I celebrated my 50th year of knowing Christ in February 2020.
It is my spiritual birthday month, the time that the grace of God was revealed to me in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In February 1970, as a freshman in college, I had just transferred from OU to Central State College in Edmond, Oklahoma.
Old Thatcher Hall became my home for the next year and a half. It was the place where the most important thing that's ever happened in my life took place.
I moved into Thatcher Hall, a men’s dormitory at that time, where many of the football players lived. It was an old building, built in the early days of the college, the 1920’s if my memory is right. It did not have air conditioning, so early in the fall semester and late in the spring semester, my room was very warm. The only way I could try to cool it was to use a box fan to stir around the hot air. During the winter months it was heated by an old steam radiator system, which could not be regulated in individual rooms. This system was quite effective, constantly pumping out heat into the rooms in that old building. Even in the dead of winter it would get so hot that we kept a window open with the box fan it, pointed outward to pull the heat out of the room. There were no private bathrooms. Rather, each floor had a community bathroom with sinks, toilets and showers. It was a solid structure, made of stone and brick, and it had seen a lot of wear and tear over the years. The joke among the students who lived there was that if a tornado and Thatcher Hall had a standoff, there would be no question about the winner—Thatcher Hall. To say the least, it was far from a luxurious living situation and was a step down from the more modern dorm that I lived in the previous semester at OU. But, it was home for the next year and a half while I was at Central State College, and for me, it became holy ground.
A Life Changing Meeting
I have already written how God chased me from OU to Central State by sending a man named John to speak at the football team meeting my first spring semester there. (See previous blog, "God Chased Me Until I Found Him!") John had asked us to fill out a comment card and turn it in with a phone number.
When we met after my class the next day it was in my room at Thatcher hall on the 2nd floor. That pivotal meeting is etched very clearly in my mind. Though I had been in rebellion against God and very angry with him for several years, at that point in my life I was pretty positive about spiritual things. I had been reading the New Testament and had come to a favorable view of Jesus. The man I found in the four biographies of his life was quite unlike the Sunday School Jesus I had heard about. I had moved from antipathy toward him to a point of trying to emulate his values. I was giving some effort to live up to his moral standards according to my understanding of them at the time, though admittedly, I wasn’t doing a very good job. In fact, I knew that in most areas of my life I was failing miserably at being the kind of person that I felt he required.
During our conversation John pulled out a booklet with a question on the front that asked, “Have you ever heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?” He asked if I had ever seen the booklet. I told him that I had not. He then asked if they could show it to me. When I said “Yes,” the other guy with him actually started reading it to me.
You may, or may not, have ever seen or heard of this booklet. (Here is an online version). It has become quite well known in many Christian circles over the years, and I have also shared it with countless people. Hundreds of thousands have been produced and distributed all over the world in many languages. It begins by saying, “Just as there are physical laws that govern the physical universe, so are there spiritual laws that govern our relationship with God.” The Four Laws are:
God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
Man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore he cannot know God’s love and plan for his life.
Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. Through him we can know God personally and experience His love and plan.
We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.
Each of these “Laws” is supported by verses from the Bible that affirm the different points. As John's colleague read through the booklet with me he would pause and ask me after each point what I thought about what we were reading and if it made sense to me. I had no difficulty affirming each Law as true for me and others.
Then we came to a point after the Fourth Law that showed a diagram of two circles. In each circle there was a throne. On the seat of the throne in the first circle was a large “S” which represented Self in control of the life. A cross, representing Jesus, was outside the circle of the life. Inside the circle were a number of dots in chaotic order, some large, some small. “These,” John explained, “represent the various interests and activities of life under the control of the Self, often resulting in discord and frustration.”
The other circle had the cross, representing Jesus, on the throne of the life, with the S off the throne and yielding to Jesus. The dots in this circle were all uniform and in order in the circle. John explained that this circle represented Jesus in the life and in control, with Self yielding to him and the different matters of this person’s life in harmony with God and his plan.
Then he asked me, “Floyd, which circle best represents your life?” He paused and waited for my answer.
I thought about the two circles and what they represented for a moment. Then I answered, “The second circle with Jesus on the throne.”
I lied.
Something big missing
While it was true that I admired Jesus, and I thought it was a good thing to try to live a moral life in line with many of his teachings, he certainly wasn’t inside the “circle” of my life. If I had really been honest, I was trying to manage the different “dots” in my life and they were in a state of disharmony and chaos. I was angry, depressed, selfish, immoral, living life like I wanted, and it wasn’t going very well at all. I had no specific purpose in life. I didn’t really know what Life was all about. I was bouncing around from one philosophy to the next like that ball in a pinball machine. I was adrift in a sea of moral and existential confusion. I didn’t know what goals to pursue or even what I really wanted out of life. I knew something big was missing, but I didn’t know what. I had no solid prescription for success. I was going to college mostly because that was what most of my friends from high school were doing. I didn’t have a clear plan for a major or what I wanted from my education. I was playing football because I had some success at it in high school where it had validated the only identity that I could gain any satisfaction from. By this point, though, a lot of its appeal had waned for me. I had little hope for a future happy family since I had come from a broken home. Nowhere in my own family circle had I seen a healthy relationship, except for maybe one aunt and uncle. I longed for love, for belonging, for peace, for a significant purpose beyond the pursuit of my own selfish, petty desires, but I didn’t know where to find these things. Most of the possibilities that I considered in my world were less than attractive to me. Had I not been dating a girl at that time who had a fairly strong moral compass, I think I could easily have gone down a path of self destruction. In many ways I was a mess. In general, I could only describe myself as...lost.
Sensing that maybe I was not really honest with them—or myself—John asked me some follow up questions to my answer. “Has there ever been a point in your life when you invited Christ into your life to forgive your sins and give you eternal life?”
I answered, “Well, I was baptized in my church when I was a kid, and I read the Bible sometimes, and try to live a pretty good life,” thinking perhaps that was what it took to impress God—and him.
He then said something like, “So, if I understand what you are saying, you think that something you can do makes you right with God. You are depending on your own efforts at goodness to make you acceptable to God. Is that what you’re saying?”
I thought about it for a moment and affirmed that was what I believed would make me right with God. When he pressed me further about what I thought it would take to make me good enough to get to heaven, I answered, “Well, I believe that if I try to live according to what God and Jesus require, if I work really hard at it, then at the end of my life, if I have been good enough, I will make it into heaven.”
I’m not sure where I came up with this idea. It seemed what most religions taught as I understood them. As I mentioned, I had started reading the New Testament about a year before with a very negative attitude. My only motive to begin reading it was to prove to myself that I had studied Christianity, and that by reading through its source document, I then could honestly reject it. But, over time, my attitude toward Jesus changed. I was impressed by him and his teaching and decided that I indeed was going to try to be a “good Christian.” I had also heard from those who preached and taught at the church where my mother took me as a boy that if I got baptized and lived a good, decent, moral life, then I might make it to heaven. At least that was the message that I picked up from them though, admittedly, I probably didn’t listen very carefully.
At that point John took me back in the Four Laws booklet and read to me again a couple of verses that perhaps I had read before sometime but had never really considered very carefully. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9). He said, “Floyd, according to these verses your relationship with God and a guarantee of salvation and eternal life does not depend on what you do. It is a gift from God. It has nothing to do with your works—how good you try to be—but on receiving God’s gift of forgiveness and eternal life by placing your faith in Jesus.”
I don’t remember where the conversation went from there. I do remember that I still thought that I had to somehow be good enough to be accepted by God and probably expressed that to them. They asked if we could meet again sometime and I said that would be fine. I had enjoyed the conversation with them, and I certainly was fascinated by these two guys, especially John, who had been a football star but had a love for Christ and a desire to share him with others.
As they left, John gave me the Four Spiritual Laws booklet and suggested that I read over it again on my own. I told him I probably would and we agreed to meet again in a week or so.
The grace light came on
I set aside the booklet and went about my daily routine. But, after a day or two, I did pick up the booklet and read it over again. I came to those verses in Ephesians and considered what they said. A saving relationship with God is because of his grace. It doesn’t come from me. It is a gift from God. I can’t earn it by any good works. I can never be good enough for God’s grace. I can only receive it by faith in Jesus.
As I pondered those words, something profound happened in my mind and spirit. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but now I know it was the Holy Spirit convicting me of my sin and inability to be right with him through my own abilities and making clear to me what it took to be accepted by God. The light came on. God loved me so much that he gave Jesus to pay the penalty for all the messed up brokenness and rebellion against him in my life. There was no way I could ever reform myself and be good enough to merit a relationship with him or heaven. It was all a free gift that he offered to me if I would simply receive it by putting my faith in Jesus alone to do for me what I could never earn.
This reality was liberating. It was exhilarating. It seemed too good to be true, but there it was, right there in the Bible.
At that moment I simply thanked God for what he did for me in Jesus. I told him that I was receiving his gift. I was giving up trying to be good enough for him. I asked Jesus to enter my life and forgive me, lead me and fix my brokenness.
My Spiritual Birth Day
At that moment, sometime in February, 1970, as an 18 year old freshman, my dorm room on the 2nd floor of Thatcher Hall at Central State College, in Edmond, Oklahoma, became a sacred place for me! It was the time and the place that I met Jesus as my personal Savior, by grace, through faith in him. He entered my life. I was made into a new person spiritually and I have never been the same since. Though over the next year I had a rough start in my new spiritual life, he changed everything about my life starting in that moment.
It was not a deeply emotional moment. There were no tears of remorse or feelings of great happiness or excitement. It was just a quiet moment of extreme gratitude for what Jesus had done for me and relief that I was now in a right relationship with him that did not depend on my failing efforts to be good enough.
I did not fully realize or understand at that time everything about the grace of God. I still don’t. I had little inkling of the profound implications of that experience or what it would mean in the days and years to come. I didn’t know a lot of biblical or theological truth. I did not fully realize the extent of my sin and brokenness and its impact in my own and others’ lives. I did not understand anything about what it meant to walk with Christ and grow in my relationship with him. I had no concept at all that I would ever serve him in any way, especially in vocational ministry. I have grown—and am still growing—in all these things 50 years later. But on that day I began a grace relationship with Jesus for which I am even more grateful today than ever. He transformed—and is continuing to transform—my life by his grace first understood 50 years ago this month by this little man from a little place, in a little dorm room in the middle of Oklahoma in the middle of the United States
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