A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 14

Have you ever been around happy people, and you are miserable? Does that irritate you? That is what happened to me. Finally, I returned to the United States, back to the university, and I could not get to sleep. I would go to bed at ten o’clock at night, and I couldn’t get to sleep until four o’clock in the morning. I believe one of the reasons was for the first time in my life I knew. Now I had done this before, but this was the first time that I knew that I was being intellectually dishonest, and that bothered me. Finally, I knew I had to get it off my mind, so I put it to the test and became a Christian. You say, “How do you know?” I was there. It changed my life. I got alone with my friend Jerry, and I prayed four things that literally transformed my life and my relationship with the living Creator God.

The first thing I prayed was “Thank You for dying on the cross for me.” One of the most humbling thoughts I’ve ever had in my life is that I realized, through reading the Scriptures, that if I were the only person alive, Jesus still would have died for me. That’s what brought me to Christ.

Second, I said, “I confess that I’m a sinner.” The Bible says, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Now what that means is this: I knew there were things in my life that were incompatible with a holy, just, righteous God, and God says if I confess, He will forgive it and remove it. So I said, “Forgive me and cleanse me.”

Third, I said, “Right now,” and I did not know a whole lot, but I said, “Right now I place my trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord.” The Bible says, “But to as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God.” I said, “Right now I receive You as my Savior and Lord. I accept Your forgiveness, come into my life. Change me from the inside out. Forgive me.”

The last thing that I prayed was--it was rather simple--I just said, “Thank You for coming into my life.” And nothing happened. There was not any bolt of lightening. I did not rush out and sprout wings or anything else. Well, something did happen. Right after I made that decision, I felt like I was going to vomit. I felt sick to my stomach. I think for two reasons--one, I was afraid that I had made an emotional decision I would later regret intellectually. More than that, I was afraid of what my friends would say. You see, I didn’t have the faith to understand that most of my friends would end up coming to Christ. But somebody among all of my friends had to take that first step, and that was me.