Starting Out on Your Faith Journey

I started a preaching series recently on where our journey's of faith begin. Doing this series has taken me back to my days when I began my journey (grade 11). I remember that it took me some time to get to the point where I was willing to accept that Jesus was a real person; it took longer to come to the point that this resurrection thing may have really happened (some how); it took me a bit longer to acknowledge that this Jesus resurrection thing had any meaning on my life. The reality is this; Guy Kember, my class mate and all-round-great-guy tried for a long time to "convince me and others" at the euchre table about Christianity with little to no success. But it wasn't until he said these words that started my thinking process; "Well, it doesn't matter what you think; Jesus is real and he died for you." It wasn't until the idea that this whole argument had to be approached this from a different angle (or maybe he realized this unknowingly), was he able to get me thinking about God and Jesus.

I remember going back home and secretly looking up anything I could on the historical aspect. If Jesus was real, then someone else must have written about him, too. My dad had quite a library at home and remember browsing the modest library of books and spotting one book in particular; The Story of Civilization: Caesar and Christ by Will Durant, Historian. Wow, someone else was writing about this Jesus Guy; he must have existed at some time. But the next question; who was he - really. And I think that is the story of Christianity that we need to return to; Who is this Jesus person? C.S. Lewis writes about this is his book "Mere Christianity." It's a great book.

I guess the whole point of this is the fact that it took me years before the saying (or that I could say); "The Bible says..." seriously. When we had discussion around the the euchre table, and Guy K. would say; "the bible says..." he might as well have quoted from a comic book - at least I would read those. This whole preaching series brought me back to some very basic fundamentals; Guy's journey was not mine; my journey is not someone else's journey. We come from very different perspectives on what we need. I think that once a Christian realizes the power of the Scriptures written over thousands of years, we want to ram it down people's throats - not realizing that we are doing more damage than good.

I want to end this with a common quote that most people know; "you don't feed a baby a T-bone steak"; you feed them something that THEY can swallow...

Many blessings to you on your journey...

Ron