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[quote=Anonymous]Like some other people who responded, I, too, had much success in my career, achievement, performance, money, etc., and still felt incredibly empty.

In addition to that, I had some major addiction issues that I carefully hide from public view but that were threatening my life.   It had destroyed one marriage and was on the cusp of destroying another one.   I had been through years of secular therapy, “trying” really hard on my own to stop, support groups, you name it.  Nothing worked.   I felt trapped in prisons with no way out.

Thinking seriously about religion again was about the last place I ever thought I would look.

But sometimes you realize that Jesus is all you need when Jesus is all that you got.

I had grown up in a Christian household and my impression of Christianity was that it was a bunch of rules, I wasn’t doing a good job of following them, so what was the point?

In my early 40s when I actually read the Bible, and heard the Presbyterian minister Tim Keller explain the Gospel, I saw an entirely different religion.

Christianity is not a religion for a bunch of people who are very “moral” and “do good” to “get” to heaven — it is a religion for people who are humble enough to admit that they are very weak and need help.

It is a religion that is not based on what I have done, but based on what Jesus has done for me.

It is a religion that is not based on me being morally superior to anyone but recognizing that we are all flawed people saved only by grace, which gives you an amazing capacity to have empathy with people from all walks of life and people you don’t agree with at all.   I am not better or morally superior to anyone else.

And when that penny dropped, so did a lot of other things.   Yes, you are supppsed to follow rules, but the motivational structure is completely different.  I am not “obeying” rules to “get” to heaven.   I am “obeying” rules as a way to honor and show my love for Jesus.  I do things out of fullness of heart, not because I am trying to “get” something from God or because I am afraid of his wrath.

Romans 7 also had a profound impact on me.  I felt like the Apostle Paul was describing my exact life — always striving, always trying harder, falling down, feeling very bad about myself.   His lines about how the more he tries not to covet, the more he covets — it described my addiction in a nutshell.   Like him, “miserable one that I am!” — until I found Jesus and true freedom.

Two other points —

I investigated the claims of Christianity from a historic perspective.   The bottom line is that there is strong evidence for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.   Is it airtight?  No.    But nothing is airtight.   That’s not the standard I use for the rest of my life.   If it was, I would never get married, never take a new job, never do anything.   All you can do is look at all of the available evidence and decide that there is enough “there” to make you want to follow this path.   Combined with the fact that I started to saw positive changes in my life almost immediately, I felt like the proof was in the pudding.   It at least beat all the endless hours sitting in my shrink’s office spinning my wheels and getting nowhere.

And one last point - I got extremely lucky when I found a very supportive, kind, and loving church community.   Before my conversion, I basically had no friends outside of work and my work friends were not real friends anyway.  It was always very superficial.  Even since that time, several have stabbed me in the back on important matters, showing their true colors.

My church friends are the real deal - we share each others burdens, we care for each other, I have seen such incredible love, dedication, and goodness from these people.   My wife is not a believer and yet they are so incredibly kind towards her.   It’s not the reason that Christianity is true, but having this wonderful group of people randomly appear in my life surely makes me feel like something larger than myself is at work in the world.   [/quote]

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