Heaven or Hell?
I didn’t know God until I was seventeen. My childhood and adolescence were years wasted in selfishness and sin. Being the centre of attention was my god. I just wanted everyone’s approval. That explains why I started clubbing, drinking, cursing every two words I spoke and generally making a fool of myself. I wasn’t strong enough to resist the hell of peer pressure. I needed my mates.
Thanks to God, I had a good friend in secondary school who pointed me God-wards. He was recently converted and resolutely insistent upon inviting me to go to church with him. To be honest, I didn’t want to go and I was a bit fed-up with his doggedness but I decided to tag along to make him happy.
When I walked into the church, I sensed something strange was happening. I saw people lifting their hands as they sang out songs to God: they had their eyes closed, some were weeping, others were bent over and I thought to myself, “What on earth’s going on here? It actually looks like these people really mean what they’re singing.” At first, it felt weird, but pleasant. I’d never seen anyone acting like that before in church. My background was one of dry, formal liturgical hymn-singing with straight backs and even straighter faces. Usually I couldn’t wait to get to the last verse to sit down in the pew again. The only part I half-remotely enjoyed was the children’s-talk. But in my friend’s church, everything was totally different.
When sermon-time came, it was a young man who stood up to preach. He was dressed like a normal run-of-the mill twenty-something-year-old. There was nothing particularly outstanding about him. To this day, I still can’t recall what his message was about, but I do remember that at one point he spoke clearly of hell and eternal perdition. For the first time in my life, I realized I was damned. All my life, I thought I was a decent lad. I’d never done harm to anyone. I loved my family. I was a sports-freak. I was a good student getting ready to fly over to England to do my interviews for Oxford University. Surely I was good enough to get to heaven. Suddenly, I was enraptured in the thought of my lost estate. I saw my sin as never before: my lust, my pride and my egocentrism. I knew that I was far from God. A vast abyss separated me from His purity and holiness. I began to shake (under what I now understand to be the convicting power of the Holy Spirit.) Unable to fight off the shakes, I was worried about what the lad sitting next to me would think, so I closed my eyes to try to stop shaking- but it just didn’t work. I didn’t have a clue what was going on.
The preacher then invited us to pray with him. He said: “If anyone here wants to give their life to Christ, please raise your hand and we will pray for you and talk with you.” As a typical Ulster lad, I was too embarrassed to lift my hand in public, but just as he was about to pray, I overcame my anxiety, and raised my hand so we were able to have a brief chat afterwards in which he explained the Gospel to me- “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That ‘whosoever’ included me!
It was all new to me, but it started a passionate love relationship with God that has continued with me ever since. I stopped falling into fits of anger and became a joyful servant of God. My attitudes changed (I stopped answering my parents back and started obeying them), my desires changed (I had a hungry desire to devour the Bible, to pray and to be with God’s people) and most surprisingly of all, my language changed (my tongue became an instrument to talk to others about how precious God is).
Throughout the years, God has helped me to grow in the knowledge of Him through His message to mankind: the Bible. My one passion in life is to preach so that others to can escape the eternal pain of hell-fire and come to find full satisfaction in the gracious arms of Jesus. That’s why I travel ceaselessly around Spain and Europe sharing the Good News! And in the same way that my God-sent friend pointed me to Jesus, I too write these words in the hope that you too will come to know Him as your God, Lord, Saviour and King.
Maybe you are conscious of your sin, your rebellion and your hard-heartedness towards God; but don’t let that distance you from Christ- just remember how much God takes delight in saving bad people that call out to Him for forgiveness, that is, bad people like me. So call upon the name of the Lord and be saved! And start to ignite others with the contagious fire of Jesus’ saving Gospel!
Thanks to God, I had a good friend in secondary school who pointed me God-wards. He was recently converted and resolutely insistent upon inviting me to go to church with him. To be honest, I didn’t want to go and I was a bit fed-up with his doggedness but I decided to tag along to make him happy.
When I walked into the church, I sensed something strange was happening. I saw people lifting their hands as they sang out songs to God: they had their eyes closed, some were weeping, others were bent over and I thought to myself, “What on earth’s going on here? It actually looks like these people really mean what they’re singing.” At first, it felt weird, but pleasant. I’d never seen anyone acting like that before in church. My background was one of dry, formal liturgical hymn-singing with straight backs and even straighter faces. Usually I couldn’t wait to get to the last verse to sit down in the pew again. The only part I half-remotely enjoyed was the children’s-talk. But in my friend’s church, everything was totally different.
When sermon-time came, it was a young man who stood up to preach. He was dressed like a normal run-of-the mill twenty-something-year-old. There was nothing particularly outstanding about him. To this day, I still can’t recall what his message was about, but I do remember that at one point he spoke clearly of hell and eternal perdition. For the first time in my life, I realized I was damned. All my life, I thought I was a decent lad. I’d never done harm to anyone. I loved my family. I was a sports-freak. I was a good student getting ready to fly over to England to do my interviews for Oxford University. Surely I was good enough to get to heaven. Suddenly, I was enraptured in the thought of my lost estate. I saw my sin as never before: my lust, my pride and my egocentrism. I knew that I was far from God. A vast abyss separated me from His purity and holiness. I began to shake (under what I now understand to be the convicting power of the Holy Spirit.) Unable to fight off the shakes, I was worried about what the lad sitting next to me would think, so I closed my eyes to try to stop shaking- but it just didn’t work. I didn’t have a clue what was going on.
The preacher then invited us to pray with him. He said: “If anyone here wants to give their life to Christ, please raise your hand and we will pray for you and talk with you.” As a typical Ulster lad, I was too embarrassed to lift my hand in public, but just as he was about to pray, I overcame my anxiety, and raised my hand so we were able to have a brief chat afterwards in which he explained the Gospel to me- “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That ‘whosoever’ included me!
It was all new to me, but it started a passionate love relationship with God that has continued with me ever since. I stopped falling into fits of anger and became a joyful servant of God. My attitudes changed (I stopped answering my parents back and started obeying them), my desires changed (I had a hungry desire to devour the Bible, to pray and to be with God’s people) and most surprisingly of all, my language changed (my tongue became an instrument to talk to others about how precious God is).
Throughout the years, God has helped me to grow in the knowledge of Him through His message to mankind: the Bible. My one passion in life is to preach so that others to can escape the eternal pain of hell-fire and come to find full satisfaction in the gracious arms of Jesus. That’s why I travel ceaselessly around Spain and Europe sharing the Good News! And in the same way that my God-sent friend pointed me to Jesus, I too write these words in the hope that you too will come to know Him as your God, Lord, Saviour and King.
Maybe you are conscious of your sin, your rebellion and your hard-heartedness towards God; but don’t let that distance you from Christ- just remember how much God takes delight in saving bad people that call out to Him for forgiveness, that is, bad people like me. So call upon the name of the Lord and be saved! And start to ignite others with the contagious fire of Jesus’ saving Gospel!