A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 20

Right now, maybe as I have been sharing my testimony, God has been convicting you that you need to trust Christ as Savior and Lord. Remember, it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship. Maybe quietly, right where you are, you may want to pray this prayer that I prayed. “Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank you for dying on the cross for me. Forgive me and cleanse me. Right this moment I place my trust in You as Savior and Lord. I accept Your forgiveness. Come into my life and change me from the inside out. Thank You that I can trust You. In Christ’s name, Amen.”

If you just prayed that prayer, I’m going to ask you to share that with someone. Tell them of the decision that you made today. Remember what Paul said, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things pass away, behold all become new.”

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 19

While my life was changed basically in six months to a year or year-and-a-half after I accepted Christ as my Savior, the life of my father was changed right before my eyes. It was like somebody reached down and turned on a light bulb. He only touched alcohol once after that. He got it to his lips, and that was it. Fourteen months later he died, because three-fourths of his stomach and many of his inner organs had been destroyed. But as a result of his decision, scores of people in that little tiny town and surrounding areas where I was born came to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord because of the changed life of the town drunk.

I’ve come to one conclusion, Christianity is not a religion. Religion is men and women trying to work their way to God through good works and religious ritual to please God in order to be accepted. That’s not Christianity – that is religion. Christianity is God coming to us. “For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son.” It’s God coming to us through His Son Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for your sins and my sins, to be buried, raised again on the third day through the power of the Father, and then to offer us a free gift of salvation.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 18

About six months after my mother died, I was in a serious car accident at the university. My legs, arm and neck were in traction. I was taken home, and my father came into my room and was very sober, because when they called him, he was drunk and thought I was dying. I will never forget his walking back and forth at my bed.

All of a sudden he just leaned over, because I was all tied in bed and strapped in with the cables. He blurted out, “How can you love a father such as I?” Lying there in bed like this, I said, “Dad, six months ago I despised you. I hated everything that you stood for.” Then I shared with him my conclusions about the Bible--why I believe it’s true and about Jesus as the Son of God. I said, “Dad, all I know is that I asked Jesus to forgive me. I invited Him into my life. As a result, I found the capacity to love and accept you and other people.”

Right there my father said to me, “Son, if God can do in my life what I have seen him do in yours, I want to give Him the opportunity.” You talk about joy. Most people do not have this much joy in a lifetime. I had it in one moment. Right there my father prayed with me. He prayed a very simple prayer and said, “God, if you are God, and Jesus is your Son, if He died on the cross for me, and if He can forgive me for what I’ve done to my family, if He can do in my life, what I’ve seen Him do in the life of my son, I want to invite Him into my life. I trust Him as Savior and Lord. I accept His forgiveness.”

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 17

Two months before I graduated from high school, I came home from a date about midnight on a Saturday, and I heard my mother crying. I remember running into her bedroom yelling, “Mom what’s wrong, what’s wrong?” She sat up in bed and said, “Son, your father has broken my heart.” And then she reached down and put her arms around me and pulled me to her and said, “Son, I have lost the will to live. All I want to do is live until you graduate, then I just want to die.” Let me tell you that was hard to hear as a kid.

Do you know what happened? Do you know the irony? Two months later I graduated from high school. Sixty one days later, and the next Friday, the 13th, my mother died. Don’t tell me you cannot die of a broken heart. My mother did. My father broke it, and I hated him for it. After I made that decision to place my trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord, to accept His forgiveness, a love--I can only say the love of God through Jesus Christ-- came into my life and took that hatred and turned it upside down. I found myself looking my father right in the eyes and saying, “Dad, I love you. I love you.” Well, that shook me up, because I didn’t want to love my dad. Even as a brand new Christian, I chose, by an act of my will, to hate my father. Do you know why? I believe it is because I didn’t want to give up that satisfaction or the joy of hating the man who had killed my mother and destroyed my family.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 16

When I was a kid, I would go out in the barn, and I would see my mother where we lived on the farm. I would see her lying in the gutter in the manure behind the cows where my father had taken a milk hose and beaten her so bloody that she could not get up and walk. All she could do was roll out of the manure onto the cement sidewalk behind the cows. And I was 8, 9, 10, 11 years old and I remember standing there just swearing that when I am strong enough, I’m going to kill him.

We would have friends over, and my dad would be drunk. If you have an alcoholic parent or a drug-dependent parent, you know what I was experiencing. You know the shame that goes through you when your friends see your parent that way. And so before our friends would get over there, I would grab my dad around the neck, and I would pull him out to the barn, and I would throw him into the pen where the cows would have their calves. I would take the car out of the garage and park it behind the barn so no one could see it. Then we would leave the garage doors open and tell everyone that my dad had to go away on an important appointment. I would go out to the barn, and I would prop him up against the boards, and then I would stick his arms through the boards. Then I would tie one arm to the other arm. I would put a rope around his neck and pull his head all the way over the top board, and then I would tie the rope around his feet, so if he shuffled his feet to get loose, he would choke himself because of what he had done to my family. One of my sisters committed suicide. My oldest brother, imagine this, sued my parents for everything that they had in a court of law. My other brother ran away from home. I despised my dad.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 15

I want to just share with you one area that changed in my life after I came to the point where the Holy Spirit led me to place my trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord. It’s an area that is not easy for me to share, because there was a lot of deep pain in it. But I want to put into context what I am going to share, and I want you to understand this. Jesus has dealt with the pain of the memory, but I still have the memory of the pain. Does that make sense to you? Christ has dealt with the pain that I experienced and is still dealing with it in my life, but I hope I will always have the memory of the pain. Do you know why? It’s a constant reminder of how great my God is and how He forgives and heals and cleanses.

The area which I want to share with you deals with hatred, bitterness, and resentment. I had a lot of hate in my life, but there was one man that I hated more than anyone else in the whole world, and I hated his guts. I can remember when I was 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, lying awake at night in bed plotting this man’s death. How could I kill him without being caught by the police? That man I hated so much was my father. Because growing up in a little tiny town, to me, he was the town drunk. I hardly ever knew him sober until I was twenty years old. I would go to high school and my friends would make jokes about my father downtown in the gutter making a fool of himself. You see, they did not think it bothered me. Because I am like some of you, I would laugh with them on the outside but oh, let me tell you, every time they told a joke about my dad, it hurt on the inside. But I never let anyone know. That was my secret.

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.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 13

The whole reason for writing my first book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, was to write a book to make an intellectual joke of Christianity – to refute those students and professors I had encountered in the university. I thought that would be easy. I left the university. I traveled throughout the United States, England, and the Middle East. I gathered evidence to write the book.

I was sitting in a library in London, England. It was late on a Friday afternoon around 6:00 or 6:30, and something happened that never happened to me before. It was like a voice spoke to me. Now I don’t normally hear voices, but it was like a voice spoke to me. It said, “Josh, you don’t have a leg to stand on.” I immediately suppressed it. Do you know what was interesting? Almost every single day after that, I heard the voice. The more I examined the evidence, the more it took me to the opposite conclusion of what I wanted to reach--that the Bible is the very word of God, and Jesus Christ is His Son, and He was raised from the dead on the third day. I had finally arrived at the conclusion that what my mind told me was true, but my will was way over here. I had quite a conflict between my mind and my will. The reason is that I found out Jesus Christ makes a direct challenge to each individual personally to place his trust in Him as Savior and Lord, to accept His forgiveness, to invite Him into his life and to allow Him to live His life through him. My mind told me that was true, and my will was way over here.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 12

I used to think all Christians were ugly. I did. I figured if you could not make it anywhere else in the world, you became a Christian. This one young woman was really cute, and that kind of threw me a little bit. I kind of leaned back in my chair, and I tried to act totally disinterested. I looked over at the young lady. In a rather flippant way I just said, “Hey, tell me, what changed your lives? Why are you so different from the other students, the leaders, the professors on campus?” I couldn’t believe it. She looked me back eye-to-eye with a little smile. She said two words I never thought I would hear in the university as part of the answer. She just looked back at me and said, “Jesus Christ.” I said, “Oh do not give me that garbage.” I said, “I’m fed up with religion, the church, the Bible. Don’t give me that garbage about religion.” All I know is that she had a lot of courage or a lot of convictions. In fact, on the farm we used to call it guts. She shot me back eye-to-eye, and she did not even smile this time. She said, “Mister, I did not tell you religion. I told you the person of Jesus Christ.”

Well, I felt bad, because I had really been rude, and my parents did not raise me to be rude, so I apologized. I said, “Please forgive me for my attitude.” But then I just had to add, “But I am sick and tired of religion and religious people. I don’t want anything to do with it.” Then, I couldn’t believe it. Right there in the university, these students and professors challenged me as a pre-law student, now get this, to intellectually use my mind to examine the claims of Jesus Christ as God’s Son. Now I thought that was a joke to do that intellectually. Do you know what I believed? I believed that Christians had two brains--one was lost and the other was out looking for it. I really believed that if a Christian had a brain, it would die in isolation. You kind of took your brains and shelved them and then ran on vacuum when you followed Christ. But they just kept challenging me over and over and over. In fact, they simply irritated me. Have you ever had someone so challenge you in something that you get mad about it? That is what happened to me. I got so irritated I wanted to silence them. So I accepted their challenge, but I did not do it to prove anything. I did it to refute them.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 11

There was something that probably caught my attention more than anything within a certain group of people I met at college. It is something you find everywhere. You find it in every university, every country, every community. It is called love. In this situation, in the university, I saw a different dimension of it. Here was a group of students and professors who not only loved each other--you will find that everywhere--but here was the difference: they loved and cared for people outside their group.

Now the way I was brought up, that was weird, but I wanted it. So I made friends with them. After several weeks--two or three weeks--we were sitting around the table in the Student Union at the university. Two of the professors were there, one of their wives, and six of those students. I wish you could have been there, because it was kind of funny. We started talking, and pretty soon the conversation started to get to God.

Well, let’s face it. If you are an insecure student or professor, businessman or woman, and the conversation gets to God, and you are insecure, you have to put on the big front. Look, every university, every faculty, every high school, every corporation, every community has what I call “the big mouth.” You know the person who says, “Oh Christianity – ha! That’s for the weakies, not the intellectuals.” You know what I found to be true? Literally, in every country, the bigger the mouth, the greater the vacuum. No really, the bigger the front an individual puts on, usually the greater the emptiness on the inside.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 10

I thought, “Well, maybe education is the answer to the questions--who am I, why am I here and where am I going?” I live in a very educated country, and I figured that coming from the farm where the cream will rise to the top of the milk that the cream must be the educated. So I enrolled in the university.

Let me tell you what a disappointment it is to enroll in any university in the world in order to find truth. I was, by far, one of the most unpopular students with the faculty in the first university I attended, and the reason is that I used to go to my faculty’s offices and wait for them for hours because I had so many questions. In fact, I think when a lot of my faculty saw me coming, they would turn the lights off, pull the shades and lock the door and wait out the storm. One of the reasons they did that was because they could not answer the questions that I had about life. Do you know what I found? I found that my professors could teach me how to make a better living, but they couldn’t teach me how to live better.

I thought, “Well, maybe prestige is the answer – being known, finding a cause, giving your life to it.” I ran for various political offices in the university and got elected. And it was neat, knowing everyone, spending their money to do what I wanted to do. But there was one problem. After all of this, I would wake up every Monday morning the same individual, usually with a headache because of the night before. Almost every Monday morning my attitude was, “Well, here goes another five days.” I kind of endured Monday through Friday. Happiness evolved around three nights a week, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then I would start that cycle all over again.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 9

A number of years ago my life was like a lot of people today in your country, my country, all over the world. It was described by the philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, who said, “There is within every soul, within every person, a restless thirst for happiness and meaning.” That described my life. I truly wanted to be happy. I wanted to be one of the happiest people in the world. And I can’t see anything wrong with that if my happiness is not at the expense of someone else. But equal to being happy, I wanted the answers to three questions. I struggled to answer these three questions: The first one--“Who am I as a person?” Number two--“Why am I here?” Number three--“Where am I going?” You know most people will not ask themselves those three questions, because they’re afraid of the answers.

Then equal to that, the answers to those three questions, I wanted to be free. I wanted to be the freest individual in the whole world. Now freedom to me is not going out and doing what you want to do. Any idiot could do that. That is why we have police. True freedom, to me, is to have the capacity or the character to do what you know you ought to do. You are truly not free until you can do what you know you ought to do morally. So I started looking for answers.

I was brought up in the state of Michigan--that’s in the north central part of the United States in the state that kind of looks like the hand with a thumb coming out--and was born in Union City, Michigan. Where I was born a lot of people had religion. It was a boring place to live, but I thought, “Well, maybe religion is the answer to these questions and that happiness and that freedom.” So I started to go to church, and I went to church, morning, afternoon, and evening. But I think I must have found the wrong church. In spite of what the pastor said, I still believed in God. And here was my problem--I felt worse in church than I did out of church. On the farm we were brought up to be quite practical, so when something didn’t work, you threw it out. So I threw out religion, because I did not think in any way it affected my life. I turned my back on the church, or at least that church.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 8

One of the greatest pieces of evidence that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that Christianity is true, and that the Bible is the Word of God is what happens in a person’s life when he comes to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. A changed life is a tremendous, powerful testimony for the reality of the Christian faith. In that light, I would like to be very personal with you starting from today and share my journey from skepticism to faith, from rejection to acceptance, from a denier to one who accepts. And so let me try to bring in my background and all and to point out the process that I went through to come to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and what happened.

In the Bible it says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone be in Christ, he will become a new creature, and old things will pass away, and all things will become new.” I believe when the apostle Paul wrote that verse, he was describing what happened in my life.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 7

I have interns who travel with me. These are young men who believe they are going to go into a teaching ministry, a speaking evangelistic ministry, and people come to me and say, “Oh, you ought to have so-and-so travel with you, he’s so brilliant, he’s such a persuasive speaker, he’s so talented.” They think that I am impressed with that. You know what goes through my mind? “Boy, does that guy have a lot to trust God for.” You know, I believe it is easy to take your natural abilities, your gifts, your talents and place them on the altar. You know what is tougher – to take that step of faith to trust Him with your limitations. I am convinced that ultimately God can glorify himself more through your limitations than your abilities and your talents. He is looking for people who are available to a limitless God to live His life out through you.

And that’s a little bit of what the attributes of God have done in my life when I realized He is greater than my limitations. There is nothing in my life that is greater than God’s power, and what often bothered me for years was that I could trust God with the big things, but I could not trust Him with little things. Why? I didn’t doubt His power, what I doubted was His love. I came to understand there was nothing too great in my life that His power could not overcome. I thought there were many things so insignificant with which His love could not be concerned. And I’ve come to realize now that there is nothing too great in my life for God’s power to deal with, or anything too small or too insignificant for His love not to be concerned about, and that’s when you truly become free.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 6

But you know, I never really had a joy in knowing how great God is until I was truly sincerely able to thank God for my limitations – to thank God for an alcoholic father; to thank God for a stutter; to thank God for poor grammar; to thank God for my home life. Not that I would ever want my children to have it, and they don’t, but that that is where God raised me and placed me to prepare me. And until I was able to say “Thank you,” I would never have experienced the joy of knowing how great my God is. He took my limitations and turned them into my greatest assets. I am living beyond my limitations. You almost never catch my stutter. Most people never catch it. I still have poor grammar, but most people do not catch it. That is why I speak fast. God used an alcoholic father and a family life to prepare me for who I am as an individual.

People will say to me, “Well, don’t you get a ‘big head’ speaking to larger crowds than anyone in the history of young people – speaking to more university students, high school students?” This year in one night I had the privilege of speaking to sixty-three thousand. They say, “Don’t you get a ‘big head’ from all the books you have written?” My response, and a very sincere response, at least from me, is, “I don’t think so.” You know why? I cannot remember a time since that morning in Wheaton, Illinois (when I gave my limitations to God) to ever putting on a microphone that I was not aware of the grace God. I cannot remember a time ever putting on a microphone that deep in my soul I failed to say, “Thank you, thank you for helping me become one of the premier speakers – yet with my background.” And every day, I am aware of God’s grace. Let me tell you, that has made life exciting. I will sit back sometimes and just almost chuckle about the books I have written and everything else. Here I was at Stanford University, as I said before, the number one rated university in America at that time, and in two nights five thousand students came out, and almost a thousand came to Christ. I remember I was speaking that night, and here were all these erudite people around there, and inside I started to chuckle. I said, “God, I am a walking example of the scriptural truth that You will use the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.” I thought if these people really knew my background--and for years I couldn’t share that because I was sensitive to it--until it really gripped me emotionally how great my God is. He is not looking for ability, He is looking for availability.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 5

I walked the streets, and finally I was walking down West Union street about four o’clock in the morning. It was in October, and there was a full harvest moon. Finally, I came to the end. I couldn’t go any further. I remember just stopping that morning about ten after four and I just said, “God I’ve had it. I just cannot go on.”

I prayed something then that I never knew you could pray. In fact, I gave myself an invitation. I never knew it was a legitimate invitation. In fact, I had never heard anyone else in the world to this day give the same invitation that I give all the time. And that was this. I stopped, and I was not angry, I was just simply hurt. I said, “God I want to be used.” I said, “I don’t have any gifts. I don’t have any abilities. I don’t have any talents.” I said, “I have an alcoholic father, poor grammar, and a lousy home life,” and then I did this – and I never knew you could do it--I said, “God here are all my limitations. I give them to you.” I said, “I place them on the altar. Here is my stutter.” When they tried to correct me from being left- handed to right-handed, it caused a tremendous stutter. I said, “Here is my stutter, I place it on the altar. Here is my alcoholic father, I place it on the altar. Here is my home life, I place it on the altar. Here’s my poor grammar, I place it on the altar.” Then I prayed something that, boy, to this day, I thank God I said, “God, here are all my limitations.” See, I heard that God was limitless, I heard He was all powerful, He was eternal. So I said, “Here are all my limitations. I give them to you. I give you my stutter, my grammar, my poor home life, and I place it all on the altar. God here am I, use me.” I really believe that God took my limitations and turned them into my greatest strengths. I truly believe I am living beyond my limitations. That’s how great my God is.

A Skeptic’s Quest – My Testimony Part 4

Dr. Halverson gave the students at Wheaton College this invitation. He said, “Tonight can you step out of your seat and come down to the altar, place your talents, your gifts, your abilities on the altar and say ‘God here am I send me’. It’s not saying you’re going, but are you willing to go. ‘Here am I send me.’” Hundreds went forward, it was like a revival. God had orchestrated that whole week, the student’s opinion of Halverson, and everything, to bring about a revival. Students shot up out of their seats, hundreds started going forward. I sat back to the left totally discouraged. Here I thought it was going to be different. He said “Who will go first, who can we send? Bring your abilities, your talent, your gifts, and place them on the altar, your stethoscope, your law school books, and say, ‘Here am I, send me.’” I felt so discouraged because even then I didn’t think I had any abilities, any talents, or any gifts that God could use.

I sat there and I started to cry. And then my roommate, Dick Purnell, a phenomenal speaker, stood up and went forward. That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. In front of the entire student body of Wheaton College I got up and I ran out of the chapel. I went back to the room where I was staying, crawled in bed and pulled the blankets up over my head and I couldn’t get to sleep. My roommate came home and went to bed.

I got up and called the young lady who at that time I was engaged to and I knew instantly I wouldn’t marry her. I went down and got Chaplain Walsh out of bed, the Chaplain of the university. This was about two o’clock in the morning and I told him what was going on in my life and what was happening, the struggle I was having. I cannot believe it, here is a man paid to counsel students and all Chaplain Walsh did was look at me and said, “Well young man it looks like you have a decision to make”, and he went to bed. I thought, he gets paid to do that? It was the best thing he could have done. He was right in the center of God’s will. I did not realize it at the time. I walked out and I was kind of hurt.