Foreword

I would like to tell you about how I came to faith in Jesus Christ and thus secured eternal salvation. A lot of my story involves telling you that my behavior in the past is different from how I live my life today. I think it’s important for you to know that I live my life differently now, but that’s not the main point that I want to get across. My ultimate point in telling my story is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about doing new things (though that should and does happen), but about being a new creature. This Truth is beautifully stated by 2 Corinthians 5:17 (my favorite verse):

Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

My Story

I was raised in a loving home and attended church with my parents every Sunday. While living at home, I was pretty much a goody-two-shoes (at least compared to most of my peers). I left for college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall of 1995. At that point, if someone had asked me if I was going to heaven when I died, I would have said I was reasonably sure I was bound for heaven. My reasoning: I didn’t party, drink, smoke, lie, cheat, steal, sleep around, cuss a lot, etc. You know, the stuff “bad” people do. I was a very moral person and believed in God, so of course I deserved to go to heaven!

By the time I went home the summer after my freshman year, that had all changed. I had become your average college kid that engaged in quite a few of your average college kid (“bad”) activities. I don’t know if my parents or the rest of my family could tell a difference; I knew what was expected of me and was pretty good at hiding things. But the filth, greed, and desires that had always been hidden in my heart growing up had finally emerged as “bad” behavior on the outside. I honestly did not like what I was doing, but really didn’t feel like I had a choice. And while I had guilt about my addictions, some of them were kind of fun. Was I going to heaven now, did I think? Uh, maybe … not?

During my freshman and sophomore years, I started hanging out with my older brother, Knocker, and his wife, Laura. I knew they called themselves Christians, but then again, who wasn’t? I claimed that title as well. (They were/are true Christians, by the way.) When I spent the weekend at their house, I would often accompany them to their church. Little by little, I started to hear some “disturbing” things in the sermons. Things like everyone is a sinner (even the pastor!!!) and no one can earn their way to heaven by doing good things (or by not doing bad things). This is because God is totally holy and totally perfect and only totally perfect people can be in His presence in heaven. But … there is GOOD news! God loves us so much that He came down to earth in the form of a man (Jesus), lived a sinless (perfect) life, and then died on a cross. All because He loved me and knew I couldn’t do a thing to get to heaven on my own. He had to do it all for me, and all I had to do was take His word on it (have faith) in order to be perfect in His eyes and get to heaven. In other words, He had a free gift for me if I would accept that I was sinner in need of a Savior.

If I had heard this good news (gospel) before my freshman year, I honestly don’t know if I would have believed that I was sinner. But my college experience showed me otherwise. So, you’d think I would have jumped at this free gift, right? Wrong. I questioned whether I could really have this gift. I was still caught in my lifestyle full of immorality, and I honestly kind of enjoyed it, despite the guilt. It didn’t seem right that I could just say, “OK, God, I accept your free gift. Thanks. Now I’ll go over here and keep on doing the same old stuff I’ve been doing, even though I know it is wrong. But you said I was going to heaven if I believed, so I believe.”

I told my brother, Knocker, about this dilemma. I asked if I would still be going to heaven if I said I believed but kept living my life the same way as before. What he said startled me and has stayed with me to this day. He looked at me and said, “But Carla, if you really believe, you won’t want to do that stuff anymore.” I must confess I simply did not believe him.

On Sunday, January 18, 1998, I woke up at 11 am. I was spending the weekend with Knocker and Laura, and they had already gone on to church. The service started at 11 and I didn’t really have anything appropriate to wear, so I decided not to go on to church. And as soon as I decided that, I got up and drove to church. I remember thinking on the way, “Didn’t I decide not to go?” I got to church very late but managed to find a seat next to Knocker and Laura. I can’t really remember what the sermon was about, but at the end, the pastor asked everyone to stand up and close their eyes. He said to imagine that a meteor or something had just crashed into the church and we had all died. He then asked those who knew they would be going to heaven to raise their hand. Boy, did that irritate me! I felt like everyone was looking at me with my hands down by my side. And then he had the nerve to ask those who weren’t sure where they would go to raise their hand. Now I was downright mad! I kept my hand down I was so frustrated and angry. But when he asked those who weren’t sure to accept the free gift, something inside me started screaming, THIS IS IT! DO IT! I asked Jesus to forgive me because I knew I was a sinner and that I needed Him to save me. In my mind’s eye I saw that my entire body was covered with black filth. I rubbed it off, molded it into a ball with my hands, placed it in a beautifully-wrapped box, and gave it to Jesus. And then I just started sobbing. I kept my head down so that my hair would cover my face. I knew that if Knocker and Laura saw me crying they would ask me what was wrong and that they would make me talk to the pastor if I told them what had happened. Which was the last thing I wanted to do right then. So I waited until we got back to their house. I talked to them all afternoon about it and started to realize that I actually wanted to change my life! Knocker had been totally right!

Now this is the point in the story where I tell you that my lifestyle changed and that God enabled me through the Holy Spirit to conquer the addictions that had surfaced my first year of college. I don’t want to minimize the fact that that all that happened. My behavior did change, and I mean DRASTICALLY. But if I go on too much about that, you might miss the point of this story. My changed behavior was merely a symptom of what happened that day. The real change happened inside my heart when I went from what the Bible describes as a “dead” man to a new, living creature in Christ. By faith alone, my old, “dead” self with all my sins had been crucified on the cross with Jesus. And like Him, I had arisen from the grave, but as a new “alive” creature that possesses the very righteousness and perfection of God Himself! (In terms of getting into heaven, this is how God sees me – as perfect and sinless as Jesus. This is not to say that I have not sinned since January 18, 1998. Only that all those sins have been forgiven and covered over with Jesus’ blood.) The fact that as a new creature I do new things is totally secondary. It simply proves to those around me that my death and resurrection had already occurred. I was “born again” as a new creature in Christ. I have nothing to give in return for God’s gift and deserve to go straight to hell. But I know I won’t. In Ephesians 2:1-10, Paul explains this gospel (“good news”) nicely:

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.