Fifty-years ago this month, on a Wednesday evening at St. James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach, I gave my life to Jesus Christ. It wasn’t an emotional or dramatic “Damascus road” experience. But it was a decision that changed the course of my life, a decision that ushered me into abundant life in Christ, with an ever-increasing discovery of his love for me, and his power to change me from the inside out.
It was an invitation I couldn’t resist. At 12 years old, caught up in very unsatisfying relationships in school and preoccupied with performance, the preacher that night said one thing that pierced my heart and which I have never forgotten: “Jesus will be your best friend, and he will never let you down.” The Rev. Dennis Bennett didn’t stop there of course, he asked us to come forward and surrender our lives to Jesus Christ as Lord and savior—and not just as a friend. But I was convicted of my need for a friend who would never let me down, and I was willing to receive Him as that friend on whatever terms he was willing to be so!
You see, I was a God-fearer, a “PK” (preachers kid), a person striving to be good and please others, including God—but living a performance driven life that was exactly the “works righteousness” dead end and bondage for which Jesus came to deliver me with his precious blood, shed on the cross. I had gone to church all my life, but I had never surrendered nor experienced personally such love and promise from Jesus himself. That night, in October 1968, I did. When I walked up to the altar rail at St. James, Dennis Bennett told us who came forward that the “whole package” included repentance, commitment to Christ and the infilling of the Holy Spirit. So, we followed him and his wife Rita into the St. James Parish Hall where we repented, committed our lives to the saving grace and loving Lordship of Jesus Christ, and received the baptism or infilling of the Holy Spirit.
My life has never been the same. I cannot even number the times I have confidently approached his throne of grace to receive mercy and to “find grace to help” in my time of need—not only because of his taking my place on the cross for all my sins. You see, I know that he will never let me down! He has never, ever let me down. He has given me a life of adventure in mission as I have followed him, in the words of C.S. Lewis in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, “farther up and further in!”
Yesterday, Jesus sent me a wonderful birthday present. I visited yesterday with a young man over coffee. He shared how he believed in God but didn’t know how that actually could help him live his life in some of the ways I had shared with him from my life, in previous conversations. He wants to be a good person but has found church impossible to attend due to his work schedule—and often unsatisfying to his deeper longings. As I listened with my heart I knew the LORD was saying to me “this young man is a God-fearer just like you were! And just like you, he is hungering for more. What are you willing to do to share my life with him?”
What an incredible birthday gift. So, this young man and I will be meeting regularly to study a chapter of a Gospel together over coffee. Please pray for him, and for me, that he may discover that Jesus Christ is his friend who will never let him down—and so much more!
Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! (2 Corinthians 9:15)
The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey is President & CEO of the American Anglican Council.
