There was no one particular moment when the skies opened up and God came wafting down. Rather, over the months as I began to study the Bible, as I went to church, as I learned to pray, as I began to reflect honestly on my life, and as I began to open myself up to the Spirit of God to minister to me and to move me, I came to realize that there was something dramatic missing in my life. I realized that there was an explanation for the low condition of my life. The many things that seemed out of line were all connected to the spiritual vacancy that I was becoming aware of.
Moreover, I began to feel myself growing and changing. I began to be aware that there was something real to this Christian business. Perhaps my greatest step forward in spiritual growth occurred when I began to think about Christianity not simply as a collection of propositions to be examined, not just as a set of truth claims which I was considering, but rather as the actual means by which a transcendent God has chosen to reach out to and that this "Jesus business" is not just an intellectual argument that people are making. It is not just a ritualistic set of conventions that people are engaging in, as I had imagined before. As a smug "intellectual" at a leading university, I was unwilling to even consider, much less accept, statements that Christians were making on faith where I could not see the evidence. I was unwilling to have faith without complete evidence, when I now understand that faith is the evidence of things not yet seen. As my resistance to acknowledge spiritual realities began to erode, I became more willing to entertain the possibility and, indeed, the truth of the spiritual things proclaimed to me. I began to make more room withing my heart for the message of the gospel. Things in my life began to change.
Dead relationships came to life. My sense of the absence of purpose gradually lifted. As I began to study the Bible, the depth and richness and profundity of life began to open up to me. I began to see that the possibilities for joy and fulfillment are much greater than I ever imagined. I found myself seeing below the surface and finding a richness of meaning that I dreamed of but never believed to actually exist.
For example, I discovered what for me was a life-changing truth: that freedom (or what I thought was freedom) is not worthy of being one's highest value. My constant quest to be "free" of constraint, to be unfettered had been the source of much of my unhappiness. Since childhood I had always thought I wanted to "do my own thing." Marriage seemed suffocating, because it meant being obligated to consider the concerns of another. Though already a father from a previous marriage, I did not want to have children, because of the enormous responsibilities. I resented the claims of family and friends if they inconvenienced me.
Yet after becoming a Christian, I learned that the deepest satisfactions and most powerful sense of fulfillment can only be achieved when one is faithfully committed and accountable to others. Holding my infant sons in my arms and experiencing the deep satisfaction of being, daily, the kind of father and husband which I know the Lord has called me to be, I realized that the whimsical passions and fanciful pursuits of my earlier life could never have produced true happiness. In the past I was free only to reap the bitter harvest of loneliness, aimlessness, and hopelessness which my reckless pursuit of personal, sensual gratification had produced. But only now do I know joy beyond my wildest expectation, even though my time is often not my own, and I have since lost the taste for the hedonistic delicacies which I used to savor. Life has such a sweetness. Instead of "Life has no meaning," my wife, Linda, now sometimes overhears me saying, "Thank you, Lord."
With my spiritual growth has come an appreciation of the joy of worship and praise, and an ability to share the gospel and minister to people. This was made possible when I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit--the power that the Lord has made available to all of us who believe. These spiritual gifts at first seemed embarrassing and irrational to me. Emotionalism in worship grated against my intellectual style; it seemed archaic, characteristic of something primitive. Yet in due course there I was, full of joy and prepared to worship not just passively but openly. For I had witnessed what the Lord had done for me; I could not remain silent or studiously passive when my church fellowship would celebrate his glory.