Finding Christ: A personal journey part 1

I have reflected on my blog posts and I realised that I seem to have told my story largely from my struggle perspective, and although this tells a story of dealing and coping, I also realise that this is not the full story and the struggles don't define me. I am going to try and balance the story and one thing that strikes me immediately is that telling of ones life is quite a complex undertaking, and not necessarily told as once off. So I will attempt to speak into various aspects as I felt led by the Spirit. 

My parents were not the church going type, in fact as a child I cannot recall going to church other than weddings and occasionally funerals.  

Not even Christmas or Easter were occasions for church, rather these were celebrated in the age old traditional manner, presents, family gatherings, easter eggs, parties, and huge dinners. 

More often than not; the men folk would go on a hockey tour, and the women and children would gather at one of the ladies houses for the easter long weekend. The children would gorge themselves on chocolate eggs, or Mulberrys or both. 

At Chistmas we traditionally went on vacation with friends or had them and family gathering at different houses each year. This would normally be a week or more and often had a few families gather, spending time in the pool, playing board games or scale-electric car racing. Often playing cricket etc in the backyard, water mellon, and loads of tasty snacks, an abundance of presents, consisting of books and special treats brought by Santa himself. For which we laid out beer and cookies etc (funny it was always the same stuff the parents loved). 

All this joyous celebration with copious amounts of alcohol, but Jesus or God were strangely missing on a whole. 

These remain precious memories from the times of my youth, care free, wild times of playing in the bush, adventures in times that didn't exist for our children largely due to the world seemingly getting a more and more dangerous place to do the things we took for granted. 

Then at about age 15 or so I had an encounter with Jesus for the first time. I was born again in the late 70's early 80's. During the time of the birth of the Charismatic renewal/ revival. 

A school friend continuously gave me small tracts to read (they were all the vogue in those days) Initially I read them out of curiosity as they often related to sex, drugs and rock and roll, and told of stories of how God intervened and saved the characters in the tracts.  One day I read and said the prayer at the back of the tracts. I immediately told my friend of my choice, and along with my family.  

My friend was excited and I expected my family to react in a similar way, but alas that was not the case. I was told that I was under the influence of religious fanatics and being born again was not in the bible. (Which of course it is) and that type of religion was a crutch for the weak minded.  Despite me trying to explain to my Father that I had felt like a load of shame and guilt had been lifted from my shoulders, and that I felt free from the burden of sin (although I did not at that time understand the fullness of the work of Jesus on the cross). He ranted on about how much sin could I have in my life at such a young age, I was not guilty of murder or any other similar heinous act, and I was being duped by con artists and emotional in my response. 

Obviously now I know that my Father had little or no knowledge of the Bible or Spiritual matters (how could he, his upbringing in large was the same as mine in this regard). 

Dad was a draftsman/ engineer  by profession and therefore required proof that something existed.  He often would say that if you could not see something or prove it; it did not exist.   

From a worldview perspective I guess dad was moral relative type thinker; he expressed this by advise as follows "that you could do what made you happy, as long as you didn't hurt anyone". He therefore struggled to see that guilt and shame except for obvious and major crimes against humanity was necessary, you were your own person and not beholden to any other moral code that was common to human decency. 

Nevertheless I continued with my journey of faith, albeit teniously. I found it difficult to settle the conflicting world views (in fact I was largely unaware of any worldview at that stage of my life), and the impact of the buried woundedness as a child and conflict of my awakening sexuality vs the biblical standards caused a large degree of confusion and ambiguity. 

In retrospect I see what my sister would  later describe as a weaknesses; that I seemed to change my mind as often as I would change underpants (her gracious accusation). Largely this was true, as I had not been given a solid foundation for my life of Faith. 

However I was passionately in love with Christ and his word and desired to please him, and was hungry to learn. And so I attended church with my aunt and uncle and their family, much to the annoyance of my parents, and I  guess they must have in a scence felt rejected, this however was not the case, but I felt prompted to attend church, and they refused to attend.  I was and still am concerned about where they would spend eternity without Christ.  

Inevitably this led to some conflict and I recall my mom one-day accused me and challenged me to know if I loved Jesus more than I loved her? 

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:26 ...came to mind immediately and being young and having no concept of tact I affirmed that "of course I loved Jesus more than her" that was what was expected to be a diciple of Christ". She flew into a rage (I never at that time had chance to explain that the hate referred to in comparison to the love for Chist my love for her, would appear as hate) and the scene was set for futher conflict in years to come. 

It was a classic misunderstanding, and I am aware of the pain I may have caused, and wish I had been wiser in my response, but again the truth of God's word has to prevail, and I desire to be a diciple of Him and try to live like anything that becomes more important than Christ I have to deal with as idolatry and cut off to make Christ my first love.

So I had this growing relationship with God during the rest of my school years, it was unfortunately not the most stable one, and fluctuations revolved largely based on my feelings and emotions, which as a teenager vary quite a bit. 

I recall the excitement of joining a large youth coffee bar in the town, and since my father refused to give me a lift (he preferred to drink, and would not drink and drive to get me there, however when it suited him, that standard did not apply) I had to cycle in the dark, there and back, with a torch taped to my bike. Nevertheless I loved gathering and learning about Jesus, praying with friends and enjoying the fellowship. It was a thrilling time, the gifts of the Spirit were in operation and we were often drunk in the Spirit of God.  

Sadly by the time matric approached I was often distracted by the allure of old friends, parties, booze and sex and I barely hung onto any real faith, and prepared to go to the army as part of my national service (this was mandatory back then) and will end this part of the tale at this juncture.