Saturday, March 14, 1998

Following Christ need not be a last-minute decision

By BRIAN PALMER / Guest Columnist

Renee and I were very good friends in high school in Oregon in the early '80s. We both wrote poems and stories. We both loved the coast and went together a time or two.

We hung out in the library before school started in the mornings, and I thought I was really cool because Renee was a year older than I. She was a good friend, one I really trusted.

She graduated, and then I moved out of state and lost track of her for a while before I joined the Navy. But she mailed me a letter, and we corresponded for maybe a year or so. Then I was stationed on a ship on the east coast and we lost touch altogether for 15 years.

During that 15 years, my personal life went into a tailspin, and I strayed all too far from what half-hearted relationship I had with Christ as a teenager.

Alcohol and purposefully forgetting decent morals dragged me down into the world in no uncertain terms. I lived shamefully and with no regard for what I knew to be the truth about how and how not to live.

Almost ten years ago, Christ used a co-worker as a witness in a simple and direct conversation that left me stammering for excuses where there were none.

I returned to Jesus Christ that weekend in a little Pentecostal church, forever grateful for that friend's willingness to speak God's truth to me.

About two months ago, through the wizardry of computers, I finally tracked down Renee again. She has one son after a bad marriage and divorce and is remarried.

We talked briefly on the phone, and then I wrote her a letter bringing her up to date and telling her about my returning to Christ and his saving me.

I waited a couple of weeks and called her again. In recent years, I have had many opportunities to tell former classmates and old acquaintances about my becoming a Christian.

I am less than pleased that some of those conversations have probably left people not realizing I have made a genuine commitment to serve Christ whole-heartedly, faulty as I sometimes am in my service to him.

Renee said she got the letter and was glad for my well-being. Then she said something I have heard before, and it stuck with me because of its implication: "God has always been there for me when I needed him."

What I believe she meant was, "When we find ourselves overwhelmed or in peril, we can call out to God and most likely find some comfort in knowing he is somewhere around the corner."

Unfortunately, men and women have been doing just that for a hundred generations, or more, waiting until life and limb are at stake until deciding to seek the God of heaven and earth. Only then, they think, is it worth their while to talk to the Father, their Creator.

I wish I hadn't selfishly taken advantage of God's grace so many times. Even as a lost and self-absorbed sinner, I was capable of asking God to get me out of this or that jam, or even to save my life.

Jesus Christ will wait and wait, allowing us to put him dead last on our list of priorities, knowing full well whom we will be praying to when the pressure in on.

But this needn't be the case. It is not necessary for us to approach Christ only after we have exhausted every other possible means of solving an issue in our lives.

He should be the very first solution. And he won't merely solve an issue. If give the opportunity, he will save our souls in the process.