old parish, and so began my journey of Christian faith. The RCIA classes were pretty good, and I started attending church regularly. I also started reading the Bible and some church fathers (especially Augustine). I found much in Catholic spirituality to nourish my new faith. Eucharistic adoration was particularly important to me.

Over the years, I grew in my relationship with God, and I also grew in my understanding of the basic tenets of the Christian faith. However, I still had serious doubts about the divinity of Christ, and these prevented me from developing a personal relationship with Christ. Although I was rarely willing to admit it to myself, I was worried that if Christ wasn't really God then I was committing a terrible sacrilege by elevating a human being to the ranks of the Godhead. I wasn't sure that God would punish me for that kind of an error, but I also wasn't sure that He wouldn't; and, regardless, I didn't want to dishonor Him.

My faith in Christ started to grow fairly rapidly just before I met my wife, and it grew very rapidly thereafter. She introduced me to her PCA church - a wonderful, faithful congregation - and God used her and the people at the church to draw me near to Him. One day, I was driving near my parents' house when I began thinking about my old doubts about the divinity of Christ. Though my faith in Christ had grown considerably since my conversion, the doubts impressed themselves on me with great force. I called out in prayer to God, begging Him to reveal His will to me once and for all. I then had another powerful experience of God, much like the one that I had experienced some ten years earlier during the Christmas of my senior year in college. This time God didn't extend an initial invitation to Christ to me - He had already done that a decade prior. But He did confirm that initial invitation, which I had received so long ago. I felt God saying to me in strong terms that I was to trust Him, and that this is where He was leading me. I felt Him saying that Christ was truly divine, and that He really did suffer and die for my sins. I have often felt the presence of God, but there was something different about that day. For one, it was one of the only times in my life other than my Christmas conversion experience when I felt that God was communicating something specific to me. Anyways, that moment was a watershed in my relationship with God. I wouldn't say that I never actively questioned my faith since that day, but my old doubts were effectively laid to rest; and, through the power of the Spirit (and nothing else), I began to trust in Christ as never before. That was 2009.

Once again, years passed, and I continued to grow in my relationship with God, only this time I also grew in my relationship with Christ and the Holy Spirit. My conviction in the central tenets of Christianity strengthened, and I eventually began to think that I had become a fairly mature believer in Christ. Sure, I tried to be humble about this, and I attributed all the growth to God, but I was pretty sure that I had become a solid Christian. Well, perhaps that's true. After all, the Christian journey is long. In fact, it never ends this side of eternity. As we progress in our faith, new vistas are perpetually opened to us, and we continually learn new things. This is wonderful, and it certainly doesn't imply that our previous understanding of God was inauthentic just because it was deficient. So, perhaps I am a mature Christian in some ways.

But I hadn't progressed as much as I thought. God revealed this to me recently through a serious of experiences for which I am tremendously grateful. Some of these experiences involved my wife, some involved my friends, and some involved the people at the new church that my wife and I are attending. (There was also a book and a few worship services that played into this.) Through these experiences, God revealed to me that I hadn't really begun to develop a truly personal relationship with Christ, and that I hadn't really started to grasp the significance of Christ's life, death, and resurrection. My faith was still largely centered on the Father, not the Son, and I rarely approached the Father through the Son. Most of my prayers were directed to the Father and the Spirit; few were directed to the Son. I hadn't really grasped the fact that I was reconciled with God only through Christ. I hadn't really believed that Christ - not just the Father and the Spirit - were always with me. I didn't know - not really - what it meant for Jesus to be my friend and my brother as well as my Lord. I didn't understand what it meant to say that Christ was the bread of life, the light of the world, the good shepherd, and the true vine. These descriptions of Christ always struck me as beautiful, but they were largely dead images as far as my heart was concerned. I didn't know what it meant to taste Christ, or to be nourished by Him. For me, Christ was for the most part an abstract figure, defined by his role as savior, and not a person with whom I could walk. I might greet Him from a distance, but that was all.

God also showed me that I was not nearly as humble as I thought, nor as generous or compassionate. He showed me that I didn't thirst for righteousness or the sake of the kingdom quite as much as I had thought, and that I wasn't the peacemaker that I had often believed myself to be. My world largely revolved around myself, I didn't even love myself all that well, to say nothing of how I loved others or God. To be honest, I have failed God in so many ways. It's a sad tale, the tale of sin. So, perhaps I'm not a mature Christian after at all. I'm still drinking spiritual milk when I should have advanced to meat long ago.

This was all humbling, but it was also hopeful. I know that my Savior lives, and that He has redeemed the world. I know that Christ has called me to walk with Him and to know Him. I know that Christ has called me to true faith, and to a deep personal relationship with Him. I know that He has called me to true discipleship. If I thought that my prospects for success depended in any way on my own effort, I would despair. But I have learned about grace, and so I am unafraid. Still, I don't want to disappoint my God and my Lord who has done so much for me. And I am terribly sorry for my many, many sins. It grieves me terribly to think how badly I have disappointed God and how much I have hurt others. And yet I can look to the cross and remember that Christ's blood has washed me clean. I want to know Christ. I want Him to be the center of my life, to pervade everything - to be everything. I want to walk with Him always. I want to learn humility and self-sacrificial love from Him. I want to be the slave of all.

The world is so broken. It needs Christ so badly. Nothing else can redeem this place. Perhaps more than anything else the past few weeks, I have learned this - the world groans for Christ. True, there is much good in this world, thanks to God, but the world is badly in need of rescue, and only Christ can provide it. I want to bear witness to Christ. If you do not believe in Christ, you are still my brother, and I love you just the same. But please consider these words carefully and read the Gospels carefully.

What can one say to God? Though we are sinners and despise Him, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross, and this just to save us. What can one say to God? Thank you? Such words seem so inadequate. But it's a place to start. Thank you Lord. Thank you so very, very much. Amen.