Page 5 - Good News February 2005 paper

serve others. Becoming other-centered instead of self-
centered was a dramatic change in my life!
were indeed true, but my will was Another area that started to change was my bad
being pulled another direction. I temper. I used to blow my stack if somebody just
had placed so much emphasis on looked at me wrong. I still have the scars from almost
finding the truth, but I wasn't killing a man during my first year in the university. My
willing to follow it once I saw it. I bad temper was so ingrained that I didn't consciously
began to sense Christ's personal seek to change it. But one day, when faced with a crisis
challenge to me in Rev. 3:20: "Here that would ordinarily have set me off, I discovered that
I am! I stand at the door and knock. my bad temper was gone. I'm not perfect in this area,
If anyone hears My Voice and but this change in my life has been significant and
opens the door, I will come in and dramatic.
eat with him, and he with Me" (NIV). Perhaps the most significant change has been in the
But becoming a Christian seemed area of hatred and bitterness. I grew up filled with
so ego-shattering to me. I couldn't hatred, primarily aimed at one man whom I hated more
think of a faster way to ruin all my than anyone else on the face of this earth. I despised
good times. every thing this man stood for. I can remember as a
I knew I had to resolve this inner young boy lying in bed at night plotting how I would kill
conflict because it was driving me this man without being caught by the police. This man
crazy. I had always considered was my father!
myself an open-minded person, so While I was growing up, my father was the town drunk. I
I decided to put Christ's claims to hardly ever saw him sober. My friends at school would
the supreme test. One night at my joke about my dad lying in the gutter downtown,
home in Union City, Michigan, at making a fool of himself. Their jokes hurt me deeply,
the end of my second year at but I never let anyone know. I laughed along with them. an hour, then he said, "Son, if God can do in my life
university, I became a Christian. I kept my pain a secret. what I've seen Him do in yours, then I want to give Him
Someone may say, "How do you I would sometimes find my mother in the barn, lying in the opportunity." He prayed, "God, if You're really God
know you became a Christian?" I the manure behind the cows where my dad had beaten and Jesus died on the cross to forgive me for what I've
was there! I got alone with a her with a hose until she couldn't get up. My hatred done to my family, I need You. If Jesus can do in my life
Christian friend and prayed four seethed as I vowed to myself, "When I am strong what I've seen Him do in the life of my son, then I want
things that established my enough, I'm going to kill him." When Dad was drunk to trust Him as Saviour and Lord." Hearing my dad
relationship with God. and visitors were coming over, I would grab him pray this prayer from his heart was one of the greatest
First, I said, "Lord Jesus, thank around the neck, pull him out to the barn, and tie him joys of my life.
You for dying on the cross for me." up. Then I would park his truck behind the silo and tell After I trusted Christ, my life was basically changed in
I realized that if I were the only everyone he had gone to a meeting, so we wouldn't be six to eighteen months. But my father's life was
person on the earth, Christ would embarrassed as a family. When I tied up his hands and changed right before my eyes. It was like someone
still have died for me. You may feet, I looped part of the rope around his neck. I just reached down and switched on a light inside him. He
think it was the irrefutable intellec- hoped he would try to get away and choke himself. touched alcohol only once after that. He got the drink
tual evidence that brought me to Two months before I graduated from high school, I only as far as his lips, and that was it - after forty years
Christ. No, the evidence was only walked into the house after a date to hear my mother of drinking! He didn't need it any more. Fourteen
God's way of getting His foot in the sobbing. I ran into her room, and she sat up in bed. months later, he died from complications of his
door of my life. What brought me to "Son, your father has broken my heart," she said. She alcoholism. But in that fourteen-month period over a
Christ was the realization that He put her arms around me and pulled me close. "I have hundred people in the area around my tiny hometown
loved me enough to die for me! lost the will to live. All I want to do is live until you committed their lives to Jesus Christ because of the
Second, I said, "I confess that I am graduate, then I want to die." change they saw in the town drunk, my dad.
a sinner." No one had to tell me Two months later I graduated, and the following Friday You can laugh at Christianity. You can mock and
that. I knew there were things in my my mother died. I believe she died of a broken heart. I ridicule it. But it works! If you trust Christ, start
life that were incompatible with a hated my father for that. Had I not left home a few watching your attitudes and actions - Jesus Christ is
holy, just, righteous God. The months after the funeral to attend university, I might in the business of changing lives!
Bible says, "If we confess our sins, have killed him. Christianity is not something to be shoved down your
He is faithful and just and will But after I made a decision to place my trust in Jesus as throat or forced on you. You have your life to live and I
forgive us our sins and purify us Saviour and Lord, the love of God inundated my life. He have mine. All I can do is tell you what I have learned
from all unrighteousness" (1 John took my hatred for my father and turned it upside- and experienced. After that, what you do with Christ is
1:9 NIV). So I said, "Lord, forgive down. Five months after becoming a Christian, I found your decision. Perhaps the prayer I prayed will help
me." myself looking my dad right in the eye and saying, you: "Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on
Third, I said, "Right now, in the "Dad, I love you." I did not want to love that man, but I the cross for me. Forgive me and cleanse me. I put my
best way I know how, I open the did. God's love had changed my heart! trust in You as Saviour and Lord. Make me the type of
door of my life and place my trust After I transferred to Wheaton University, I was in a person You created me to be. In
in You as Saviour and Lord. Take serious car accident, the victim of a drunk driver. I was Christ's name, Amen."
over the control of my life. Change moved home from the hospital to recover, and my [From: The New Evidence that
me from the inside out. Make me father came to see me. Remarkably, he was sober that demands a Verdict, Thomas
the type of person You created me day. He seemed uneasy, pacing back and forth in my Nelson Publishers, Nashville,
to be." room. Then he blurted out, "How can you love a father 1999 by Josh McDowell]
The last thing I prayed was, "Thank like me?" Josh McDowell is an
You for coming into my life." I said, "Dad, six months ago I hated you, I despised internationally known
After I prayed, nothing happened. you. But I have put my trust in Jesus Christ, received s p e a k e r, a u t h o r, a n d
There was no bolt of lightning. I God's forgiveness, and He has changed my life! I can't travelling representative for
didn't sprout angel wings. If explain it all, Dad. But God has taken away my hatred Campus Crusade for Christ.
anything, I actually felt worse after for you and replaced it with love." We talked for nearly
I prayed, almost physically sick.
I was afraid I had made an
emotional decision that I would
later regret intellectually. But more
than that, I was afraid of what my
friends would say when they found
out. I really felt I had gone off the
deep end.
But over the next eighteen months
my entire life was changed. One of
the biggest changes occurred in
how I viewed people. While
studying at the university, I had
mapped out the next twenty-five
years of my life. My ultimate goal
had been to become governor of
Michigan. I planned to accomplish
my goal by using people in order to
climb the ladder of political
success. I figured people were
meant to be used. But after I placed
my trust in Christ, my thinking
changed. Instead of using others
to serve me, I wanted to be used to