Testimonies

I grew up attending church weekly with my mom and brother. Whether the gospel wasn't preached there or whether I just didn't "get it", I'm not sure... but I remember often thinking, "Just be good! That'll make Mom happy... and God too!"

As I went through junior high, however, I remember being more and more critical of what I saw around me. After all, so many of the kids I'd sit in church with on Sunday would then come into school on Monday and be just as cruel and apathetic as everyone else! The seeds of doubt were planted.

Once high school rolled around I found myself being more and more exposed to what was going on in the world. In particular, I remember taking a course that dealt with world religions. Suddenly it occurred to me: all religions are basically the same! "Just be good!"

Those seeds of doubt had taken root. If all men were striving to be good, then what did we need with God? I told my family that I wasn't going to go to church anymore, and inwardly I had completely rejected God. I was now a professing atheist.

After high school I decided to go to Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania to get a degree in computer science. Overall, I loved college life... except for the fact that somehow I had ended up on a hall where seemingly everyone was a Christian! I was more than a little bothered by this... cause aren’t people supposed to be smarter in college? Aren’t they supposed to realize by now that Christianity is just like all those other weak religions?? Just be good!

So, after an appropriate amount of frustration was vented, I decided rather to seize the opportunity: it became my goal that by the end of my freshman year, I’d convert every one of those Christians to "nothingness". And so it went. But here was the really interesting thing: in high school, if I wanted to talk with a Christian, I had to find them. In college, they found me...

Every Thursday night, seemingly my entire wing would disappear and go off to some Christian fellowship group on campus for a couple of hours. While there, they’d hear some Bible message and sing some songs. Then they’d come back all excited, ready to evangelize the atheist! Into my room they’d pile...

Week after week they'd try telling me about Christ, and week after week I'd come up with some question or argument they couldn't answer. Poor souls... they were wasting their time.

One day, though, something unexpected happened. I was talking to a girl about some qualm I had with Christianity, and suddenly she said to me, "Okay Tom, if you think you’re so smart," - which I did - "then why don’t you come out to the fellowship group next week and talk to the guy in charge? His name is Dave."

I remember smiling. What a great idea! If I could talk to this "head Christian" and cause him to doubt, then all the other Christians would surely come tumbling down! I’d never have to hear this garbage again!

"Sure, I’ll talk to Dave."

Enter: next Thursday. I went out to that group where all these Christians were singing songs I didn’t know, clapping their hands, praying out loud... oy. What a bunch of wackos! I was certain that at some point they were going to smell my unbelief and turn on me like a pack of wolves. But there I stayed for the whole thing. After it was all over, I was directed to the guy identified as Dave – who looked a few years older than me. I walked up to him, shook his hand and said, "Hi Dave. My name's Tom. I’m not a Christian, but I’m supposed to talk to you about that."

Dave told me years later that was the easiest evangelism he’d ever done.

So Dave and I started getting together once a week to talk, usually over lunch. (The key to a college student’s heart is food!) For the first few weeks, he barely mentioned Jesus except for him asking me if he could pray before we ate. (Sure, why not?) What we DID talk about was food, movies, college life, my friends, my interests, and the like. "Interesting," I'd think to myself. "I actually like this guy."

Then one day Dave started asking me questions about God. Not really wanting to get into that, I asked him some of my own questions in return: "What about aliens? What about dinosaurs? What about the Pygmy in Africa who has never heard about Jesus? How could a good God send him to hell?"

Now, I didn’t care one lick about the Pygmy. I just wanted to trip Dave up. I wanted him to doubt. I wanted to shake the Christianity out of him! But Dave knew what I was up to and was not easily fooled. He’d either answer my questions (and answer them well) or he’d say, "Well, Tom, I don’t know. But here’s what I do know." Then he’d flip open to the book of Romans and have me read what the Bible said about who I was. Whoa.

I don’t remember really believing much of what Dave said, but I knew that he believed it. And I saw that he was actually living what he was preaching. I respected that. He was always pointing me beyond himself to Someone greater. It wasn't about his opinions of how the world worked - it was about what the Bible said. Interesting... this was a new idea to me. I also noticed that there was something that set Dave apart from a lot of other "Christians" I knew: he cared about me. He actually loved me. Weird.

Then came a day when Dave and I were meeting, and he asked me what I was doing that weekend. As usual, I was looking forward to many hours of watching TV and playing video games. (What else is there?) But Dave suggested something else. He said that for the whole weekend, he was going to go out to some camp where hundreds of high school students would be going to hear the gospel, some for the very first time. (Whoop-dee-doo...) Then he said that he wanted me to come, but not as a camper. Rather, someone needed to feed these kids three meals a day. Multiply that by hundreds of kids, and that's a lot of work. Dave told me that I'd barely sleep, barely eat, I'd work like crazy, and I'd love it.

If anyone other than Dave had told me that, I’d have laughed in his face. But Dave was a good guy and I liked him, so I figured "why not?"

Well, the first night there changed my life.

See, about thirty Christians from different schools and areas got into a big circle on that Friday night to pray. Now, I knew enough about prayer to bow my head and stare quietly at my feet for a while. But I was listening, and suddenly a horrible thought occurred to me that had never occurred to me before:

"I'm not good enough..."

I realized that I was not like these thirty people around me. I was there because I had nothing better to do that weekend. They weren’t there for that reason. And they weren’t there for some kind of personal glory (because they were barely going to sleep, barely going to eat, and they were gonna work like crazy). They were there to lay down their lives for these kids they didn't even know. They were there because of Jesus Christ.

"I'm not good enough..."

I didn’t become a Christian that night. But over the next few weeks as I’d meet with Dave, my questions were no longer, "What about aliens? What about dinosaurs?" Now my questions were, "Why did Jesus do this?" and "What did Jesus mean when He said that?" Yes, I was reading a Bible. Dave’s Bible, in fact. He gave it to me.

I don’t know the exact moment that I gave my life to Christ, but sometime over the next couple months, someone from that fellowship group (which I had started attending) asked me if I was a Christian.

Much to my own surprise, I told him that I was! I really believed it! I'd come to realize – and embrace – the fact that I am not good enough. And that's why God's Son came to die for me! He bore my penalty before the Father so that His perfection became mine. So while I myself am not good enough, God sees Christ when He looks at me – and He is good enough!

What I didn’t tell you was that Dave was and still is a staff worker with DiscipleMakers.

And now, so am I.