Why I Am A Disciple
by Jimmy Humphrey
In the ten years I have been a Christian, I have heard many different reasons as to why other people believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, there seem to be as many different reasons why people believe as there are people in the world. There are many whose testimony is quiet ordinary and without a lot of drama behind them. Then there are those who have a testimony that is pretty complicated, full of action, drama, visions, miracles, and would be considered extra-ordinary.
Whatever the case, I believe if you were to carefully examine the testimony of every believer, including your own conversion experience, you would find they all have one thing in common: a burning bush event.
Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, “I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight…” (Exodus 3:1-3, NASB)
Undoubtedly, this event in the life of Moses falls into the extra-ordinary category as far as testimonies are concerned. In the story we read how Moses was simply going about his every day life, doing what probably had been his every day job for nearly forty years. Then suddenly, when he did not expect it, he had an encounter with the Lord. This encounter arrested his attention, to which he turned aside to see "a marvelous sight."
Whatever the unique details surrounding our own conversion experience, I believe if we were to truly reflect on our life, we would find a time in it which we encountered the Lord through a burning bush. Indeed, I believe we would find our life has mirrored that of Moses' in great detail. From the beginning, all Moses knew was death. His birth was marked by a great slaughter of children. He grew up in Egypt saturated by a culture full of dead idols. Around his fortieth year, he killed a man with his own hands, and then fled into a desert for forty years. But with one foot in the grave, in his eightieth year Moses had an encounter with the Lord, and when he responded to the Lord by turning aside to see the living God, Moses passed from death to life.
Is this story not like yours? Prior to knowing the Lord, was your life not marked by continual death? Yet the moment you turned aside to see, like Moses, did you not also pass from death to life? No matter what precious encounters we may have with the Lord after that time, it is that first moment that will always stand out in our minds as the most as the moment that made the ultimate difference in our lives. Indeed, I think such can be likened to a couple who has been married for many years. Although they have shared many intimate moments together in their life, all of various degrees of intensity, the one they will always remember the most and will forever stand as a moment of radical transformation will be the moment they first encountered one another on their wedding night.
Indeed, I have grown more and more convinced over the years that our original encounter with the Lord, in whatever form that took, should be the basis by which we, "give an account for the hope that is in you," (1 Peter 3:15) and it should help steer us through the choppy waters of life. It should be that pivotal moment that serves as the very foundation of our faith in Christ. When we are assailed by doubts from the devil, we should tell him of our burning bush experience. When the world demands to know why it is we believe what we do, instead of turning to the clever answers Christian apologists, we should simply share with them how we first came to know the Lord.
Leonard Ravenhill often said that a man armed with an argument is no match for a man armed with an experience. I have personally found this to be true. This is all the devil and the world can do to assail our faith: offer arguments. I have found that while counter arguments have their place, ultimately the thing that the devil and the world will not be able to argue about is our encounter. Such is a precious and historical moment in time by which we first met the risen Lord Jesus Christ. It was an event like no other that transformed us like no other.
For a moment, I would like to talk in a less theoretical and abstract way about this issue, and simply recall my burning bush experience. When I was about fourteen years old, I found myself attending a Passion Play at my aunt’s Church. It was there I saw the gospel story unfold before my very eyes for the first time. I saw a man named Jesus pushed down the isle, being beaten to a bloody pulp by Roman soldiers. I saw them mock and taunt Him. Eventually, they crucified Him, and after He was killed, they placed Him in a tomb where He remained for three days. But after three days, the stone on the tomb was rolled away, and Jesus emerged from death victoriously.
Shortly after this, the pastor of the Church came on stage and made a simple appeal to all who wanted to receive the Lord that night. Many came forward, including members of my own family. As they made their way forward to the front, I found myself sitting alone. I wanted to respond to the message, but sat frozen. Suddenly, I became very aware of God’s presence. Overwhelmed by Him, I heard the Lord speak to my heart for the very first time that night. He simply said to me that He loved me and wanted me to respond to the invitation of the preacher. He said that I did not have to go up front if I did not want to, but, if all I wanted to do was simply kneel at my pew, that I was surrounded by people who loved me, and would help pray with me.
I wanted to respond to the Lord so much. But something in me just would not budge to His prompting. Time went by, and eventually the sense I had of God’s presence left. I was not raised in the Church, nor did I receive any meaningful religious instruction growing up as a child. Indeed, I doubted whether there even was a God, and thought science had proven God was simply a thing for people going through a mid-life crisis. But that night, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was a God.
I did not come to put my trust in the Lord that night. Indeed, I can still recall laying on my aunt’s sofa as I fell asleep, staring off into the darkness of her living room. After having such a brilliant encounter with the Lord that night, I recall the darkness I looked off into seemed darker than it ever had before. Indeed, for the next couple of years things would get all the darker for me. But through that time, though I did not know it, the Lord continued to pursue me. I would receive exposure after exposure to the gospel message thanks to the inroads it made into the life of my family. And finally, when I could run no more, as I lay upon my bed one night, I uttered a simple prayer to the Lord, and gave my heart over to Him.
It wasn’t long after this that I began to truly wrestle with my newly found faith. Indeed, the intellectual arguments of our secular society greatly assaulted my faith, and I began to have continual doubts running through my mind. Though I was growing in the Lord, I couldn’t overcome the nagging doubts I had about some of the claims the Scriptures made that science assured me were wrong. Indeed, these doubts assaulted me so greatly that as I was preparing a sermon that I was to preach the next day, I wondered if I would even be a Christian when I woke up in the morning!
But as I wrestled with my thoughts for and against the gospel message, the Lord suddenly filled me with the grace to overcome these doubts. Instantly, my mind was flooded with thoughts about my first encounter with the risen Lord, and how He spoke to me. Whatever my doubts were, and no matter how air-tight the world’s arguments were, I knew that I knew that I knew that I knew that there was a God, and that He had brought His Son Jesus Christ back to life. From that moment on, though I have encountered many things that could cause me to doubt my faith, these things no longer shake me.
This is ultimately why I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. For no matter what the world or devil may say, they are no match for a man who has had an experience. The reality of my burning bush experience, and my personal encounter with the risen Lord when I first heard the gospel, has ultimately become the foundation of my faith. All the arguments for and against, as great as they might be, are nothing to be compared to the reality I’ve experienced in Christ.
It is my hope that with this essay you will recall the first time you encountered the risen Lord Jesus Christ, and make absolutely sure that event serves as the foundation of your faith. I would love to read the testimony of whoever might be so bold as to share it.