I remember the day like it was yesterday. It was June 2006, and I was in Pathos, Cyprus, semi-enjoying a two week holiday with a friend. I say semi enjoying because it wasn't long before I discovered that our idea of how to spend a two week holiday were somewhat different. I must add however that it wasn't all bad, we did have some fantastic times together. The reason this holiday remains firmly fixed in my memory, is because I believe it is part of the process God used to bring me to a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It was in Cyprus where I was confronted face to face with the reality of my sin and the greater reality of the one who alone can rescue me from sin. How did this happen you ask? Part of the story I'm about to tell is often edited out of my testimony, mostly due to embarrassment, but I've come praise God to a place now where I can confidently say that even in our most shameful moments God is working. This was indeed the case for me back in the summer of 2006.
We were now back in the hotel room after another night on 'bar street', this time however there were two girls with us who we had met in one of the bars. Before you worry, nothing happened, but I can still remember the sense of shame, even being in such a situation, especially as someone who generally considered himself a good person. It wasn't long before they left to go back to their hotel. In order to pay for the taxi they needed to borrow some money and so I reached for my Bible case where I had stored all my holiday cash only to hear the words "You're a Christian, I thought there was something different about you". At that moment in time I would not have called myself a Christian, and considering the number of cocktails I'd drunk, would have thought myself the least likely person to be a Christian. The next morning I distinctly remember a feeling of shame, guilt and a pressing sense that I had offended someone, but the question was who? Had I offended my friend? No. The girls who we met at the bar? No. Myself? No.
We spent that day by the swimming pool. Jumping in and out, I accompanied this time with reading the Gospel of Mark. It was another beautiful sunny day in Cyprus, remarkably contrasting to the dark events of the previous evening. Whilst on holiday, I had decided to continue reading through the coursebook for 'Christianity Explored' and was now entering the final chapters of Mark's Gospel. It was during this afternoon when it hit me. I had offended someone last night - God. My actions that night were yet another entry on the list of sins that I had committed, a list that I had been blinded to due to my delusion of an inherent goodness. That night had lifted the veil that had covered my eyes over how offended God is at sin. The Holy Spirit was convicting me that I was not good, far from it, I was a sinner separated from God, and in my current state deserving of the coming wrath of God. God took that one event and like a surgeons knife, with sharpness and accuracy cut into my heart revealing the person I truly was. The words I read from my coursebook at the moment were as follows:
We can't make ourselves acceptable to God by doing "good things." These things may be wonderful in themselves, but they can't solve the problem of our sin.
As I read these words it was as if a switch was flicked on in my heart as I heard for the first time in my life, it's not about being good. Being a Christian is not about being good. This was so opposite to what I thought made someone a Christian. I thought, you lived a good life, doing good things for God, and then because of this you got to heaven. If you lived a bad life, and did not do good things for God, you went to hell. That was my Christianity and I realised there and then it was a false Christianity. My standing before God has absolutely nothing, 0% nada to do with me. And so as I read the closing chapter of Mark's Gospel it all began to make sense. This is why Jesus came, this is why Jesus died on the cross, this is why the gospel is good news. Yes, I have offended God, yes I deserve his rightful punishment for living in his world without reference to him, yes the punishment for sin is death, but God has done something about this, God has sent a saviour and he is calling me to repentance and faith in him so that I might know peace and a restored relationship with God. The next verse I read from the coursebook said:
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no-one can boast. Ephesians 2:8-9
I vividly remember that moment when I believed this to be true. When I confessed before God my need for Jesus and asked him for forgiveness, and thanked him for sending Jesus to die for me. The peace that flowed through my soul in that moment is unexplainable, and unknowingly at the time, as a fitting declaration to my new life in Christ, I dived into the swimming pool being only able to think thoughts about Christ. In the space of five weeks I had moved from unbelief to belief in God, from rejecting Christianity to accepting Christianity, from discounting the claims of Christ to embracing the claims of Christ. After eight years, I can look back on that holiday knowing that the hidden hand of God was at work, and I thank God for his mercy and grace, for if it were not for him I would still be dead in sin, living in the delusion of my own 'goodness'.
Since that time, I testify to his continuing work of grace, how I have come to see that the gospel is not just a one-off, believe it and then do nothing gospel, it is a gospel we need every day if we are to live out the calling of being a redeemed child of God. God was willing to die for me, he sacrificed his only Son to give me life, the only proper response as I see it is to be willing to sacrifice everything for him, to be even willing to die to the world, knowing that what he has given me is not simply a ticket into heaven as some might want you to think, but the glorious, unmatchable treasure of knowing him for all eternity.
If you are yet to come to know God in this way, it is not too late to surrender your life to Jesus Christ, and know the forgiveness of your sin, and the acceptance of the God who loved you so much that he died for you. One day we will all stand before him and the question will not be - are you good enough? but - did you believe in and know Jesus the one I sent?
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