On This Day …

On 1st July 1973 at 8.15 p.m. my path of destruction, drugs, depression and the darkness of the occult came to a screeching halt for me.

I was sixteen and at boarding school in Dublin. Across from me sat my best friend, a number of months my junior, whose life of similar destruction, and one of debauchery, had radically changed when he met Jesus, like the Apostle Paul on the Damascus road. I was stunned by the life transformation he had experienced.

For two weeks, already convinced that what my friend Grant had found was real and the answers to what I was searching for in the meaning of life and my life, I had been weighing up whether I was willing to pay the cost to follow Jesus.

You see there was a cost to me. I was headed into what could have been a fairly lucrative career and one involving travel (a love of mine), and my parents had sacrificed so much to get me this kind of education. Any change of course could be hugely problematic for my family.

No one told me, but I knew in my heart this one thing: “If I am to believe in this Jesus, I must spend the rest of my days telling others about Him”.

And so, fifty years ago today, I made that decision to give up all to follow Jesus, and prayed with the help of my friend Grant.

Little did I know that God made me with a love for travel and that He put that in me, because with a call to take this Gospel to the nations, I have found that not only is that travel desire being more than fulfilled, but I have found MORE—so much more—than all I could ever have imagined in this wonderful, abundant life and crazy walk with Jesus, as well as forgiveness for sins and intimate fellowship with my Creator, Shepherd, King, Whom, incredibly now, I get to call Father and Friend.

1973 seems like it was just yesterday and I feel like there is SO MUCH more to learn and Kingdom work to do, as well as a number of nations to yet tell of His Story. But what a ride! Who could possibly not want this? Personal cost or not, there is nothing near what we receive from Him if we give up our small ambitions and plans to follow the King of kings.