Phil’s Story

Course Correction

One night I turned on my TV set and saw Billy Graham speaking to a great crowd. I respected this man; I was curious about what he was saying. He was explaining that many experts on the Bible believed we were coming to the end of history, and that soon we would each have a personal reckoning with our Creator. It seemed as if Billy Graham was speaking to me personally.

There comes a time when we look at ourselves and say, “What’s the point of all this? Where does traveling the trail of more eventually lead? And what price am I paying to take that path?” These were the questions I was asking myself at this point in my life.

Billy Graham was talking to me about the biggest issues of life just as surely as my father had discussed with me the economics of cows and cash. Dr. Graham asked what would happen to my eternal soul if I were to die that evening. And I had no answer.

Maybe I wouldn’t die that night. But it was going to happen, and as things stood, I wouldn’t be ready. My heart was in disarray.

I struggled with what to do. My first instinct was to go to church. But my childhood impression of churchgoing was that when you went to church you put on a coat and tie, and I couldn’t see what that had to do with anything today. This was a crossroads moment. I came very close to making some weak excuse, and moving on with my life.

However, something inside me wouldn’t let me walk away and discard that confrontation with eternal truth. In the end I found a church, and there I heard about what it means to live as a true follower of Jesus Christ. It wasn’t enough to for me to intellectually accept Christ’s reality. I had to know him in a genuine relationship. I had to let him have all of me, so that every sin and imperfection within me could be cleansed in the way that only he could accomplish. There wasn’t anything I could do. I could only come before him in humility; but that was all right, because he could and would do the rest. He could cleanse me, forgive me, and make me a new creature.

I came to understand what it meant for Jesus to die on that cross—that he did it to pay the penalty for all that was wrong about me. A perfect man was punished so that a guilty one could go free: me.

And best of all—it was a gift! With my orientation in financial transactions, this was hard for me to believe. There was no dickering or bargaining here. All I had to offer was my flawed and broken heart, worthless to anyone but the One who created it; what I had to gain was deep joy, indescribable peace, and full forgiveness now—and eternal life later. What wise investor would reject such a deal?

I prayed and asked Jesus to come into my life, trusting only in him and nothing else to make me right with him. And I meant it.

My first action was to find a bookstore and make two purchases: a modern translation of the Bible, and Halley’s Bible Handbook, which helped to give me some idea of where to find what I needed in the pages of Scripture. I learned what it meant to pray daily, to share my faith, to enjoy Christian fellowship. I couldn’t get enough of God’s Word and I couldn’t hear enough good teaching. I began to grow and to see the world through new eyes.