Truly – the one top event in my 36-year-old life, to begin God’s grace filled salvation, was when the Holy Spirit began His incursion, into my empty life. As usual I was alone. He baffled me, by His soft, quiet presence. One then another incident relating to the Bible, before His intentions faded or stood back. Over an 18-month period, the Holy Spirit came closer, more frequently and more powerfully, like an attack on my camp of deliberate isolation and sinful lifestyle, in His hit and run approach. The Mysterious Force kept leading, showing and withdrawing, leaving powerful Bible scriptures, like breadcrumbs.
There was the old man’s voice on a Christian radio program, the only station I could find while driving in the desert, outside Los Angeles. Then, while walking the streets where I lived, I found three walnut half shells in a line with a tiny, red 1 ½” square Bible, on a picnic table in North Hollywood Park. At home, in the garage I slept in for cheap rent, I found other Christian radio stations and began conversations with neighbors about God. Members of the rock band I was part of, began opening my mind to the world of Christian song lyrics and the huge Christian song market I had no idea of. Indeed, my questioning became very serious, toward the concept of another sphere or domain that existed outside of my 36 years of wayward living in a world, I was awkwardly trying to fit in.
At the end of roughly 18 months, the Holy Spirit led me to a church worship service. At the end, I walked out bewildered and wept while trying to drive home in the car I borrowed, my mind was being thoroughly shredded, I needed to pull over. There I sat, teary eyed as traffic went by normally. Some kind of new analysis was forcing me to strongly consider God. Without knowing why, I found myself in-between my Godless, unbelieving, crumbling world and God’s eternity crashing in.
Somehow, I made it through the day pacing in the yard, going in and out of the garage. That evening at sunset, I was still pacing in the large backyard trying to make sense of it all. Standing near the large fireplace, my eyes stared into the orange and blue colored western skies. My mind raced with all those recent events, which left me asking myself “What’s next?” In a moment with the sinking sun, the gift of clarity came. God’s grace opened my eyes to believe. God is real! My old world crashed down as God’s world rose up. Whatever happened was going to be huge.
Once I believed in God’s existence, I was given spiritual life. The gospel message of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ fell into place. That was the moment I was born-again. Those first few seconds were like being on stage, in front of the drawn curtain, looking at the audience of empty seats but I was no longer alone. God pulled me through the curtain, to see His backstage production. The truth of God’s private domain was given to me. He brought me into His eternal sphere. God made me, part of His family. That day was the greatest day of my life, a true story I will tell through all eternity. Thank God.
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