My Story - Part 3 - My First "Jesus Moment"

Here’s a recap of the first two parts:  I had almost no religious input in my early years and was raised in a dysfunctional, emotionally abusive family. During my sophomore year of college, because of my flirtation with the paranormal, I attended a program that discussed whether contact with dead people was possible. To my surprise, the answer was “no,” but the program also included an entirely new “take” on Jesus’ life, death and resurrection – the fact that he did what he did to address everyone’s sin problem, making a vital relationship with him possible. Even though I didn’t fully understand what I was getting in to, I eagerly accepted the speaker’s invitation to commit my life to Christ.

One of the last things the speaker mentioned was that those of us who had just begun a relationship with Jesus should expect to see God begin revealing himself to us in the coming days. Again, I didn’t know what that meant, but that sounded pretty intriguing.

Let me provide some context for what happened next by explaining my roommate situation. Even though Art and I were pretty good friends during our freshman year, living together proved to be our relationship’s death knell. He was hyper-neat and, to say the least, I was not.  He was also a hypochondriac and was on a first-name basis with the entire student health clinic staff team. We quickly got on each other’s nerves, and I started complaining (loudly) to the other guys on the floor about what a kook Art was, even to the point of posting unflattering comments about him on our dorm room door. I know. That was very mature of me.

About three days after the program where I heard about a relationship with Christ, I was heading back to my dorm after class. I planned to take a quick shower before dinner, and as I approached our room, I saw that Art had posted a nasty comment about me on our door for all the world to see. I was furious! How dare he do that!

I ripped the note from the door, grabbed my towel and headed to the bathroom, fuming. The steam from the hot shower paralleled the steam boiling up inside me as I plotted how to retaliate for this public humiliation.

But then something happened.

In the middle of my anger, a new thought popped into my head. I realized I was the one who had begun the public “war of the door signs,” and Art was just following my example. So really, I was the one who brought this embarrassment on myself.

Then I had another very odd experience. I don’t know if technically it was a vision or just some kind of visual impression. I felt like I was up in my parents’ home’s attic rummaging through some old boxes of junk when I glanced up at the inexpensive metal wardrobe where we stored coats. It was up against one of the walls, and in my vision, I noticed that it was actually covering up a doorway that was barely visible behind it. I had never noticed this door before. In my mind, I pushed the wardrobe aside, opened the door, and discovered a large room behind the wall that I had been totally unaware of.

My very next thought was of the speaker’s comment from three nights prior indicating that if we trusted Christ to enter our lives, he would begin to show us things about ourselves and give us the ability to live in ways we never thought possible. “I bet this insight into my blame over my roommate feud is an example of what that guy was saying,” I thought. Jesus had just brought me into a previously unknown “room of my soul” and revealed one of my deficiencies. And, even though I had to face an unhappy truth about myself, I was delighted knowing that I could move on from here and that this whole Jesus thing was real.

That was fifty years ago, and since then, there have been hundreds and maybe thousands of instances where God has nudged me with specific ideas, insights, and promptings, all designed to make me gradually more like Jesus in ways I could not have dreamed of. Once in a great while, these experiences are fairly dramatic, but the vast majority are rather “ordinary.”

Please understand, I have a long way to go, but I can say that I bear almost no resemblance to that cocky, insecure, pseudo-intellectual high schooler from so many decades ago. Praise God! And I wanted to pass along to you my story as a testimonial about what God can do.