Personalising a verse led to me starting my Christian journey.
When you insert your own name into a text (‘Personalise it!’ in 40-days-speak) remarkable things might happen. I don’t often get the chance to talk about how I started by Christian journey, but it happened when I personalised a verse of scripture. Here’s the story (excerpted from our book “The Road Not Chosen”)
It was Sunday morning in 1964 and I had been gripped by my father’s preaching in church. His message had been about being born again and the real story behind this much maligned phrase. Jesus had been talking with a Jewish teacher who, in spite of his wealth of knowledge, had never made his commitment to God personal. Nicodemus was a religious expert of impeccable credentials whose relationship with God had yet to begin, and somehow my young mind latched on to this. Being eleven-and-a-quarter and having a pastor as a Dad I was, de facto, an expert on religion! But that morning I came to realise that all my churchgoing and trying to be good (whatever that looked like) would count for nothing with God, any more than it did for Nicodemus.
As the warbling of the Hammond organ faded away, I had a very clear impression that I needed to do something about my life and give Jesus Christ a place in it. Some of the congregation shuffled out to leave only the most committed worshippers for communion. Here in sombre reverence they would pass bread and wine round to celebrate Jesus’ last supper. This must be for the highly holy people only, I reasoned, because kids like me were strictly excluded. From the other side of a heavy door I could hear the clink of glass on silver, the familiar prayers being intoned and the drone of hymns. Cat-like I paced up and down the side of the church, peeping through a keyhole to see when the end might be in sight. There was more Hammond as the remaining congregation started filing out past my father, each shaking hands with the formality characteristic of the 1960s.
“Goodbye, Mr White.”
“Thank you, Mr White.”
“I did enjoy your sermon, Mr White.”
“Nice to be here, Mr White.”
I gatecrashed Mr White.
“Dad! I want to talk!” I urged; and without so much as waiting for the next handshake, he left the queue and ushered me into a side room. It was a postage stamp of a room with elderly wooden chairs, each with its back to the wall. The musty smell of seasoned varnish filled the air. It seemed my father knew instinctively how his son needed help, and with fatherly tenderness he unravelled the mystery of coming to faith, just for me. There was a warmth in that room even though I could see no heater, and a presence I can still feel to this day. Within a few minutes, we were kneeling together at one of the more rickety brown chairs and I was doing what Dad encouraged me to do. I followed him phrase by phrase as he gave me the words of a childlike prayer.
“Now you say just what Jesus said to Nicodemus but this time put your own name in,” he said. I obeyed, falteringly, reading the text from the rustling India paper of my King James Bible.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, so that if Ian believes in Him, he will not perish but have eternal life.” I paused. “Is that it?”
“Yes, Ian, that’s it. You’ve given Jesus a place in your heart.”
It was as if heaven touched earth in an instant and my young mind was flooded with the elation and relief of knowing that the issue was settled. Tears rolled down my cheeks but I felt no shame for my crying, only joy, release, freedom and forgiveness; and as we left the room to return to the church I knew something momentous had happened. I may only have been eleven-and-a-quarter (and I have had to reaffirm that commitment many times since) but that transformational moment changed the course of my life, and I still look back on it as my moment of being born again.
