On Becoming a Christian - Part 2

(From 7/9/06 on my old blog)

(Well, you should read part 1 first)

This is a good place to introduce one of my favorite verses. It is Revelation 3:20: Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

Why is that verse important to me? Because it fits my life for the next 7 or 8 years – my college and early working years.

I attended the College of DuPage in Illinois from 1975-1977. It’s a 2 year community college. During the first years of college, new friends are often made and that was the desire I had for myself as well since I didn’t have many in high school. There was one event during these years that fits the verse from Revelation. I had a speech class in which the class members got to know each other fairly well. This was unusual in my college experience. Usually, you might get to know a few people from a given class. But this class even went out to do occasional extra-curricular activities together.

There was a girl in the class named June who was friendly to everyone and I got to know her a little bit. Not to the point of dating – just a friendly acquaintance from class. She invited me to a party at her parent’s house and I agreed to attend. There were 20 or 25 college-age friends of hers that attended. We played some party games, listened to some music, ate food, and socialized. At one point in the evening, we all sat in a large circle and had the opportunity to introduce and say a few things about ourselves. I was about the 15th person to do so. The weird thing about this part of the party was that one of the things that everyone included about themselves was how long they had been a Christian. Some 2 years, some 3 months, fairly short amounts of time I thought. I thought that I had been a Christian all my life but I didn’t feel comfortable saying that so. I was the only one who didn’t say something about it. And this made me feel even more uncomfortable.

But I wasn’t curious enough to find out why they all did that or what was different about them. After that I was more interested in making it a short evening and getting away from what I thought were “Jesus freaks” (a not so uncommon term of endearment for Born Again believers in the late 70’s). I was the first one to leave the party.

In retrospect, I recognize that this was one of those times that someone was knocking…