29th Anniversary of My Sanctuary Experience
Something was missing. I was a professional Christian, raised in a parsonage, went to church three times a week, spent summers at camp, attended a Christian college, married a Christian girl, graduated from seminary, and landed a youth pastor job; but my spiritual life fell woefully short. There’s a big difference between serving God and loving him.
I was dry and lukewarm with exterior religion: self-serving at the core with an outer glaze of holiness. Though attempting to cover my soul anemia through busy church activity, Isaiah’s lament echoed in my honest moments. “My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!” (Isa. 24:16 kjv). I was one of those rule-bound Christians who had just enough religion to make myself respectable and miserable.
I actually got away with half-baked spirituality for awhile but eventually realized I couldn’t do it that way any longer. With growing spiritual discontent, I embarked on an inner pilgrimage to discover what God really wanted for me. This process took several months. During my quest, the word repent popped up everywhere. I tried to ignore it. Repenting was for sinners and not for fairly faithful fellows like me. I practiced Mary Poppins Christianity: practically perfect in every way. So repentance seemed unnecessary.
But this message from Jesus repeatedly came to me loud and clear, through reading, music, sermons, and conversations: “Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15).
One day, I felt the nudge to open an old nineteenth-century Methodist theology text, Elements of Divinity. I bought it for a quarter at a rummage sale to make my library look impressive but had never read it. On this day, however, I pulled the book from the shelf and opened it. The chapter title was “Repentance.” Finally, God grabbed my attention, as I read the page.
This is my paraphrase of what it said: To find the fullness of Christ, you must: see God as he really is, see yourself as you really are, see yourself through God’s eyes of grace and mercy, and seek him with all your heart.
That’s exactly what I did over the next few weeks.
First, I asked God to help me see him as he really is, and scales fell from my eyes. For the first time in my life, I began to grasp his holiness and majesty. One disadvantage of being raised in a minister’s home is over-familiarity with spiritual things. I had viewed Christ as my friend, but failed to understand how high, holy, and mighty God is.
After I captured a glimpse of God’s holiness, I saw myself as I really was—not nearly as good and perfect as I previously assumed. Until this experience, I had an inflated view of myself. For instance, I refused to sing the word wretch when our congregation sang “Amazing Grace.” I thought, “I’m no wretch. That’s a horrid word! I’m a decent guy.” So I sang soul while everybody else sang wretch. But my wretchedness surfaced when I saw myself as I really was. In fact, my religious acts were just wretched, self-serving efforts to prop up my image. This took awhile to admit. At first I protested, “God, why are you asking me to repent? I don’t have anything to repent of.” I was like the lazy housekeeper who kept the lights off so nobody could see the dust. But then God turned the light on, and I saw all sorts of things that needed attention.
Seeing myself through God’s eyes of grace and mercy was actually the hardest step because I was so ashamed of being a judgmental, self-righteous hypocrite. It was hard for me to embrace God’s grace for myself, recalling something a friend said in a low moment: “I understand that he loves the world; I just struggle to believe that he would love me.”
My quest for peace took me on a journey through arduous interior terrain. Having lived mostly on the surface level, I found such soul searching extremely painful and frightening. Uncovering all sorts of unholy motives, desires, and ambitions, my heart cried out with the apostle Paul: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24 kjv).
Grace Will Lead You Home
One evening, after a frustrating youth meeting where I harangued the poor students telling them that they were a big disappointment to God, I plopped on the couch and turned on the television to escape. A PBS documentary, Amazing Grace, was on. Opera diva, Jessye Norman, was sharing about the hope she found in her favorite verse of this sacred hymn: “Through many dangers toils and snares I have already come. Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”
“Deep calls to deep” (Ps. 42:7), and that moment, something called to the depths of my being—a whisper from heaven, “My grace will lead you home.”
My Sanctuary Experience
Long before dawn the following morning, I drove to the church and entered the sanctuary from a side door. Switching on the light above the piano, I found a hymnal and opened to page 293: “Amazing Grace.”
I had sung this hymn on countless occasions, but this was the first time I truly embraced it. “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see.”
I knelt at the altar in the empty sanctuary and poured out my heart: “Lord, I’m tired of going through the motions. I need you now and will not settle for lukewarm, halfhearted religion. Please give me the real thing. Take away whatever is unholy in my life and replace it with your love.”
I’m not sure how long I prayed, but it was long enough to do business with God. He met me there. It seemed like heaven opened, and God poured out buckets of holy love all over me. My heart overflowed with joy and peace. I felt a tingling, holy energy flowing through me.
The burdens I carried into the church that morning all fell away. My worries and concerns melted in mercy. Resentments turned to forgiveness, and guilt was covered with grace in a beautiful manifestation of God’s presence. “Heaven came down and glory filled my soul.”
Finally, knowing it was time to rise and face the world, I whispered, “God, if this is real, and not some figment of my imagination, please let me take it with me when I leave.” God answered by directing me to a Scripture verse. “May he give you what your heart desires and fulfill your whole purpose (Ps. 20:4 hcsb). I shouted, “Hallelujah!” and bounded from the place a transformed man.
Later that same day I led someone to Christ for the first time. Until then I never considered myself an evangelist. I always shrank back from such encounters. But now that I was juiced with Jesus, he gave me an opportunity to share his love.
Someone knocked at my office door. I was surprised to find Brenda, a former youth group member, standing there. She had been missing from church for months. “I don’t know why I’m here,” she stammered, “I was walking by the church just now and something made me turn and knock at your door.”
“I know exactly why you’re here!” I replied, “Let me tell you what Jesus did for me this morning!”
As I recounted my experience, Brenda wept. “I need that too. Can you help me find it?”
There in my office Brenda surrendered her life to Christ. That day I began to understand that evangelism is not some grim duty, but rather a beautiful gift that comes from overflowing love.
I was dry and lukewarm with exterior religion: self-serving at the core with an outer glaze of holiness. Though attempting to cover my soul anemia through busy church activity, Isaiah’s lament echoed in my honest moments. “My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!” (Isa. 24:16 kjv). I was one of those rule-bound Christians who had just enough religion to make myself respectable and miserable.
I actually got away with half-baked spirituality for awhile but eventually realized I couldn’t do it that way any longer. With growing spiritual discontent, I embarked on an inner pilgrimage to discover what God really wanted for me. This process took several months. During my quest, the word repent popped up everywhere. I tried to ignore it. Repenting was for sinners and not for fairly faithful fellows like me. I practiced Mary Poppins Christianity: practically perfect in every way. So repentance seemed unnecessary.
But this message from Jesus repeatedly came to me loud and clear, through reading, music, sermons, and conversations: “Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15).
One day, I felt the nudge to open an old nineteenth-century Methodist theology text, Elements of Divinity. I bought it for a quarter at a rummage sale to make my library look impressive but had never read it. On this day, however, I pulled the book from the shelf and opened it. The chapter title was “Repentance.” Finally, God grabbed my attention, as I read the page.
This is my paraphrase of what it said: To find the fullness of Christ, you must: see God as he really is, see yourself as you really are, see yourself through God’s eyes of grace and mercy, and seek him with all your heart.
That’s exactly what I did over the next few weeks.
First, I asked God to help me see him as he really is, and scales fell from my eyes. For the first time in my life, I began to grasp his holiness and majesty. One disadvantage of being raised in a minister’s home is over-familiarity with spiritual things. I had viewed Christ as my friend, but failed to understand how high, holy, and mighty God is.
After I captured a glimpse of God’s holiness, I saw myself as I really was—not nearly as good and perfect as I previously assumed. Until this experience, I had an inflated view of myself. For instance, I refused to sing the word wretch when our congregation sang “Amazing Grace.” I thought, “I’m no wretch. That’s a horrid word! I’m a decent guy.” So I sang soul while everybody else sang wretch. But my wretchedness surfaced when I saw myself as I really was. In fact, my religious acts were just wretched, self-serving efforts to prop up my image. This took awhile to admit. At first I protested, “God, why are you asking me to repent? I don’t have anything to repent of.” I was like the lazy housekeeper who kept the lights off so nobody could see the dust. But then God turned the light on, and I saw all sorts of things that needed attention.
Seeing myself through God’s eyes of grace and mercy was actually the hardest step because I was so ashamed of being a judgmental, self-righteous hypocrite. It was hard for me to embrace God’s grace for myself, recalling something a friend said in a low moment: “I understand that he loves the world; I just struggle to believe that he would love me.”
My quest for peace took me on a journey through arduous interior terrain. Having lived mostly on the surface level, I found such soul searching extremely painful and frightening. Uncovering all sorts of unholy motives, desires, and ambitions, my heart cried out with the apostle Paul: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24 kjv).
Grace Will Lead You Home
One evening, after a frustrating youth meeting where I harangued the poor students telling them that they were a big disappointment to God, I plopped on the couch and turned on the television to escape. A PBS documentary, Amazing Grace, was on. Opera diva, Jessye Norman, was sharing about the hope she found in her favorite verse of this sacred hymn: “Through many dangers toils and snares I have already come. Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”
“Deep calls to deep” (Ps. 42:7), and that moment, something called to the depths of my being—a whisper from heaven, “My grace will lead you home.”
My Sanctuary Experience
Long before dawn the following morning, I drove to the church and entered the sanctuary from a side door. Switching on the light above the piano, I found a hymnal and opened to page 293: “Amazing Grace.”
I had sung this hymn on countless occasions, but this was the first time I truly embraced it. “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see.”
I knelt at the altar in the empty sanctuary and poured out my heart: “Lord, I’m tired of going through the motions. I need you now and will not settle for lukewarm, halfhearted religion. Please give me the real thing. Take away whatever is unholy in my life and replace it with your love.”
I’m not sure how long I prayed, but it was long enough to do business with God. He met me there. It seemed like heaven opened, and God poured out buckets of holy love all over me. My heart overflowed with joy and peace. I felt a tingling, holy energy flowing through me.
The burdens I carried into the church that morning all fell away. My worries and concerns melted in mercy. Resentments turned to forgiveness, and guilt was covered with grace in a beautiful manifestation of God’s presence. “Heaven came down and glory filled my soul.”
Finally, knowing it was time to rise and face the world, I whispered, “God, if this is real, and not some figment of my imagination, please let me take it with me when I leave.” God answered by directing me to a Scripture verse. “May he give you what your heart desires and fulfill your whole purpose (Ps. 20:4 hcsb). I shouted, “Hallelujah!” and bounded from the place a transformed man.
Later that same day I led someone to Christ for the first time. Until then I never considered myself an evangelist. I always shrank back from such encounters. But now that I was juiced with Jesus, he gave me an opportunity to share his love.
Someone knocked at my office door. I was surprised to find Brenda, a former youth group member, standing there. She had been missing from church for months. “I don’t know why I’m here,” she stammered, “I was walking by the church just now and something made me turn and knock at your door.”
“I know exactly why you’re here!” I replied, “Let me tell you what Jesus did for me this morning!”
As I recounted my experience, Brenda wept. “I need that too. Can you help me find it?”
There in my office Brenda surrendered her life to Christ. That day I began to understand that evangelism is not some grim duty, but rather a beautiful gift that comes from overflowing love.
I remember that PBS documentary, and I can picture Jessye Norman speaking those words to the interviewer. Was it Bill Moyers?
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