How I Stopped Running From Jesus

When I summarize my testimony of how I became a follower of Jesus, I usually say that I spent the first 20 years of my life running from Jesus. He then got tired of chasing me and tackled me from behind. I then turned around and said, “Jesus, I found You!” While this is a humorous way of describing my salvation experience, it describes the idea that God is always the initiator and that He is pursuing us. He is the author (pioneer) and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). How He does it is unique to each one of us, but we all have a story to tell. The following is a small part of my story.

I was raised in the church and my older brother and sister both became followers of Jesus during the Jesus Revolution (The Jesus People Movement) in the late 60’s and early 70’s. I was in Jr. High around that time, and I was exposed to these teens who were later known as Jesus Freaks. I liked to be around them because they were nice to me! These teens loved to sing songs (cool) and pray (weird) and talked about Jesus (cool) and the Bible (weird). When I got into High School there were Jesus Freaks on the campus. This was the 70’s, and by then I was smoking weed (we called it “pot” back then) almost every day. I still liked to hang out with the Christians (because they were nice to me), but didn’t want to commit to following Jesus because that would mean I had to give up my “party lifestyle.” I hung around the fringes of Christianity, yet would stay at a safe distance from making any kind of change or commitment.

After I managed to somehow graduate from high school, I continued to get high as I attended a variety of community colleges. Two events happened in my 20th year of life that changed everything. Looking back now I can see that one of the major factors in these events was the fact that my mother was praying for me to repent and come to Jesus for salvation. Her prayers of intercession were kept in heaven until it was God’s sovereign time to pour out the answer. I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes, but God’s answer came down on me - hard!

The first event occurred in my friend Phil’s bedroom at his parent’s house. Phil and I would get high together and we had just purchased an ounce of Thai sticks. For those of you who don’t know what that is, Thai sticks were about the most powerful cannabis you could get (other than hashish) back in the 1970’s. There were no tables or chairs in his room, so we put them down on his low dresser. We had to kneel down to get close to them, and we were inspecting the sticks and thinking how much money we could make by selling them after we had smoked our share. Suddenly a voice spoke in my head! “You are bowing down and worshiping a false idol!” I jumped up and ran out of the room. I knew it was God speaking, and it shook me to the core of my being. I knew right then that I had to change what I was doing and stop getting high. I felt that if I did that God would leave me alone.

“Jesus, I am so sorry. I’ve really messed up my life. I’ve been running from you all my life. I can’t run any more. Please forgive my sins and help me follow you.”

About three months later I was walking to my next class at the community college when I bumped into a friend I knew from the church I grew up in. Bill looked at me and said, “Todd, I haven’t seen you at church in years. You must be really backslidden!” His words hit me like a bolt of lightning. He was just joking around with me, but God was very present at that moment. I ran away again. I wanted to get off the campus because God was there. I skipped my scheduled class and ran to my car. I didn’t get far because God was in my car as well! About 2 blocks away I had to pull the car over because I was weeping uncontrollably and couldn’t see the road. Prayer poured out of me like a torrent. I prayed something like this.

"Jesus, I am so sorry. I've really messed up my life. I've been running from you all my life. I can't run any more. Please forgive my sins and help me follow you."

That was the start of a whole new life for me. There is much more to the story, but what I wanted to share is that God pursued me, and He manifested Himself to me in a way that interrupted my life for good. I tell people I meet, including some of the teens I pray for in Operation PRAY, that if they have a mother or grandmother praying for them to come to Jesus, they might as well surrender now! If you have children, family or friends that don’t know Jesus yet, don’t stop praying for them. God is pursuing them, and He wants to reveal Himself to them. Our prayers are like bowls full of incense kept in heaven (Rev. 5.8), and in God’s perfect timing, these bowls are poured out as the answers come. I believe I’m alive today and following Jesus because God wanted me for Himself and moved on the heart of my mother (and others) to pray for me. Who has He called you to pray for?