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Pastimes : Religion on SI -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: wallacestevens who wrote (984)	9/10/1998 10:58:00 AM
From: dragoman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1542

Never thought I would see a religion discussion on SI. I've only been following it for a few days but there's one thing that I have not seen mentioned, and that's the personal experience of how God changed someone's life. I live in Calgary, Alberta, and eleven years ago I had a good job working for the Canadian government. The personal side of my life was a bit of a disaster area however, as in the space of two years I went through a number of failed relationships, i.e. I got dumped by different girlfriends. I had no family here, and no close friends to lean on. Years before I had met someone who had gone to something called the Calgary Centre for Positive Living, what Christians call a New Age group. I decided to give it a try, and so I attended four or five times. The speaker was an ex United Church minister. One Sunday morning he was talking about meditation, and he said that Jesus was one of the greatest teachers of meditation of all time. For some reason that struck me as very odd, to hear the name of Jesus mentioned in this way. I immediately went home and I started to read a Bible that my mother had given me. I had never read a single word of it before that day. The Jesus that I found in there was not at all what I expected. He spent much of his time with prostitutes, lepers, and the despised tax collectors, i.e. broken people. A few months later I returned to University at the age of 26. I was invited to attend a Bible and Life conference with about thirty other students. As these students prayed for me that weekend all the pain that I had stored up inside began coming out. During a Sunday service the next day I accepted Jesus as my Saviour. Christians fall down on the job a lot, myself included. I stubbornly want my own way rather than doing what God would have me do. To me all this is just evidence of man's rebelliousness toward God. Because of that we need Jesus; we just don't cut it ourselves. It is amazing to me that God takes painful and broken experiences in our lives and uses them for good. I'll finish with these words by Charles Spurgeon: "The least love to God and the simplest act of obedience to Him are better than the most profound knowledge." Regards, Colin Hansen