My journey towards Christian faith happened in two stages: first I came to believe in God, and a little later I came to believe in Jesus Christ. The moment when I came to believe in God occurred when I was 16 years old, on my first day in Sixth Form. I had spent the summer worrying about whether everything in our future was predetermined by an impersonal force of destiny, and struggling against an overwhelming wave of adolescent pessimism. I had also spent some of the summer in Paris, where I had visited lots of churches and felt admiration for people of faith. I heard in my heart, quite clearly and distinctly, the words ‘fate is unjust, but God is just’. The words were accompanied by a sense of certainty that a loving God presided over my life, and that nothing is predetermined by impersonal fate. My pessimism vanished instantly to be replaced by an optimism (the gift of hope) that has never left me. Indeed, my optimism is so unshakeable that it can become a weakness.

This encounter with God sent me to read Mark’s Gospel, which I had studied at school but always found boring. I was now reading the text with new eyes, and the personality of Jesus jumped out at me as the perfection of human nature. Over the course of the next year, I made several extended visits to a Christian community where I stayed and did some voluntary work. It is hard to pin down the exact moment when I became a Christian, because I gradually came to accept that Jesus was the Son of God and I began to pray. However, the moment when I encountered Jesus as a living person happened about a year and a half after my first encounter with God. I was at a community eucharist. At a certain point in the service I experienced the complete and perfect certainty that Jesus Christ was truly present with us in the chapel, and that he is alive. This was the gift of faith, and like the gift of hope, it has never left me.

The reasons why I believe are closely linked to the experiences I had all those years ago. I believe because it is clear to me that love is the principle underpinning all reality, and that a loving God has the power to change the course of our lives and the course of history. I believe because Jesus Christ is the perfection of human nature, the hope for what we will be in the future, as well as the Lamb of God who takes away our sins. To know him makes us more human, and the further we depart from his friendship, the further we leave humanity behind. But ultimately, I am convinced that faith is a gift that God will give us if we ask him for it.

"Lazarus Come Out!"

I was watching a video on YouTube the other day by a preacher called RW Glenn. He was talking about a thing called ‘irresistible grace’. I had never heard the term before but when he started explaining what it meant it made me start to giggle. I was laughing like a little kid because it was the first time someone had described what had happened to me when I became a Christian.

When people talk about their conversion they often point to a specific sermon, or bible passage, song or even words on a plastic carrier bag (that’s another story!) For me I can remember very little of what was said, sung and sold.

What I do know was that I was an atheist at a Billy Graham rally! I had been lured to Kirkcaldy ice rink in an elaborate Christian ‘honeypot’ by my then girlfriend. I am aware that I watched an old american guy on a giant TV screen who talked about sin and God and hell. I had heard all that before. This time it was different. It was like being in a movie where suddenly it goes silent. It is silent but you can still see everyone else moving their lips but no sound is coming out. It felt to me as if I was inside a bubble. Into that bubble came a voice saying one word....

JASON.

My name. The voice just said my name in a calm, gentle way, like someone trying to wake me from sleep. Calm but with purpose. It is totally weird but it was like I knew the voice, had heard it all my life in the background ‘noise’ of the world, had sensed it whispering to me in answer to my searching questions.

This was my moment of irresistible grace. I knew this voice was the voice of the one true God. What else could I do? I could not resist. I woke up, got out of my chair and was born again.

Oh, the title, ‘Lazarus come out!’? Some people, half joking, half serious, suggest that Jesus had to call Lazarus by name because his grace is so irresistible that if he hadn't, ALL the dead people would have come out!