Launching My Journey

On this blog-site, I want to share a number of basic ideas that helped my launch my now forty-five year journey with Jesus from a healthy platform. My hope and prayer is that these are valuable for you wherever you are on your journey. Then pass them along to others.

Since reflecting back on the first two years of my Christian journey birthed these blogs, let me begin where it all began with me.

My mom insisted I went to church until turning thirteen. Nothing in church intersected my life so at thirteen I became a “CEO” Christian (“Christmas & Easter Only”). By my mid-twenties, I struggled mightily with purpose in my life. I did not like who I was and escaped mostly through alcohol and cards. I had no idea where I came from, where I was going or what purpose I had on the way. At times when I was quiet and reflective, despair hit me with gripping darkness.

I was working in an accounting firm in Colorado Springs in my mid-twenties. An older lady who was like a second mom to me was dying of leukemia. I visited her in the hospital one day at my lunch break. Never having been around a dying person before, the awareness of death shook me to my core. After the visit, I drove my red Fiat-124 rag-top convertible back to work and a violent hail-storm threatened to destroy it. I quickly pulled under a large tree for protection.

Surrounded by nature’s fury as I sat alone, the deep feelings of my imminent loss hit me hard. I prayed…perhaps my first prayer ever. I was an agnostic, unsure if God even existed. Yet I prayed: “If you will heal her and save her life, I will serve you.” In a flash, the thought rushed unbidden into my mind. “Jim, if you think there’s even a possibility of such a God existing, what are you doing bargaining with him?” Then my second prayer. “If you make yourself real to me, I’ll serve you.” Nine months later, in the attic of my in-laws’ farmhouse in Haven, Kansas, God answered this prayer. My response: “Jesus, I don’t know very much about You. I do know I can’t lead my life the way I want. Here is my life just as it is, and I’ll take your life back in return. I’m all Yours.”

That simple prayer of all-in allegiance to Jesus as I knew Him at that specific moment was the pivot point of my life. I later realized that in that instant, I passed out of death into life. The Bible began to make sense to me for the first time. As I learned more about Jesus, I responded with a consistent, “Yes, Lord!” I enjoyed hanging around Christians, not as a have-to like during my childhood, but as a get-to.

Life made more sense. “The way in is the way on!” So I can look back and see how God guided me into at least three healthy, foundational beliefs. (1) God wooed me and I responded. (2) I was certain I could not run my life myself. (3) I was all-in with Jesus, best I knew, from the get-go. I wonder what would happen if we all laid these three simple responses into our daily lives.

 

This came from my book, Foundation Stones. I also have a web-site with tools, books and "more than Bible studies" that have helped me to live out of this spiritual DNA, www.JimFredericks.com