Faith Anniversary

On one of my other posts, Veritas Fellowship, (veritasfellows.blogspot.com), I described that today is my anniversary or birthday for becoming a Christian.  Thirty-seven years ago, on March 21, 1976, I was asked about my faith and a pastor led me to the Lord.  My life was forever changed, and I still have "faith today".

Many things have changed since 1976 when Jimmy Carter was the Democratic candidate, gasoline was .59 a gallon, and you had to be connected to a "land line" in order to make a phone call.  Bell bottoms were something everyone still knew about, Rocky was the first in a series of Stallone movies, and the beloved Red Sox lost to the Reds in the world series.  Even more, Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I, in March, and together with Steve Jobs, they founded Apple Computers on April 1.  Just a year earlier, Paul Allen and Bill Gates wrote the first computer language for personal computers (PCs), which was a form of BASIC designed for the Altair.

We live in a fast-paced technological revolution that is changing the world.  But interestingly, it really is only changing culture, the world is being discovered technologically.  Christianity hasn't really changed throughout all the cultures or centuries either.  Because cultures are different and do change our view of truth, our faith in God can change.  But God never changes. 

Personal lives change as well and in 1976 I was a freshman in college when I became a Christian.  Later I would change schools and go on to graduate with a Bible degree at a Christian college in 1980 and work for a couple of years as a youth pastor in Massachusetts, before running off and joining the Navy to fly the P-3 and chase Soviet subs in the Atlantic during the Cold War.  As you can imagine, there was a girlfriend in my life, and that turned into a wedding in 1983, and then the kids, in 1985, '87, '88, '90, '93, and 1995.  Yup, a six pack.  It wasn't my idea, but they were too big to throw back.  And I love them all forever.

My Spiritual life has seen some highs and lows with steady progression I hope.  "My theology" has changed at least seven times, starting at conversion when I thought believing in God was good enough, and then realized I needed to accept Jesus as the Savior and Lord.  Probably the most important theology I have ever learned, however, is that it is a Person we want to know.  We want to know God and to be known by him.  And we need God.  He has sent his son Jesus into the world as the God-man to show us who he truly is.  But we don't want to really know about him as much as we want to know him personally.  And he wants us to know him, and to seek him and recover the relationship we lost in the fall of man.

Still in faith after all these years.  And I can't possibly describe how great it is to know the triune God, even in such a limited or small way.  He reveals himself in the creation and in the Bible.  He is eternal and trustworthy.  He created us and can redeem and sanctify us.  We are blessed when we walk in faith with him, even as the people of faith before us lived by faith and were blessed.  God is the goal.

FAITH TODAY:  Hebrews 11: 13, "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth."