I was not looking for God. In fact, I was avoiding him. But as someone (I’ve forgotten whom) so memorably stated, the ‟Hound of Heaven” was pursuing me, and somewhere between the Geology building at CSU and ‟gruesome Newsom” Hall (my dorm) on a sunny November afternoon in 1974, He caught me eternally.
Like a guided missile, Chuck Dixon gained target lock on me and pursued me across the
beautiful, tree-lined commons on the old part of campus. I had just finished studying for a
geology exam and was walking back to the dormitory. Despite my evasive actions (I could see he had a Bible under his arm, and I was definitely NOT interested), Chuck caught up to me.
For the next several hours I fired question after question at the poor man, thinking I could at least challenge, if not dislodge, his faith in an ancient book and the ancient God of whom that book testified. No such luck. Every challenge was parried by specific verses of Scripture. Chuck wielded the Bible as though he actually believed what it said and considered it the final authority.
This I had never seen anyone do. In my background, the Bible had been treated with the
respect one would grant a favorite coffee-table book; it was not treated as a reliable authority containing the true answers to life’s most basic questions.
I can’t explain it—but the light dawned on me on that sunny afternoon. It was not some
emotional, weird crisis, but a growing realization that culminated in the conviction that the
Bible was indeed God’s book and that it spoke with God’s voice. Chuck invited me to repent
of my sins and pray and place my trust in Christ. Jesus Christ had secured for me the
forgiveness of all my sins by His work on the cross. In His death He absorbed the wrath of
God directed at me on account of my sins. As an eighteen-year-old college student, my sins
then (and since) have been many. But they have all been covered by the blood of His cross.
Paid in full.
In Jesus’ resurrection He demonstrated that His claims were true and that God had accepted the payment of the penalty on my behalf. I was free, no longer under condemnation.
Instead of Paul’s ‟Who art thou, Lord?” I finally knew who Jesus is—He is the Creator God,
the Sovereign Lord, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the Redeemer
and Sustainer of Life, the exalted Majesty on High, the soon-coming King.
And He is mine, and I am His.
