“The Gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” Romans 1:16 NIV.
My history is His story.
My thoughts and comments today are about “my journey.”
I recently celebrated another birthday. As many as I have had, I should be good at them by now. Birthdays mark the journey of one’s life and ought to be celebrated. There has been much to celebrate in my journey – Godly parents and grandparents who loved and taught me good habits and God’s ways; a happy childhood; a healthy adolescence; a helpful education with good friends and wonderful memories; an incredible, creative, and loving wife and ministry partner; better kids than my parenting skills ever warranted; grandkids beyond anything I could have hoped, the company of life-long friends, and all this wrapped in a lifetime of serving people who modeled the Gospel to us and lavishly opened their hearts and lives to us.
There is another, more important “birth-day” that made my faith journey what it has been. That birthday initiates the story where my life in Christ began and from which it is still being written. My history is His story. Though born and raised in a pastor’s home, I first responded to receive Jesus into my heart as a six year old. As much as I could understand at the time, I sincerely committed my life to Jesus and a new and eternal life began. In the simplicity and sincerity of a child’s heart I had experienced, “The Gospel . . is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” Romans 1:16 NIV.
At a New Year’s Revival, a Sunday School teacher knelt beside a ten year old. With her encouragement, I walked to the front of that humble building and knelt, opening my heart to know Jesus in ways that I never had before. You cannot be born into your family’s faith; you must be individually born into the Kingdom of God, through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior. Read Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV. I cannot describe the inexpressible joy that I experienced that night and continue to experience even now. That joy came with the realization of one simple truth, “The Gospel . . is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” Read John 3:1-21 NIV.
Then as a teen of fifteen, while a guest minister invited the church to the altars, I knelt and experienced an overwhelming sense of “God’s call” upon my life for the vocation of ministry. I seemed to see a world in desperate need of a Savior. I felt God’s broken heart for masses of people lost and powerless to find their way. His call then, and remains the same now, was to share one message, “The Gospel . . is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”
But when I was seventeen, newly graduated from High School and preparing to begin architectural studies at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, God again spoke to my heart about ministry. I had made other plans for my life. But so had God. I chose His plans over mine, and the rest is history – more than fifty years of the greatest privilege and grace I could ever have imagined, still telling a simple story, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. For in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last.” Romans 1:16-17 NIV. Read Romans 10:9-10 NIV.
Today, I pray for you to believe and receive the power and privilege of His salvation.
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