It was a beautiful summer evening in Shadyside, Ohio, where I had taken the youth group down to the Ohio River for our meeting. It was an interesting time, not only because we had fun talking and eating by the fire, but also because we had unexpected visitors. From across the river, at Mitchell’s Bar and Boat Club, a group of young men spotted the lovely young ladies in the group and began to make, what turned out to be, a long voyage across the wide and swift Ohio River. Trying to paddle a John-boat the way you would a canoe, the four young men made their voyage with two facing one way in the boat and two facing the other. Blame it on the Budweiser. Since they were paddling more against each other than with each other, they would go sideways, then backwards, then around in circles until you wondered if they would ever make it. And when they finally did, we wished they hadn’t. There was almost more beer in them than water in their boat, and as they got out they each carried a liter bottle of beer. They soon realized that this was not the usual gathering of young people along the river, and became very discouraged at their prospects for a good time.
Somehow they made their way back across the river, but it was not long until we had two more male visitors. We had just finished devotions and began to sing as they landed. One of them stayed in the boat, but the other one staggered in my direction. When he heard the Christian songs we were singing, he began to tell me his problems, even though he had never seen me before. This was his second marriage, he said, and it looked as though it was almost over. All they did was fight about his drinking and running, and he could not understand why everything was always going wrong in his life. His partner in the boat was getting more and more agitated, and they finally got in the boat and started back to the other side. We cleaned everything up and starting to get into the cars when we realized that we could still hear them, even though it was so dark we couldn’t see them any longer.
The boat they had was borrowed, and they had only gone a short distance when they turned the boat over. A dangerous place to be with all the barges going up and down the river. They swam toward shore, and when they got to the shallow part they started wading. We could just barely see their outline in the dark. They were trying to walk in the water and thick mud, but stumbling and falling into the muddy goo every few feet. They were completely soaked and covered with black mud when they finally reached us. One of the young men was crying, and the other looked deeply depressed — and they wondered out loud why everything went wrong for them. We drove them back across the river to the bar where their truck was parked, and wondered what would become of them.
The first reason I believe in Jesus Christ is because: He makes life work. That experience with those lost young men was a living illustration to the young people about how a life lived apart from God invites disaster. More importantly, it was a picture of how much people need Christ in their lives. But perhaps I was more moved by the experience than the young people in the group. It was as if something was again confirmed in me, and from deep within I said with new meaning and conviction: “I believe in Jesus Christ.” Every time I see people destroying their lives without him it reaffirms my faith and the veracity of it. When I have occasion to see what a life apart from Christ is like, or what a culture becomes which tries to separate itself from God, I am renewed with thankfulness that Jesus Christ is in my life. I have a new appreciation for his Word, and a new love for his ways. When I see Hollywood and television’s degrading view of life, and their cheap ideas about love; when I see the futility in the lives they live, I say again, “I believe in Jesus Christ.” These are experiences which make me stop and be thankful all over again that I am a Christian. It helps me to understand in new ways why I follow Jesus Christ and live for him. When I see the sickness of the world, and on the other hand see the health that Christ brings, I repeat the Apostle’s Creed with a new enthusiasm: “I believe in Jesus Christ.” I believe that he is “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6). I believe that he alone can bring satisfaction and meaning. I believe that to have him is to have life, and to reject him brings emptiness, dysfunction, destruction and despair.
The people who live in the kingdom of this world have to keep telling themselves they are having fun, and anesthetizing themselves with alcohol and drugs to keep them from seeing the lie they are living. They go from relationship to relationship. They weary themselves attempting to find happiness. I believe in Jesus Christ, because when I give my life to him I find something that I can find nowhere else. The world’s fun is always disappearing, disappointing and destructive, but the joy that I and many others have found when we experienced Christ becomes better and stronger with the passing of time. I believe in Jesus Christ, because he makes life worth living. When I follow him I naturally avoid the things that create destructive problems in my life. If I ignore his will for me I know that I am only inviting disaster. When I ignore what he so clearly taught, it is not a question of will I mess up my life, but when. It is only a matter of time.
The Bible says, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). People today need that spiritual discernment. When I see the destruction of people’s lives who are avoiding God, I sing with new fervor the hymn that says: “In the cross of Christ I glory, Towering o’er the wrecks of time. . .” I believe in Jesus Christ more than I believe in myself. He is more real, more eternal, more powerful, wiser and more full of joy than I could ever dream of being. I don’t want to try to plan my life on my own. I don’t want to make up what I think is right and what is wrong. I don’t even know what I really want sometimes, or what would make me happy, but he knows all those things, for he knows all of me as my Creator. And so I lean on him, talk to him, and give myself to him with abandonment and joy. Left to my own devices, I cannot make myself happy, neither can I make myself good. I am more than willing to let him lead and I will follow, for I believe in him more than I believe in me.
I love the way of God because it is truth, it is reality and it works. When I see on the other hand, the futility, the stupidity, the falseness and delusion of the way of this world, the deeper my faith becomes.
The second reason I believe in Jesus Christ is because: He is the only way. What I am talking about is more than just a vague religious feeling, or a generalized belief in a God, whoever and wherever he/she may be. It is a belief in “Jesus Christ his ONLY Son our Lord.” He is the only path to God. He is the only reason, and the only way, we can come to God. I am certainly not the way. I cannot come to God just by looking deep within myself, as those in the New Age movement would have me do. I do not find God by looking inside myself, but by looking outside myself. My good works, or church membership, are not the way. He is the only way.
The Bible says, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). While he was on earth Jesus made this astounding claim: “I am the way and the truth and the life. NO ONE comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). I am not the way. My good conduct is not the way. Buddha is not the way. Mohammed is not the way. Krishna is not the way. Our culture seems headed toward a dangerous syncretism which says that all religions are the same. But the claims of Jesus Christ are exclusive. We are NOT all worshiping the same God. Anyone who has studied other world religions at all realizes this is true. I have nothing in common with a Muslim or Hindu spiritually and philosophically, nor for that matter do I have anything in common with the popular cults. Although I may love those people as human beings, desire to serve them and care for them as a part of God’s creation, we are worshiping very different gods. They do not recognize my Lord as the only Son of God. And the Bible says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The other religions and cults of the world do not understand that he was more than just a man; he is God. Jesus Christ is not a way, he is the way. He is not one way among many ways, he is the only way. That is the essential doctrine of our faith. He is the central object of our commitment, and the heart of our worship and devotion. He was God in the flesh. Not a man who became God, but God who became a man.
Jesus said, “I and the Father are One” (John 10:30). He said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). No one else made the kind of claims he did. Now, if you said the kind of things he said, I would suggest the psychiatric floor at one of our fine hospitals, but when Jesus Christ says it, I believe it. I believe it because I have felt his power in my own life, I have sensed it strengthening me and bringing wholeness and health to my mind. I have seen it at work in the world and in the lives of other people. There are many who think they have that kind of power, but he was the only One who could demonstrate it.
Soon after I entered the ministry a young man came to my home and claimed to be a special messenger from God with extraordinary powers. But there was no power in his life, only the delusions of one who had a drug saturated mind. He showed me the secret to the universe which he held in his hands, but it was only a spring with string wrapped around it. He was my neighbor, and I spent long hours with the family trying to find help for their son. I have also been in touch with a family in another town, half crazed with grief because their son claims to be Jesus Christ. His drugs have left his brain permanently damaged. He will spend most of his life being cared for by the state.
There is only One who made the claim of being God whose mind was sound, whose heart was pure, and could substantiate his claims with divine power. Only he can satisfy the needs of the human heart. Those who live thousands of years after his appearance on earth feel as close to him, and are as intimately related to him, as those who walked by his side on the Galilean shore long ago. I believe in Jesus Christ, and I believe that he is still being experienced today.
That is the third reason I believe in Jesus Christ, because: I have experienced him. I believe in Jesus Christ, but I am thankful my faith is more than a belief. It is an experience. I not only believe in him, I know him, because I have experienced him. Perhaps you believe in Jesus Christ, but do you know him? The Bible tells us that even demons believe in Christ, and they tremble at the thought of him (James 2:19). They believe in him more than you do, for they live in the realm of the spirit. There are many who believe in him, but far less who have experienced him. It is like this: You may be able to describe a sunrise; you may even know the scientific and technical terms used to explain what makes the sun appear to rise in our sky. You may believe in the sun without any doubts, but it is quite another thing to walk out in the early hours and look out over a lake until you begin to see the sky become an ever changing palette of colors: purple, then red, then yellow, while feeling its warmth wash over your body as it rises above the edge of the world on a cool, dew-drenched morning. Now you have experienced a sunrise. You have not just read about it and believed there was such a thing, you have gone beyond all that — you have experienced it in all of its beauty and warmth.
The Christian life is an experience; it is a living relationship with a living Savior. John wrote: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched — this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1).
Pity those who can only talk about Jesus Christ, even though they may describe him well. Pity those who only believe in him, and have never gone beyond belief to discovering him, and experiencing the beauty and warmth of his presence. He is not only God, he is mine. In Jesus I see what God is like. In him I discover life. I feel his love and experience his presence. I see the life God wants me to live. I hear all that God wants me to know, and all he wants me to be. That happens when I live in him and he in me.
But there is still more. The fourth reason I believe in Jesus Christ is because: He is Lord. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord. He is Lord of heaven and earth. Because he is Lord, I want him to be my Lord. I want him to have my life and rule it. He alone is worth giving my life to. He alone, as my Lord, can bring satisfaction to my life. Some may be dedicated only to themselves, or their own pleasure and satisfaction, but I want to give myself to no other. I want to know Jesus Christ and have him as a part of my life—nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. I will emulate no life but his. I will have no Master but him. He is Lord. He alone holds my destiny in his hands. To trust in anything else is to see my life end in ashes. He alone can bring me with joy into his kingdom where one day “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10,11).
I want to close this morning with the story of Tom. Tom was a young businessman from one of my former churches who owned his own company. He and his family moved to our area and began attending our church at the invitation of friends. As Tom became a part of our church life, he began having questions that he had not thought about before. He began to hear about a personal relationship with Christ as he talked with other young couples in our church and joined a Bible study group. Tom was not a bad person, in fact, he was a very good person. He had been active in another church where he had held several offices. He believed in Christ and attended church regularly. But he did not have the assurance that Jesus Christ was actually a part of his life, and that he knew him personally. One day he was on a business trip and was doing a lot of thinking. He said to himself: “This is ridiculous. If I am not sure, why not be sure.” So he simply pulled off the highway to a roadside rest. He sat at a picnic table and prayed. He said, “Lord, if you are not in my life, I invite you to come in now. I want to have the assurance that I belong to you and that you are living inside me.” From that point on there was a dramatic difference in Tom’s life. There was a new assurance and joy. He had a new confidence about his relationship with God. It was so simple, but so essential. He just opened up his heart.
I believe in Jesus Christ because I know the difference he has made in me, in people like Tom, and many of you. I believe that Jesus Christ is able to give you that assurance, because he lives and there is no other.
Rodney J. Buchanan
April 29, 2012
Amity United Methodist Church
rodbuchanan2000@yahoo.com
