A Case for Fire Insurance

Several years ago at a business retreat with a group of friends and associates in Fairplay, SC, we decided rather than overwhelming some little country church with about 20 Yankees, we would hold our own Sunday morning service at our host's home. Wow, truly the most amazing service I have ever attended. What was so amazing was each of us got up to tell "our stories" our own spiritual moments, and to hear those stories of people that you knew so well, but learned those private most important moments was very moving. We laughed, cried, and laughed some more.

Some of the stories were of amazing redemption's, truly touching stories of pain, defeat, and overcoming, and God's grace poured out. When my turn came, I was quite anxious about telling mine. There was no great moment, no pain, nothing overcome, I thought mine was at most amusing, maybe even shallow. However, at the end of my testimony when we were all done and just in fellowship, a gentleman came up to me, shook my hand and thanked me. As he did so, he pressed a small folded paper in my hand, after he walked away. I read his heartfelt thanks, he said that he had been searching and my words touched his heart and made sense to him. God was able to teach me two lessons in that one moment, one is not to diminish any story as to how you came to find salvation, and two, the one person in that group that I had never liked, it was that one God chose to use me to talk to.

The story that I told that day, is how I came to Christ, and I have never again been shy about sharing it. It won't relate to all, but maybe to some.

As a child I attended a Catholic School, was an alter boy, wore my St. Christopher medal and believed completely. As I grew up during massive changes in the Church, I was there when they moved away from Latin to English in the Mass. When they no longer required fish on Fridays, and much more, even St. Christopher was downgraded. In my mind at the time, I couldn't understand if men could change all "the rules" how can I trust any other part of the story. I no longer believed, and decided that I was agnostic, never would get so confident to become an atheist. Being an atheist takes just as much blind faith as it does to be born again. Just faith in the opposite belief. As a teen I was once thrown out of a church youth group, I attended so I could play football before the meetings with friends. In the group meetings I would debate the pastor, and was able to keep him off balance enough that it appeared that I was "beating" him in the debate. When Pastor Dan asked the other kids to tell me not to come back, he didn't tell me himself, he told them he thought I might be a pastor someday. This was the funniest thing I had ever heard at the time. Once while doing some lay preaching his words came back to me.

For years, I considered myself too smart, too strong, to self-assured to need the "crutch" of faith. I felt that Christians were weak people who couldn't stand for themselves without an excuse for their failures. Comments such as "If God's willing," drove me to distraction, I thought they should man up and make things happen. I was so full of myself, that I loved to get into debates with those who believed and shoot holes in their beliefs. Then I started dating someone who was really into her faith, and she was hot, so I hung around. She was the first one who tried to sell me on John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will have everlasting life." She told me things like "all I had to do is believe in Jesus, and ask Him into my life accepting him as my Saviour and I was saved." I almost fell over laughing so hard at her on that one, I grew up believing in Purgatory, this idea of a free pass just for the asking was too easy, of course she liked this religion, I thought.

I would try to shoot holes in her beliefs, and she held firm to that one verse and idea, no matter what I tried to confuse her with from other parts of the Bible. She held firm to John 3:16. This made me start reading the Bible for the first time in my life to help me build a case against it.

Later I became involved with a group of very strong and prosperous business leaders, whom I wanted to "grow up and be just like them." They were the image I wanted to see myself, strong, confident, successful, powerful, great families, deeply involved in moving and shaking their worlds. There was something that ran through these men and women that didn't make sense to me. They each would say things like the most important single thing in their lives was their personal relationship with the Living Christ. This didn't compute to me, why would strong, self confident, successful people need this "crutch?" So now between reading the Bible, and now trying to figure out what these heroes of mine saw in this, it made me think deeper on the subject.

One night I was driving home from Michigan down I-69 with the radio off, just thinking, doing the math so to speak. I started running through the equation. If my friends are wrong and I am right, when you die that you simply turn to dust, neither they or I would ever know. There would be none of those "perchance to dream" moments." However, if they were right and I was wrong, I would be in a lot of heat, and too late to cool if off. Taking this thinking further it dawned on me that even if they were wrong, they would live their lives filled with Hope, Peace, Faith in a promise of a better future, faith that they would see their loved ones again in Glory, taking the sting from funerals throughout their lives. So, even if they are wrong, they still won. It finally dawned on me that if you looked at this from a bottom line perspective, the Return on Investment is much greater being a believer than not. There was no ROI at all for not believing.

I guess you can say that my first step into faith was to take out a Fire Insurance policy. Thank God, He doesn't hold that against me, and opened my heart much further to His words and Love. However, it took almost a business decision to get me there to begin with. If this makes sense to you, Praise God. I am also most thankful for the words of a dear friend that day. Colleen, a very soft spoken, sweet, and nurturing woman scolded several of us. This was so out of character for her, that her words penetrated to the quick. There were so many who talked about growing up in a "dead" church, or being part of the "frozen chosen." What Colleen brought clearly to our attention was those churches where we grew up laid the foundation in our hearts, "raise a child up." She was right and we all knew it. Thanks.

I still have that folded piece of paper that was put in my hand in my wallet, as a reminder of both lessons.