Ian
Jesus said “I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they dreamed of” John 10:10 (Message translation)
I was brought up to believe in God. But that belief in God never really had any effect on what I did and how I lived. I SAID I believed in Him but didn’t do the things He said I should and I did a lot of things He said I shouldn’t do!
By about 15 I was busy trying to make myself happy and particularly by the time I went away to study. I used to get drunk as often as possible. I was the best at getting drunk. I started smoking and before long not just cigarettes but other drugs as well. I would use relationships with women to make myself happy.
These things did make me happy to a certain extent; but you see, they only lasted for a short time; usually about as long as a cigarette lasted, or a night’s drinking or being with a girl. I started to feel more and more empty. Relationships made me feel lonelier not less lonely. The only purpose I had was to be happy and have a good time; but I couldn’t even do those things for myself.
It was around that time that I’d been telling someone about the way I was feeling. That person told me I needed God at the centre of my life. I wasn’t really sure what they meant – how do you put God at the centre of your life?
Jesus said: “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it”
Eventually I realised I needed to give my life to God. Knowing that alone wasn’t enough. So I actively started to seek God again.
I went to a church meeting one Sunday morning knowing I needed to change my life. I’d been trying to do this and failing; but that morning something happened. God Himself intervened in my life and He changed me. Someone in the church meeting came up to me and told me they’d seen Jesus walking around the room and that He had come up to me and touched me on the head and said: “you’re changed”. The lasting change that followed made that far more than just a bizarre statement out of someone’s imagination. I really was different!
You see, all the things I’d been trying to do to make myself happy hadn’t achieved anything. I never took another drag on a cigarette or any drug again from that day 9 years ago. It was the summer of 1998. I didn’t need them anymore to make me happy. I didn’t need to get drunk, it wasn’t relationships with girls that made me happy anymore. Suddenly I felt totally fulfilled just by living my life his way, for Him. Instead of my purpose being just to make myself happy (which I couldn’t even manage to do); now my purpose was to make Him happy and guess what? That made me happy!
He has totally changed my life. I failed to make myself happy, but Jesus has done it for me.
