The older I grow, the more thankful I am to be in Christ.
As a child in school, a Christian teacher told us about Jesus, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep (John 10:11). I came home that day and asked my father two questions: “Who is the Good Shepherd? Why did he have to lay down his life?”
He answered them and asked if I wanted to trust in Jesus as my Shepherd. I prayed without hesitation and he rejoiced without inhibition.
This was the first of many times I remember the grace of God gently moving me deeper into the rule of God. My story of turning to Christ feels more like a process, not an event. If at all there was an event, it was before the creation of the world, when he chose me (Eph. 1:4-6).
Later my parents gave me a cassette tape of Jesus stories. At night, I used a Sony Walkman to listen to them. To this day, I remember the story of Jesus raising Jairus’s daughter from the dead. I can still hear the mocking voices of laughter when he said, “The child is not dead. She is only sleeping” (Mark. 5:39).
He woke her up with a word. He woke me up too. But my faith was in its infancy.
The Early Wonder of First Love
I wandered through my early teenage years with a moralistic, transactional relationship with God. My prayers were like a negotiation, “If you help me get through this exam, I promise I won’t do it again.” But through a series of events, when I finished my 12th standard board exams, I dedicated my life to Christ with great eagerness.
There is a first love kind of naiveté in turning to Christ. You are so captivated by the beauty of Christ but you do not fully realise what you are getting into. It is like marrying someone you love without fully comprehending how costly it will be. In fact, it is no less than a marriage and it is so much more than one (Eph. 5:31-32).
Like the transfer of a football player to a new club, I wanted to sign the rights to my life over to Jesus. I would no longer be my own. Instead, I would be his possession, eternally. Happily so.
However, unlike a football transfer, there was no merit in this purchase. Jesus was not acquiring a proven and prized asset. He was adopting a liability. It was a love that made no sense and still makes me wonder, “Why does someone like Jesus want anything to do with someone like me?”
The Growing Cost of a Fervent Love
The most visible, tangible thing I felt in turning to Christ was a change in desire. It felt like a shift in power, a changing of the guard. Something new and fresh was in the air.
I was devouring the Bible and could not go to bed without kneeling in prayer. There was an increasing, overpowering desire in me to live under the authority of God’s will.
If I read something in the Bible that I could not understand, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. When I felt a tension between God’s desires and mine, I knew my heart needed to change, not his.
To be in Christ is to be like an athlete, who thinks the prize of success is worth the price of self-control. Jesus becomes worth fighting for, even if you have to battle with your own desires.
He was turning the excitement and wonder of a first love into a fervent love.
The Inevitable Burden of a Fainting Love
Turning to Christ, I cognitively knew to expect unanswered prayers, unresolved conflicts, and undoing circumstances. But I did not expect how deeply they would affect me.
I am surprised by how lonely and heavy the Christian life can feel. In the many years since my first prayer, I have seen relationships change, hope deferred, dreams shattered, and hearts broken.
In these times, your soul feels like it’s starving at a banquet, hungry at a feast, and thirsty at the well. You feel near to God and far from him at the same time.
Today, I appreciate more personally the calls in the Bible to wait on the Lord and to endure without losing heart or becoming weary of doing good (2 Thess. 3:13, Isa. 40:31, Rev. 2:3, Gal. 6:9).
I also see more clearly how Jesus’s warnings are true that increasing lawlessness will make the love of many grow cold (Matt. 24:12).
I do not think I can trust a Christian who is not familiar with the weight of a fainting heart (Ps. 38:10). Yet, I only want to imitate those who rely on the power of God’s steadfast, forever love (2 Cor. 4:7-10).
The Enduring Wonder of God’s Forever Love
Today, I am less confident in my faithfulness to Christ and more thankful for his faithfulness to me.
In my early years, I felt like Peter. I was willing to die for Jesus. But the reality of living for him has taught me more than the thought of dying for him.
Years have gone by, each one bringing new adversity and fresh responsibility, only to expose more frailty. It has led me to the bitter tears of Peter and to see the futility of my own strength. Not unlike Peter, I was trusting in my trust in God.
But what a bitter and beautiful gift it is when God shows you that Jesus is more faithful to you than you can be to him.
Now I feel what Peter may have felt at the shore, by the sea, in the days after Christ rose from the dead, “What is someone like Jesus doing with someone like me?”
When my strength is most failing, God’s mercy is most satisfying.
By the strength of his faithful love, he calls us to return to the wonder of our first love. In his faithfulness, he deepens it, refines it, and matures it into a fervent love, until the day we will be forever raptured and rescued into his eternal love.
Truly, we love because he first loved us (1 John 4:9-11, 19).
