Imagine a caged rat running frenetically on the inside of his spinning plastic orb trying to get ahead. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but has the notion, that since he’s running as fast as he can, he should be arriving soon. In fact he will be arriving soon, just not where he thought. The ambient noise, of what sounds like water running, interrupted by intermittent honks and the shaking vibration of his surroundings hasn’t deterred him. Moreover, as he’s so focussed on achieving his goal, he’s unaware that he’s currently en route to the animal shelter, where he’ll soon be euthanized. Furiously he scurries to success, but his existence is soon to come to an end.
It brings to mind the movie, The Matrix, where the mass of humanity was unaware that their existence was quite different than what they believed to be their reality, and their life-line was about to be unplugged. I wonder if this could also be our reality. If you were given a sneak-peak into your future and learned to your utter dismay, that your existence was about to come to an end, would you have any final thoughts? Or, even with this knowledge, would you continue your frenzied pace? And as you read this bizarre supposition, you quickly correct the conjecture by taking a quick sensory assessment. You glance about and surmise all is well. Unfortunately, you’re not absolutely sure. Well, I have good news, and bad news. You see, I’m bringing this to your attention, because I have been given a sneak-preview. And you can breathe easy; your existence is not in jeopardy.
But, what is your existence? Are you really just a consuming, calculating bag of bones and meat – much like what your pork roast looked like before it arrived to your supermarket? If that’s the case, then you really don’t have much time. You see, even if you live to a ripe old age of, say, ninety-seven, which is unlikely, it still passes like a dream. Think of your last twenty years. What do you really remember of it? Can you relive each moment; or was it more like a wisp of smoke that momentarily lingered, then disappeared? If the latter is the case, I conjecture your next twenty years will be the same – and the next- and the next, until you find yourself sitting in a chair unaware of your past or your future – simply living in the moment. Time is relative.
Now, back to the sneak preview. This is what I’ve been shown: the bag of meat, is really more like an overcoat. It will eventually wear out, but you, as a person, will continue into timelessness. You see, life and death are both timeless. The state of your conscious continuance, however, is determined by a decision you can make now. Your existence begins in a state of spiritual death. You began this way, because humankind once made a decision, or more of an allegiance. You’ve heard the term “he sold his soul”? Well, that’s one way of describing it. You are a slave to whom you obey. And someone in your ancestry decided to join the losing team, and what they lost was their spiritual life. They still existed, but in a state of spiritual death. In the Bible, we’re told that Jesus is Life. He Himself, said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” and that, “whoever has the Son, (Jesus) has Life and whoever does not have the Son, there’s no life in him.” Whoever is “In” Christ, also has all that He is. A brief list would include: joy, patience, peace, contentment, faith, hope, love, etc, and without Christ is the opposite of all that He is. Jesus described it as “weeping and grinding of teeth”.
But here you are, still in your physical “overcoat”. It’s not completely worn out – yet. But this is the only time you can change your state. Will it be Life, or will you remain in your spiritually dead existence? The answer is simple – it’s even easy. You see, God has a very intense love for you. And the only way that, He Himself, established as a means of correction, was for Him to take your place – and that’s exactly what He did. He entered into our spiritually dead state, by being incarnated in the person of Jesus the Messiah. He lived as a man, but one without sin and without committing sin, and when those who were ruled by Satan learned who He was, they were motivated to have Jesus executed. Satan believed he had finally won. But God being who He is, conquered death. He was crucified, died and went to the same place all who are outside of Christ go – to hell – that place of “weeping and grinding of teeth”. But He didn’t go as a result of His own sin, but in payment for yours and mine. He paid for our sin and separation from God’s Life by suffering and dying on our behalf. He then overcame Death, by means of the resurrection. In the gospel of John, we read, “that God loved us so much that He gave His only Son (Jesus)and that all we need to do is simply accept His free gift of Life, by telling Him that you are switching sides. You’ll be His instead of being “dead” in sin and you will enter into the Kingdom of God” – John 3:16 (somewhat paraphrased). Remember, Jesus is Life. In Him you will experience all that Life is.
Consider this as the one moment in time – in your bag of meat existence – that you can change the rest of your eternity. This moment may never come again. If you feel drawn to say YES, then it is really not you, but God who is drawing you. You can’t resist. You are not your own. If you are ready to make this change, follow me now in simply talking to Him:
Father, I know that I’ve been living in a death-like existence. I don’t want to be a slave on the wrong side any longer. I want Life. I choose You, God. Thank you so much for dying in my place, and I accept You now, as my new Life. I give myself to You. Come and fill me with Your Life. I will now live my life through You. Thank you Jesus.
Oh, remember me saying that I was given a sneak preview? This is how I know it’s all true.
My Story
I recall from my earliest memories being a kind, honest and genuinely happy child. My mother would bring me to church with
her on Sundays where I would be relegated to the Sunday School and she would sing in the choir. My father was not interested in church and seldom attended. He had been raised on a farm in the Ottawa Valley, one of twelve children and although Christianity then was an accepted part of life in most households, it wasn’t in theirs. He married young, divorced young, then in his early thirties joined the army and became part of the regiment that led the assault against the Germans occupying Holland, and fortuitously fell in love with one of the local girls after The Battle of Arnhem. After the war, they corresponded for two years, then she left her homeland and became one of the many war-brides. Following the war, my father worked as a forest fire fighter for the Department of Lands and Forests, as it was called then. He was often away for weeks at a time fighting fires in Northern Ontario. He smoked Players Plain cigarettes heavily, and enjoyed swapping war-time stories with other veterans while swilling from dark brown stubbies of Red Cap Ale at the local Legion. Oddly, I can still remember the smell from his Zippo flip-top lighter. In time, he moved up the ranks and we moved into a government house on the outskirts of the city.
In 1960, as did many men of that era, he developed lung cancer; as my mother spent much of her time staying at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, the minister of our church took me in for almost a year staying with his family. I was close friends and classmates with one of his sons and it seemed like a prolonged sleepover. In 1963, my father passed. I was ten, my brother was thirteen and my mother was thirty-nine. My memories of that period are scant and selectively intermittent. What I clearly remember, however, was that something had profoundly changed within me. It was like the changing of dawn to the blackness of night. When once I was a happy child, I became dark, brooding and angry. My father didn’t believe in life insurance and left no savings. My mother had to sell the family car and take any job she could find. We were promptly evicted from our government owned home, so we moved from the suburbs to the city’s core. My mother found work as a clerk at the local utility company and now we lived in a two bedroom, third floor walk-up in a tenement building. Much changed over the next few years. My brother and I quickly assimilated to life downtown and were both on a fast track to becoming career criminals. Fighting, smoking, stealing and break and enters were all normal activities.
My mother continued to attend church and sing in the choir. I remember standing with her on the side of road, as she hitch-hiked to church on Sunday mornings. Although, I still attended Sunday School, I no more believed it. On the contrary, I had become a child atheist. I recall thinking to myself, ‘I don’t believe He walked on water; I don’t believe He healed the sick or raised the dead – He didn’t heal my father; He didn’t raise my dad’. It was all fictitious as fairy tales, as far as I was concerned. The following year, my mother prudently moved us out of the city and into a rented house in the country. It was a huge sacrifice and inconvenience for her, but both my brother and I had had run-ins with the law, and after several court appearances, she learned to drive and exchanged her ten minute walk to work for a daily ninety minute drive; and my brother and I moved from a large urban public school to a small rural public school. We made new friends, developed new hobbies and even found part-time jobs helping local farmers. Yes, much changed – but inside, I was still the same dark angry boy I had become just a few years earlier. The fighting at school continued and my disturbing attitude was such that the school principal brought in a psychologist to hopefully identify the underlying issues behind my disturbing behaviour.
I admit, I was inextricably malevolent: I would skip classes as much as I would attend, regularly lose assignments, seldom complete homework and blatantly disrespect my teachers. It seemed weekly I was brought to the principals office, and with another teacher present, would receive five hefty blows on each hand with what looked like a shaver’s strap. I cried at first, but soon learned to take it defiantly flint-faced. Each year, they would push me into the next grade, not because I had passed the course requirements, but because they just wanted me out. Of course, I wasn’t the only miscreant. There were others that I chummed and regularly got into trouble with. It was like we were a club that regularly met and hung out in the hallway – the teacher’s way of dealing with the trouble makers.
The year was 1967, and while most of my classmates, would bop to the music of The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Jackson Five, it was the music of The Rolling Stones, The Doors and Bob Dylan that struck a chord with me. Their music often reflected my own dark and troubled soul. I was now in grade eight and every few months the school would hold a dance in the gymnasium. It was an ideal opportunity to get in tight with the girls of my class. One girl was particularly cute. We started hanging out regularly. We’d slouch together at the back of the bus and she always laughed at my jokes. What I didn’t like about her though, was she was “churchy”. She always wanted me to go to church with her and finally talked me into going to Happy Hour. Each Friday night, at the Baptist church, the youth would meet and sing songs and play games. It was a small rural church. The pastor, worked during the day in the mines near Sudbury and evangelized knocking on doors on weekends and evenings. I couldn’t figure him out. I went to Happy Hour just the same – only because she wanted me to.
The months passed and I began regularly attending church with her. I didn’t believe any of it and still considered myself an atheist. On one particular Sunday, I was centred out for causing a disturbance during the sermon, and brazenly I stood up and hollered at the pastor to “F— off”. That was the last time I attended; and the end of having a girlfriend. I continued to emphatically denounce God and Christ. Oddly, though, I found myself regularly talking to Him. It wasn’t so much talking to Him, as it was yelling at Him. Outwardly I was an atheist; inwardly, I had an intense anger and hatred for God. I had been given an award Bible for good attendance – a black, fake leather bound, King James version with small print – I never read it. While having another conversation with God, spewing expletives and expressing my contempt for Him, I remember, grabbing the Bible, thrusting my fist into it, and violently ripping out a handful of pages, then throwing it to the floor, defiantly exclaiming, “That’s what I think of your Word, God!”. Yes, I was an atheist – who talked to Him regularly.
One morning, after stealing my mother’s car the night before and “bombing” up and down the dirt road with the pedal to the floor, my mother asked me to start the car for her. She was making a trip back to Holland to visit her ageing parents and needed to catch a flight in just a few hours. I gladly got back behind the wheel and turned the key – errrrrrrrr clunk, errrrrrrr clunk. I began to sweat. ‘Oh no, I’ve screwed up Mom’s car. She’s going to kill me’. I sputtered, ‘Ok God, help me. I’ll do anything, just please start the car!’. Another turn of the key – vrrrooom; it purred, softly idling in the driveway. ‘Well – whatever’, I thought. My attitude remained obstinate, I still smoked cigarettes and regularly stole booze, mostly home-made blueberry or dandelion wine was all that was available.
On New Year’s Eve, 1968, I was invited to a party where one of the older kids had an ornate looking hookah pipe. He had quit school and was now the main drug dealer of the community. I had never tried anything like this before. The atmosphere was alluring, and from a cotton pouch he carried, he placed a measure of three grams of black Lebanese hash into the bowl and “sparked it up”. The pungent smell of wafting plumes from the hashish combined with smoldering cones of sandal-wood incense filled the room. The walls were painted black and large psychedelic posters illumined by black-light lamps and thick coloured candles twisted into, now heavily dripped, empty Mateus bottles, created the perfect ambiance. Gathered around this Medusa like hookah, a few of us were toking and getting very high.
Over the next four years, from grade eight to grade ten – and yes it took four years – my use of hash and pot, along with various hallucinogens, provided a welcomed escape from reality – escape, yes, but also many near death experiences as a result of my reckless lifestyle. My delinquency also got me expelled from two high schools and I was now trying my third. I lied my way into grade eleven, telling them the transcripts would follow, and decided to get serious. I was nineteen with a grade ten education. Inco was accepting applications for apprenticeships and my dream of becoming an electrician was now within sight. One of my best friends had dropped out of school; he found a job pumping gas and regularly spent his entire pay cheque on drugs. I had quit taking drugs by this time and didn’t see much of him. I didn’t see much of any of the old crowd, for that matter. I finally woke up and concentrated on my studies.
As in most rural communities, everyone knows everyone, and gossip is the best means of staying on top of community news. Rumours began swirling through the various social networks that he had blown his mind and was now some kind of Jesus Freak. As soon as I heard, I called him at home. He was tall and lanky and had a drawn colourless complexion, dull vacant eyes, and hair, though shoulder length, was thin and often greasy. He characteristically reminded me of Kieth Richards of the Rolling Stones. When he answered, I straight out asked him what’s going on. He replied, “how about I come to your place and tell you about it?”. I lived about ten kilometers away and he would’ve had to hitch-hike down the dirt road, which often would take an hour. When he arrived, I scrutinized him. He looked different. His hair had been cut, his eyes were clear and emanated a calm confidence, like he had just graduated. Even his complexion had changed, it was more ruddy. My mother was home and the three of us sat around the kitchen table while he told us of his, obviously, life-changing experience. He described how he had received his weekly pay from working at the gas station, summarily hitch-hiked to town and spent almost all of it on drugs. He said that he had taken two hits of clear-light acid and had smoked a couple of joints of Jamaican weed. He was peaking on the acid and nearly oblivious to his surroundings when a few teens from the Mennonite church found him and, since they were on their way to a youth service at their church, decided to bring him along. With as much detail as he could, he recalled being in church hallucinating heavily. Then a collection plate was passed to him. Groping in his pockets, he pulled out its contents: more hits of acid and a few grams of hash, all wrapped in pieces of foil. He had spent all of his earnings on drugs – but there, among the folded smithereens, was a single dime. In his stupor, he picked it out and dropped it onto the collection plate. “No sooner than it hit the plate”, he exclaimed, “I was as straight as anyone else in church”. He said he knew it was God, and with tears streaming down his face, he went to the front of the church and told everyone what had just happened. He told me that he had accepted Christ as his Saviour that night.
Keep in mind, I’m an ardent atheist. I’m skeptical, but I keep listening, mainly because this is still a friend I’ve had since grade six. I was uncomfortably at a juncture. What he was telling me I believed to be a load of crap. I didn’t know what to make of it. Then he said, “Ian, just go into your room and talk to God yourself”. Well, I have actually talked to God many times in my bedroom, just not like this. Now I really had a decision to make. ‘First’, I thought,’if I go into my room and find that what he’s been saying is true, then fine and good; but if not, I’ll just tell him to leave, and that will be that.’ I peered at him, holding eye contact longer than necessary, then said, “fine, we’ll see”. I walked the ten steps to my room, opened the door and closed it behind me. I looked around, and disbelievingly thought to myself, ‘well, God, there’s my bed, there’s my dresser, there’s my desk – now where are You?’ I then began to see myself in a way I’ve never seen myself before. It was as if a slide show of my life had just begun. But it was all the ugliness of my life: the rebellion, anger, hate, violence, disrespect, stealing, lying – it was all of me and all the worst of me. I couldn’t bear it. I dropped my face into my hands and cried, “God, please, if you can wipe all this away, I’ll be yours”.
What happened next may be unbelievable to many, and I can certainly understand that, but without a word of embellishment, it is true and as real as if it happened yesterday. The room grew brilliantly white. It was such, that I couldn’t see anything else in the room. I was enveloped and filled with an indescribable joy and palpable warmth. Overwhelmed, I reeled and fell supine on my bed. Unable to move, I lied there until the room began to look normal again. I can’t imagine the expression I had when I entered the kitchen. I blurted, “Wow, it worked!”, like it was some kind of magic. But I knew it wasn’t magic, or drugs, but a personal encounter with God; the same God that I had blasphemed, cursed and shown utter contempt for. It was the same God that had saved me from numerous scrapes with death and who had also started my mom’s car. It was this God that had now shown me incredible mercy.
This is how I gave my life to Christ – literally. I had told Him I was now His. But it wasn’t completely voluntary. God was always there – leading me, guiding me, protecting me, preserving me and preparing the way for this very moment in time. I believe that God, in His omniscience and wisdom touches people in many different ways. I know that my experience isn’t everyone’s experience and in no way diminishes one’s own conversion. Indeed, many are saved as children by simply yielding to the Divine. The disciples readily obeyed Christ when He said, “follow me”. And the recalcitrant Paul was blinded and needed to be led about for days as a result of the brightness of God’s light. In reflecting on that afternoon, it has
occurred to me that my real birthday had just past. It was forty years ago this spring, I surrendered my life to Him, and I’ve not doubted God’s saving grace since. I had been transformed from one dead in sin to alive in Christ. My life, however, has not been without trouble, pain and discouragement. I have many times since despaired, resisted, rebelled and, even to this day, I am still learning simple obedience. I have not always been faithful to my Saviour, yet He has always been faithful.And, so, we again come to a juncture. If you are now sensing God’s leading, then talk to Him. He’s waiting. The following is meant as a model first prayer.
Father, I know that I’ve been living in a death-like existence. I don’t want to be a slave on the wrong side any longer. I want Life. I choose You, God. Thank you so much for dying in my place, and I accept You now, as my new Life. I give myself to You. Come and fill me with Your Life. I will now live my life through You. Thank you Jesus.
II Corinthians 5:17 says, If you are in Christ, you are a brand new creation. Old things are now behind you. As you now see, everything is new.
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