From time to time I like to mention blog posts from New Lifer”s who blog personally. Usually I just quote a few lines and redirect you to their original post but with this one I felt it appropriate to quote in it”s entirety. So without futher ado, a blog post from Chad…
My Journey with an Apostrophe
Aug 30th 2013, 10:00, by Chad Booher
After a nice break, I’m back at it and I’m sure you’re thinking “What the heck is up with this title?”. Well, it’s simple really. What is an apostrophe used for? One of its functions is to make contractions such as taking two words like “can” and “not” and creating a shorter word with the same meaning, “can’t”. The new word has the same meaning, but it’s shorter and has a few parts missing. This post was written in similar fashion. Recently, I had a request for my own story: The story of the point of which I went from an agnostic to a Christian. Part of that story involves my wife and her story. Her story, however, is her story. It’s not my place to tell her story so I will tell you mine, with a few parts left out, but the meaning will be the same. Get it now? Let’s begin.
I grew up agnostic. This part is pretty cut-and-dry. Although I occasionally attended church for weddings, funerals, and when visiting my aunt, I never attended on a regular basis. I had never learned the great news of Jesus Christ. His supposed existence was told to me once or twice but I had little information to back those claims. Every now and again I would “pray” asking for things to happen in my life. I would usually ask for petty things, but never give thanks for anything in my life. None of those “prayers” were answered. As I continued to grow up, I stopped giving a whole lot of thought to the existence of God, or Jesus.
Late in my high school years and throughout my twenties, I enjoyed debating Evolution vs. Creation. One sticking point for me was that I frequently engaged in these debates with people who knew The Bible. They would quote it and I would have little to debate. In frustration, I would make a snide comment or some absurd claim about the nature of man with little to no proof and just leave the debate unsettled.
About a year after I got married, I decided that my days of unsettled debates were over. I was going to read The Bible, cover to cover. I was going to find the ways to trap those I debated with and make them doubt their faith…or so I thought. I went to a local store that sold all sorts of bibles. I had only ever heard of one translation, the King James Version (KJV). I saw that there was a study bible version and purchased that. If any of you have attempted to read a KJV Bible, then you know that this was not a wise choice. The language was confusing and difficult to follow. If I was going to understand it well enough to disprove it, I needed help. Lucky for me a few men at my work studied The Bible. I went to them without mentioning my true motives and discussed my endeavor to read The Bible cover to cover. They were slightly baffled at my attempt but agreed to give any insight they could. I began to dive in and found that many of the stories made a lot of sense when applied to today. I wasn’t naive though, I knew this book had been around for centuries, so I wondered how it could be written as the fiction I believed it to be. I continued to have my doubts until one very particular day.
My wife and I had just recently celebrated our two year anniversary when there came a day of great difficulty in our relationship, the kind of difficulty that can and has ended some marriages. At a moment of despair in one of my greatest moments of need, I went to my office, grabbed my Bible off the desk, knelt down on the floor and prayed. I spoke out loud “Jesus, if you do exist, I need you to show me right now.” I then opened my Bible to a random page and began to read. The page I opened to was in the New Testament, which I had not even begun to read. The verse I started on was in a random spot on the page. That verse spoke of exactly what not only I needed, but what my wife needed as well. In tears as I read what Jesus had just revealed to me in our time of darkness, a light was spread upon us that I will never forget. That day at that moment I became a believer in Christ. He saved my marriage and has continued to not only make my marriage stronger, but me as well. There’s a saying that goes: “Sometimes we need to reach rock bottom to find out that God is the rock at the bottom.” I can assure you that my story proves that sometimes, that is true. What is important is that when we reach rock bottom, as we all do at different points, that we look up and not down to solve those problems.
Jesus Christ came to me when I needed Him to, not when I had previously wanted Him to. In doing so, He proved to me that He exists because a God that appears on my whims, would have to be fickle and inconsistent, but God is neither fickle nor inconsistent. God is our constant in the never ending change. God is the rock.