The Expedition

Expedition pastor Sean Griffin shares this story about who he was, who he is, and how God changed his life.

 “Get out. Now!” I said calmly but cruelly to my friend, Jay, who was sitting in the passenger seat of my ’64 Buick Le Sabre. I had offered him a ride home from school after our high school track practice, and as we were driving I had asked him “are you still going to that church?” He hesitated before looking over at me and saying “yes.” That’s when I pulled over to the shoulder and hit the brakes, still two miles from his house, and ordered him out. He took his bag out of the back seat, got out, and started walking. I turned the car around and headed home.

I didn’t have much patience for people who believed in God back then. I thought I was an atheist! As a typically self-centered teenager, I was probably a little worse than most. I recall thinking very carefully one evening about what I would have done, had I been on the sinking Titanic. Since I was convinced that this earthly life was all there is, it was coldly clear to me that, if necessary, I would throw the women and children overboard in order to secure a lifeboat for myself.

Now don’t misunder-stand me! I was raised in a very loving family. I was very fortunate to have two wonderful parents who gave of themselves and of what they had just because they loved me. They are still like that today. My childhood was pretty good by almost any standard. In spite of my family, though, I was arrogant. I learned to depend on myself and to believe in my own ability to handle any situation. I did not need any God.

I remember one slow Sunday morning, flipping through television channels, and seeing a choir singing on a religious broadcast from beautiful Silver Springs, Florida. I was disgusted at the numbing ‘happiness’ of the singers – all those pretty people dressed so nicely in such a beautiful setting. It all looked so fake to me, because in my thinking, those people weren’t thinking for themselves, but were what I called ‘blind sheep.” I thought it was mind-numbing and repulsive. It was a religion for weak-minded people and hypocrites. I suppose that was what motivated my cruel nature to kick my friend, Jay, out of the car, or to go out a couple of nights to throw rocks at one of the local churches. I hated the idea of God. I was independent and didn’t need a God or a church.

And I was not a very nice person.

Up until I went to college, no one had ever told me who Jesus really said he was or what he said in the Bible. I was never challenged to deal with Jesus’ claims in the Bible and either believe them or reject them. I believed in the ability of my own mind to reason through anything (yeah, I was pretty arrogant - but boy, have I been humbled!). I didn’t need some God. So, I was left to create my own ideas – pretty unsuccessfully!

When I went to college, I was the man in charge. I could take care of myself, or so I thought. I jumped into the party scene. After a very short time, I discovered that Mr. ‘I am in control – I can handle it’ actually couldn’t handle it and was not in control. My entire philosophy of life had been built on my being able to reason through anything and be in control. However, fairly frequently I was finding myself under the control of something else. When the resident assistant walked onto my dorm floor one afternoon and found me staring up at him, unable to get on my feet, I knew that I was a fraud. That was a major turning point in my thinking. If I wasn’t in complete control, and my philosophy wasn’t working, then could it possibly be wrong?

 
At the same time, I started running into Derrick, a kid from the south-side of Chicago, whom I had met the first day on campus but whom I hadn’t seen for at least a month since then. He started asking me if I wanted to get together just to go get something to eat or to study. When we got together, he would ask me strange questions, like “what is love?” or “what’s going to happen when I die?” Because I thought of myself as intellectual, I enjoyed our discussions, but Derrick challenged what I had always believed.

In October of 1982, Derrick invited me to go to a camp-out with his church. My first reaction was to say no. Why get stuck with a bunch of hypocrites who would probably try to brain-wash me. However, my life was getting out of control. My belief in myself had been challenged, and increasingly I was open to new possibilities. I decided to go, but I prepared myself to stave off any cult brainwashing tactics. When I arrived out in Brown County State Park, though, I found the people to be much different than I had expected for Christians. They were ‘real’ – not like the plastic people I remembered from TV. They were smart and fun and didn’t act like they were perfect. During the course of the first evening, I struggled with the question of whether there must really be a God. I realized that if I made room for a personal God in my thinking, it answered a lot of questions that were unanswerable as an atheist. Late that Friday evening, October 29, 1982, Derrick and I sat out on a picnic table and he explained to me from the Bible how all men had sinned – or done wrong things – and fell short of God’s standard of perfection (Romans 3:23). How my ‘sin’ was deserving of death, of being separated from God forever. I needed to repent, or change my mind. He explained that Jesus came to earth and went to the cross to die in my place (Romans 6:23), and that if I believed in him and trusted that he had died for me, I could be saved and have eternal life (John 3:16). I became convinced that this was right. Derrick shared with me Romans 10:9-10 – “If you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” I remember sitting on that picnic table and talking to God, telling him that I knew I was a sinner and I wanted to accept his gift of forgiveness and life through Jesus. I told him that I wanted Jesus to be in charge of my life and take control. I had certainly been making a muck of it on my own.

My life changed drastically from that point on – and for the better! I don’t mean that everything has been perfect and rosy for me. Life is very difficult at times, but I do know that no matter what circumstances I am in, my life is in God’s hands and he has promised that I will be with him forever. Yeah, I’m going to heaven! But only because of God’s mercy on me - I certainly don’t deserve it. I know forgiveness and security every single day. I still sin, but not as the basic pattern of my life. Through Christ, I have learned to love and care about others.

If you don’t know what will happen to you when you die, or if life just seems out of control to you like it got for me, that could simply be God trying to get your attention. Do you want to learn more or are you ready to let God have control? Maybe the verses below will help. Ask God to show you what they mean for you and your life.

Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.”

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever should believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

John 5:24 “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.”

Romans 10:9-10 “If you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Talk to God and tell him you know you are a sinner and want to repent (change your view or direction to follow God’s). Accept the gift of Jesus’ dying on the cross for you. Tell him you believe he died and came back to life, and ask him to come into your life and take over.