I have shared with you an accurate description of what it has been like to live the Christian life. But you can’t live a Christian life unless you are a Christian. What makes me a Christian and an adopted child of God? I have been a member of several Christian churches in my lifetime, but that didn’t make me a Christian. I have empathy for others and try to give them a helping hand when I can, but that didn’t make me a Christian. I have been water baptized, but that didn’t make me a Christian. I have taught a Sunday school class, but that didn’t make me a Christian. I have even preached the Gospel in several churches as a young lay evangelist, but even that didn’t make me a Christian. I have written this Christian blog twice a week for more than five years now, but that hasn’t made me a Christian. So what was it that made me a Christian and a child of the living God at the age of eleven? The answer is love; not my love, but God’s love for me when I was unworthy of it.
As I knelt at that church altar nearly sixty-eight years ago seeking a personal relationship with God, a woman kneeled beside me and asked my name. Then she led me to recite John 3:16 like this; For God so loved Jim Anderson he gave his only begotten son so that Jim Anderson can believe in him and not parish, but have everlasting life. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I said those words and when she asked if I truly believed that, I told her that I did. At that moment God’s love flooded my soul, my spirit was reborn and God’s Holy Spirit took up residence in my heart to teach and guide me through my new life.
Paul wrote about God’s love within us and why none of those other things I wrote about in the first paragraph matter until we have his love in our heart. “If I could speak every language of earth and of angels, but did not love others, I would be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophesy and understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had faith that I could move mountains but didn’t love others I would be nothing. If I gave everything I had to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it but if I didn’t love others I would have gained nothing.” (I Corinthians 13:1-3) It is only through God’s love in us that we and our actions become Christian.
I am so grateful for the Holy Spirit to show me my responsibilities as an obedient child of God. He even guides my fingers on the computer keyboard as I write this blog post.