Sunday, April 24, 2016

A Christian witness

So how did I become a believer in God the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit? Three Biblical words, proved true in personal experience, were especially important.

One: 
ἐάν τις ἀγαπᾷ με τὸν λόγον μου τηρήσει, 
καὶ ὁ πατήρ μου ἀγαπήσει αὐτὸν καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἐλευσόμεθα 
καὶ μονὴν παρ’ αὐτῷ ποιησόμεθα. 
(John's Gospel 14:23)

Two: 
τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ κυρίου οἱ οὐρανοὶ ἐστερεώθησαν
καὶ τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ πᾶσα ἡ δύναμις αὐτῶν 

(Psalm 33:6)

Three: 
μετανοήσατε, 
καὶ βαπτισθήτω ἕκαστος ὑμῶν ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ εἰς ἄφεσιν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ὑμῶν 
καὶ λήμψεσθε τὴν δωρεὰν τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος. 
(Acts of the Apostles 2:38)

Let's discuss these.

The first word that became obviously true in my own life:
"If someone loves Me, My Word he will keep, 
and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, 
and an abode beside him We will make." (Jesus Christ, as recorded in St. John 14:23)

Odd, quasi-miraculous coincidences began to become an everyday experience for me, when and only when I made the effort to keep Jesus's teachings and commandments. This went on for years and slowly broke through the atheistic skepticism I had been indoctrinated into.

The word that became obviously true in my life:
"By word of the Lord the heavens were established,
and by Spirit of His mouth all their force." (Ps. 33:6, in Greek)

University of Oxford professor John C. Lennox's book God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (new edn, 2009, Oxford: Lion) brought me face-to-face with the fact that many natural scientists have gone from atheism to theism (belief in God) because they are convinced by huge amounts of evidence in nature that it must have an intelligent designer. Not only did scientism's background doubt about God disappear for me, but I was also led to the following conclusion: If God is powerful enough to design the universe with such miraculous precision that atheist scientists are forced to believe, God must also be powerful enough to write a book (i.e. the Holy Bible).

The third word that became obviously true in my life:
"Repent, 
and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for remission of your sins,
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
(Acts of the Apostles 2:38)

One April Sunday in 2013, I confessed in my heart along the following lines: "The whole Bible is written by God and it convicts me as a sinner. I pray with thanks to the Lord Jesus Christ to be forgiven and to become a disciple of the Lord Jesus." As I sat there praying, a tremendous force of energy radiated onto and into me, for perhaps 5 seconds. The following week I spent much of my time cleaning out anything from my home that could be offensive to God (e.g. books of other religions, radically skeptical theology books, etc.). From then through today (three years later), that process of bringing my life into obedience to God's Word has continued, thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit enabling me. Other manifestations of the gift of the Holy Spirit include physical healings and (what increasingly certainly appears to be) exorcisms, just as promised in Mark 16:17-18.