I love this song by Selah – HT: Becoming Me. A great way to start the week out.
My 15th anniversary is coming up on Thursday. Fifteen incredible, amazing, hard and sometimes painful years. We have three wonderful children and our mutual faith in Christ has brought us through hard times. This song reminded me of my journey to placing my faith in Christ.
Most of you probably don’t know that it was my wife who led me to Christ. I was at Drake University. She was a freshman, I was a sophomore. When we first met she couldn’t stand me, but I guess I grew on her, LOL. Through that semester I got to know her I witnessed in her life some tragic events in her family with her mom being hospitalized after being hit by a car and then later that same month her grandmother passed away.
It was her faith in Christ that gave her peace through those difficulties. I was blown away. It wasn’t so much anything Cheryl did, it is what she didn’t do. She didn’t crack up, she didn’t drop out of school, and she didn’t blame God and walk away from her faith. That wasn’t what I was expecting. I knew I would have been a wreck.
I had heard the gospel numerous times. I knew the facts of the gospel. I believed I was a Christian (it was synonymous with being American in my mind). I had been checking out different religions at that time since I was on a spiritual journey. I knew there had to be more to life that parties (which pretty much at that time was the center of my life). It was through Cheryl’s example and then the seeds planted before that the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to my true condition.
I was pursuing religion, but I needed a relationship. I was trying to earn my way to approval by God, but Jesus had already paid my way. My eyes were opened and I was drawn to Jesus. I knew that He had died and rose again. I had heard that before, but it wasn’t until that point that I actually believed. I knew I needed a relationship with Him, and the forgiveness of sin that He offered on the cross, so in the privacy of my dorm room in the middle of the night I gave my life over to Christ. It was April 1, 1992 – April Fools’ Day… how appropriate.
Cheryl and I were married then a little over a year later.