Glimpses of Grace

Today on Moments of Grace our is Will Lemmers. Will lives in Gettysburg PA. He is an assistant Sunday School Teacher, he sings in the choir and he has a great interest in creation.

Moments of Grace:

I came to faith is Jesus at a very early age. And since then I have lived through seasons of various levels of devotion to Him. When I was sixteen years old I started to really get serious about the faith, and within that year I read through the Bible for the first time.

I decided at that time that I would no longer listen to any secular rock music and said goodbye to all my Led Zeppelin cds, all my Nirvana and Guns n' Roses, no more Metallica or Bon Jovi, lol. And I really started trying to live the Christian lifestyle. 

I began going regularly to church and youth group. It was also at that time that my parents introduced me to C.S. Lewis. My mom bought me a copy of a C.S. Lewis biography which was a part of the Heroes of Faith series that can probably still be found at Christian bookstores. 

Soon after that, I borrowed a copy of Mere Christianity from the Gettysburg College Library. Now I was getting immersed in Christian apologetics. All of this was shortly after I had dropped out of public high school, and had started working full time at a local restaurant. 

At eighteen, I decided to go back to school and I enrolled at the Adams County Christian Academy, where I would earn my diploma. I had read more of Lewis' writings and much of Josh McDowell's material. At ACCA, I learned a bit more about the creation/evolution debate as well, which inspired me to write a song called "Mutant Monkey".

Now, maybe it was my introduction to apologetics, or maybe it was just a part of growing up. But I had begun to think more about what and why I believe. C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowel were of profound help to me, but as I read the biblical accounts of events like the parting of the Red Sea and the miracles and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it was just difficult for me to imagine that those events actually, really happened. And I wondered to myself whether or not faith requires the ability to imagine it in one's mind.

And it was sobering, to say the least, to realize that a person's eternal destiny depends on their response to a poor, first-century carpenter-turned-wandering-preacher from a tiny little dot called Israel. I grappled with all this in my mind.

After completing high school, I continued to go through various ups and downs in my walk with the Lord. Some of the downs seem more significant than others, maybe they're not. I have reached a point in my thought-life where the truth of gospel of Jesus Christ seems self evident. 

I look at this troubled world (on the news as well as the History Channel), and I look at my own life. I see the need for grace and salvation. I can see that humanity is made in the image of God. But I can see how marred by sin humanity is too. How broken is this world in which we live.

I see the prophet's words vindicated by the history that continues to unfold in the Middle East and the rest of the world. And I think about Jesus, and His message. His offer of a new creation, starting inside the believer's heart and life. And I think about the apostles, with their lives turned upside down because of what they saw with their own eyes (1st John 1:1-3). And I know that it's all true.

I still wrestle with sin as I strive to live out the Christian lifestyle. I'm not very good at it. And I realize that all my life is, to use the words of a song by Tait, "holding out for grace". And so is the Church, and the world.