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a life of obedience to God wasn't necessary to be a Christian. The
churches preached "you are saved by faith in Christ ALONE."
Obedience wasn't necessary. I was sure all these churches couldn't
be wrong!
For six solid months of intensive study, night and day, I
wrestled with the question. But I found what seemed incredible to
me. I found that the Bible says, on so many important points, the
diametric opposite of what I had been taught in those childhood
Sunday-School years. I was confused. My head was swimming. Could
all these churches be wrong, after all? By now I was determined to
know the TRUTH. I was forced to see that my wife was right and I
was wrong. But did I have the honesty and courage to confess what
I now clearly saw? I found myself face to face with the life-and-
death decision of whether I would be willing to surrender my will
to the will of God, or reject what had proved to be the TRUTH, and
resort to dishonest twisting of God's Word to justify this
rejection. God had softened me by repeated defeats, by reverses
beyond my control, by humiliating poverty and hunger, to a point
where I had lost all self-confidence. I had come to feel
frustrated, like a rat caught in a trap with no place to turn. I
felt my life was a failure---it was worth nothing to me any longer.
And in this time of humiliation and despair, I did at last turn to
GOD---for there was no other place to turn. At last I was made
willing to surrender, completely and unconditionally, to Him, and
to present this useless failure of a life to HIM, telling Him that
if He could use it and make anything out of it, He could have it!
I was CONQUERED!
This experience was agonizing. But it began to change
everything! Even in this humbling financial poverty, life began to
take on new hope. The BIBLE began to open to my understanding. It
became more interesting---more fascinating, thrilling, than any
past carnal interest. It was like entering into and exploring the
richest gold, diamond, and ruby mine in the world, glittering in
glorious splendor. I was enthralled with the Bible. I studied it
day and night, in reverence and awe, much of the time on my knees.
Material success had been taken from me. But now I was excited
with eager joy! For the first time I was experiencing the REAL
RICHES!
For the next three and a half years Jesus Christ taught me
---by His written word. He talked to me a great deal---for during
these continuous hours of Bible study He was talking to me, and
during other hours of private prayer, alone with Him, I was talking
to Him. Thus we had a great deal of conversation together, and we
became well acquainted! You can, too---the same way!
Of course this intimate contact and acquaintance with
Christ and my heavenly Father has continued ever since, but after
the first three and a half years of eagerly absorbing the divine
revelation and true understanding, God literally plunged me into
His work as His minister. I did not, even then, seek entrance into
the ministry as a profession---I was literally PUT IN, by
circumstances of God's making. By now the former egotism had been
burned out in the crucible of adversity. I had been rebuked,
chastened, brought to a willingness to repent and to acknowledge
error where I found it. The former self-confidence was now
replaced with living FAITH in God and in His Word. God must first
humble those He can use---and I had been humbled.
And so as I wrote to some of you a year ago, as the Apostle