Categories: uncategorized
Date: 07 June 2005 06:22:24
I met Jesus when I was 35. That sounds a bit more dramatic than it actually was, but it's how I can best describe the events that changed my life some 20 years ago.
I was a partner in a professional business in Melbourne, wheeling and working my way up the success ladder, talking about how I'll know I've made it when I get the grand house, pool, car, etc. but inside always having a sense of uncertainty about the life I was working so hard to achieve.
Maybe it was because I was a country boy with a hankering for a simpler life, that I just one day loaded up the car and trailer and with my wife and two young children went “bush”.
I'd lost all my money in the business, but my wife had received a small inheritance and we were able to put a deposit on this small weatherboard (very run-down) house on 5 acres.
So there we were..no job, living in a strange place where we knew nobody, with a daunting new mortgage and feeling unsure about everything...It should've been exciting but I would describe it as a low point in my life..
My sister visited one weekend and insisted on taking us to church. We reluctantly went...it was a small weatherboard church, like you see dotted all over the countryside with a max capacity of about 40 and the scene took me back to my child-hood.
Surprisingly I felt at ease, but the message from the young visiting lay preacher, “you must be born again”, was like an explosion in my heart. I just had to find out more.
Since then I have had a fantastic time on a journey of discovery. Talk about living life to the full, I couldn't believe what I'd missed for the first 35 years of my life.
Now for the last 10 years or so I have been worship co-ordinator in my small congregation, but I started developing an uncertainty about what God wants me to do. I just recently asked for a few months break.
I'm sort of seeing a parallel here to 20 years earlier. I feel a bit uncertain and am wondering whether I need to hear the message “you must be born again” again.