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WITNESSING - CLIMBING TRIP? Look - I spent my entire life (until 8 months ago) not taking Christianity seriously. In fact I was so busy building barriers to the message of Christ that I never took the time to find out what it was that I was refuting. Two things changed my life (I pray forever). First of all, one day I crossed paths with a couple true followers of Christ (John and Esther - love you guys!), whose inner peace, simplicity and serenity were so much more appealing than my prideful life philosophy. The appeal turned into a burning desire to find out where all the good that was in their lives came from. And still I never even allowed for the possibility of the whole "Jesus thing" having anything more than metaphorical value. But in ways known only to Him, the Lord was preparing my heart for a sower to come along. One day, while I was sitting on the quad of the University of Illinois, a kid named Jonathan walked up to me at a time when I was too tired to run away, and in a loving way challenged me to talk about my beliefs, making me realize with no small amount of shock that they were so loosely knit and so shakable - that I could not even name them. For one short moment I came to doubt my strength, came to doubt my invincibility, and most importantly, came to doubt my ability to explain away my life, the lives of people I knew, and the wonder filled world around me. That's all the Lord needed. He came into my heart filling it with a light and a meaning more beautiful than anything I'd ever experienced, asking me if I would dare to truly seek answers to questions which until now had seemed could not have any satisfying explanations. Two weeks later I accepted Christ and, in short, He has turned my life upside down - or rather right side up. He has shown me how much I'd been given, how much I have to be grateful for, how much love was allaround me all this time, and how blind I was to it all. My life, past and present, truly started making sense. The more I consider the evidence, the more I apply all my powers of reason, of critical thinking and the further I hazard into the adventure of living with God, the more I am convinced that what once seemed an improbability, is rather a certainty, and the more I want to tell everyone I run across about it. None of us are out to impose our beliefs on others, or to tell anyone what they should think or believe. It is my personal sincere and humble desire to love and to respect those that the Lord will send across my path no matter what their life philosophies are, to get a chance to discuss their beliefs and the teachings of Christ with them, to offer a few pieces of evidence for Christianity which I'd ignored my entire life, and to encourage them to not dismiss the answers to the toughest questions in our lives as unreachable - but to seek with our whole hearts, minds and souls. I pray for that to happen. |
| --Radomir |