Funny and Awesome Moment

Andi and I went to hear Josh Mcdowell on Thursday. He was speaking at the Municipal Auditorium in Nashville. Mcdowell is one of the nation's leading youth speakers. He focuses on apologetics. There are not many youth speakers who take the energy to explain apologetics to teenagers, something I commend him for.

Anyway, toward the end of his presentation he was describing what happened when he finally accepted the truth of Scripture and gave his life to Christ. You would expect in this kind of scenario to hear the speaker talk of a radical transformation and a life now filled with joy and purpose. Instead, Mcdowell said this:

"I had just given my life to Jesus and I wanted to vomit."

He didn't really mean for it to come out funny, but I started dying laughing. I couldn't stop laughing for quite a while. Although just hearing him say it was funny enough, I was equally thrilled to the point of laughter that he was truthful, in a rather extreme way, about how giving your life to Christ comes with consequences and experiences that will be difficult. For him, explaining to his friends and all the people who he had joked about religion with was going to be a scary process. He also discussed how, although the Spirit of God immediately fills the believer, it still takes time to develop into the Christian we are called to be. It doesn't happen overnight.

So, although the Christian life is indeed filled with joy and thankfulness, we do ourselves well when we are truthful with our testimonies and do not fall into the trap of making them sound like a classical evangelical essay on a transformed life. I was pleased that Josh took the time to explain why he wanted to blow chunks.