Owned (1): A Rocker’s Faith

I’d like to share with you the story of how I came to be a Christian. I hope you find it interesting, I hope it helps you to get to know me more and I also hope it helps you to continue thinking things through so that you too might come to know God. Every Christian has their own unique story of how they came to know God. This is mine.

Regular Young Aussie Guy

Before becoming a Christian I was, in most ways, a regular aussie guy. I had almost no interest in God or Jesus or Church, prayer, religion and so on. And not surprisingly, I had almost no understanding of what being a Christian meant. For me, the thought of God rarely entered my mind; he wasn’t on the radar of my life. I didn’t know Him, I didn’t seek Him and no-one came and told me about Him. I assumed that if he was there, he wasn’t worth paying any attention to, because no-one else seemed to, and so I just continued living life my own way, giving God the cold shoulder & ignoring him.

As a result I drifted through life; through school & sport, uni & relationships, work & music without much direction or purpose. As far as I could see, that was all there was to life. So I just went with the flow – what else was I going to do?

My Problem

But I had a problem. Life was lacking something; I was not satisfied, I was not content. Most things didn’t seem very worthwhile to me. My attitude towards things was often, “What’s the point? That’s not important! Why bother? That doesn’t matter!”. I had a desire to live a meaningful life; I had a thirst for purpose in life. But I didn’t know where to find it. As a result, I could be negative and unmotivated.

However, most people who knew me, wouldn’t have known I felt like this. I still got on with life, got my assignments in on time, earned money, went to parties, had friends… but underneath the surface, I remained unsatisfied with life. Even with music.

Music

For a long time music was a massive part of my life. In fact, playing guitar was the main reason I got out of bed in morning. My weeks consisted of practising, jamming, teaching, writing, recording, rehearsing, improvising and performing. I was doing what I wanted to do. I was flat out with all the musical activities I had filled my life with. I had made music the very centre of my life. And for a time there, I thought, ‘this is great’. But it didn’t last. I became less and less satisfied with music. I had become too ‘serious’ about music because I made it into something it was not meant to be. If music was ever unenjoyable, consequently, almost everything in my life became unenjoyable. So my passion for music began fading. Little did I know at the time, that I was not made to have all my desires met just by music. But I didn’t know where else to turn. So I just kept picking up the guitar, only to be disappointed again and again. This problem turned out to be a good thing.

Brothers invite

One day my brother invited me to church. It wasn’t the first time he’d invited me. I’d said ‘no’ to him plenty of times previously, but this time, I agreed. And to be honest, I only really agreed because I knew he wanted me to go. That and I had the time to go. If I had of been flat out with music, I might of said no again. But that wasn’t the case. So I decided to do my brother a favour and let him take me. And you know what? It wasn’t all that bad. It was all new to me; I didn’t understand everything in the sermon, and it seemed a bit odd that they sang about unusual thing like, ‘the blood of Jesus’, and I was a bit worried someone might corner me and interrogate me – but otherwise, it was alright. I met some of the people and they were alright. So I went back the next week, and the next, and the next… I wasn’t exactly sure why I wanted to go, but I did.

After about six weeks, I decided to go to something the Church was running called ‘Christianity Explored’. Again, I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to go, but I did. I always looked forward to it. Each Wednesday night for 7 weeks people would meet to sit around tables, share a meal together, listen to a talk and discuss what Jesus said in the book of Mark. This is how I came to learn about Jesus. It was as I read about him in the Bible with other people helping me and talking with me. Later on, I realized that the other 6 people sitting around the dinner table were already Christian. It occurred to me that for 7 weeks these Christians were turning up every week, for little other reason than to help me get to know Jesus. They consistently gave up their time on cold nights to share the good news of God’s forgiveness with me. I am still good friends with some of these people today.

Now, at the end of Christianity Explored I gladly agreed to join something called a ‘bible study’. I was too shy to let on that I was actually really glad about this, so, I kind of just said, ‘ok’, but inside, I was secretly disappointed that it wasn’t starting until next fortnight. Again, I didn’t know exactly why I wanted to go, I just did.

Prayer

It was during this time I began praying to God. It was a bit awkward, not having really prayed much before, but I’m glad I did. I asked God to help me believe in him and to take control of my life. I didn’t have any amazing dreams or vision, but you know what? He answered my prayer.

Bible reading

Reading was something I didn’t like and rarely did. Even if I was interested in whatever the subject was, I would rather watch a video or just have someone tell me. But for the first time in my life I was choosing to read on a regular basis. I had a new found desire to read the bible. And thankfully, at that time I was single, and my only job was guitar teaching – so I wasn’t too busy to make this change.

Looking back

As I look back now it amazes me how much happened over those 2-3 months since I went to Church with my brother. I realize now that I wasn’t the active player in the story. God was. Normal 24yr old aussie males don’t just wake up one morning and say to themselves, “hey I think I’ll just start going to church, and reading the bible, and looking into Christianity, and praying and believing in Jesus, and following him and…”.

But that’s not actually what a Christian is. See, if I left it here you might think a person is a Christian just because they go to church, read the bible and pray. It’s possible to do all these things and still not be a Christian.

What it means to be a Christian

This is what it means to be a Christian. I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ died for me. He died in my place, to take the punishment for my sin. And by believing in Jesus Christ I am completely forgiven by God and accepted by Him as one of His very own sons. And I am confident that I will be welcomed into eternal life, where I will live forever with God and his people. My life is now filled with the meaning and purpose of and loving God and living for him.

And being a Christian means that I know God loves me because he sent his dearly loved son Jesus to die for me, so I could be reconciled with God. God loves me even though I don’t deserve it. Even though I ignored him, disobeyed him and lived life my own way without him for such a long time, he still forgives me for everything and never stops loving me.

Being a Christian does not make everything easy. I still have to battle sin and temptation everyday, but God helps me to overcome sin. Now that I know the truth that is in Jesus I would not trade being Christian in for anything. With Gods faithfulness to me I know I will be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ until the day I die.