The road to Calvary is rarely straight. A host of detours, excursions, and u-turns often attend our steps before God brings us to the cross. Such unexpected twists fill conversion narratives with color and texture and bring the greatness of redemption into sharper focus.
Accounts of God’s saving grace are among the most edifying and evangelistically forceful activities of ministry. In addition to enriching our faith, they offer us language and logic for appreciating the divinely appointed steps that lead men and women to conversion. In what follows, I will lay out some of the salient movements of my own testimony (since it’s the story I know the best) in order to consider how God uses our existential wanderings to accomplish what the late Francis Schaeffer called “pre-evangelism,” the process that leads one to conversion itself.
Fire Walk
After five weeks in the hospital, having nearly died from meningitis, I resolved to find life’s purpose. The first step of my quest was to investigate transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. After a few months of making unusual noises in a lotus position, I understood why the Beatles became disenchanted with Mr. Yogi’s method. From there I went on to attend seminars through the Learning Annex, studying under world-class gurus like M. Scott Peck and Deepak Chopra.
The apex of my spiritual journey was a “Fire Walk.” It was at New York’s Jacob Javits Center where more than a thousand people waited to hear motivational speaker Tony Robbins. After three hours of his encouraging affirmations, neurolinguistic programming, and some New Age meditation, our massive herd shuffled outside to the parking lot where we encountered a long stretch of burning coals and embers. According to Robbins, the experience was designed to be a “metaphor” for overcoming our fears and improving life. Never before had a metaphor looked so hot and potentially harmful.
When the lady ahead of me proceeded to walk across the 12-foot path of fire, I inhaled deeply. Tony Robbins’s wife (who happened to be facilitating my line) put her hand on my shoulder and said, “You can do this!” I noticed that she was wearing shoes and was at least 20 inches from the nearest coal; nevertheless, I stepped forward and moved as quickly as my trembling legs could carry me. I don’t know how it worked; all I can say is that I walked across the fire without getting burned. When I cleared the coals, someone immediately hosed down my feet with cold water. Despite the thrill, however, my heart remained empty.
Nut-Jobs Like Me
After months of practicing similar forms of craziness, I met a born-again follower of Christ named Jan. By that time, my searching had yielded questions but no answers, an appetite for God without the knowledge of how to feed it. Then came a turning point, the day when Jan started to tell me about Jesus. Knowing something of my pathetic effort to locate purpose, she started by asking questions along the lines of my spiritual journey up to that point. These questions included: What did you learn from your meditation? How did you benefit from your fire walk? My answers forced me to acknowledge that, despite my best efforts, I was no closer to the goal than when I had started. It was shortly thereafter that Jan explained that Jesus died and rose from the grave for nut-jobs like me.
Looking back through years of hindsight, I see enormous value in Jan’s approach. How intentional she was, only the Lord knows; nevertheless, it is clear that her honest and humble queries into the progress of my spiritual journey were instrumental in helping me realize my need for divine grace. Such was the trajectory in which God led me to salvation.
It appears that the Lord often leads sinners through deserts of longing before he imparts the Water of life. These valleys showcase our feeble attempt to find truth. They parody the reality of Jesus’ death and victorious resurrection. Whenever we invite an unbelieving friend to share his or her story, we create a context in which divine light can shine into darkness, and hopefully, in God’s sovereign timing, the darkness will eventually comprehend it.
