JESUS THE WAY!

I had just passed my driving test – yes, many years ago now. At that time  Christians often had a Bible text in the rear window of their car. Was I confident enough in my driving to declare myself a Christian? But if not now, when?

There was one text which so wonderfully expressed my own Christian experience and that was John 14: 6

          ‘Jesus said, ‘I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me.’

Of recent weeks this verse has been the theme of our ministry in church.  Jesus – the Way, and I felt I wanted to share this, my testimony.

So how had I been confidant that this verse was especially for me and that I should display it in my car?

I had been brought up among a group who called themselves Bible Students. I knew a great deal of the Bible but when Billy Graham came to London I heard the Gospel in a fresh way and for the first time realised my need of a Saviour. I began to go to Evangelical meetings but was still attending services with these Bible Students. Finding serious differences, I cried out in agony to God:

‘Lord, it was so easy for your disciples. All they had to do was so follow Jesus, and I am trying to find out what is right and what is wrong.’ 

Wonderfully, I heard God answer me. ‘No,’ he said, ‘It is just the same for you. It is just for you to follow Jesus.’

‘Lord,’ I replied, ‘If that is true, then make it so plain to me that it  is either to choose you or to deny you.’

God did just that. A few weeks later I was in a  small cottage meeting where the whole theme was, ‘Come out from among them and be separate.’ Somehow I knew God was speaking to me. Sharing with a friend, he replied, ‘For me to attend a place where they deny that Jesus is God would be to deny my Lord.’

He had made the issue plain, for I had been brought up to believe that though Jesus was our Saviour, yet he was a created being, and the Trinity was a false doctrine. 

God had answered me. I chose Christ. Now with Thomas I could say, My Lord and my God.  Ever since then, every decision I have to make is a matter of choosing Christ.

Facing leaving everything I knew to go to the mission field, I expressed my fear that I did not have the courage to do it. Then God gave me a picture. Jesus was standing at the door of the airport and told me, ‘I am going. You can come with me, or leave me.’  I knew I could not leave him. He is my way. When I got to New Guinea, Jesus was there. He has never left me.

And also he is

‘Jesus the Truth.’ I had been brought up to believe that we, the Bible Students, had the truth. We were the truth people. But now, in following Jesus, not only their teaching with regard to the Trinity, but much other of their teaching I had to discard. No longer did I have all the answers, as I had thought. I was confused. But I learned that when things happen we cannot understand that we must go to Calvary. No, we may not understand but we can trust in the love of this God who died for us, and I did find some relief that I no longer had to explain away those things that did not seem to fit in. Jesus was the truth.

Later I married a theologian, and came to more understanding, but still, for me, Jesus, not doctrine, is the Truth.

And ‘Jesus the Life’? Before I knew Jesus as my Saviour I had been baptised, I had consecrated my life to him yet I had no joy in my life. Often I would pray that God would take me to heaven because I thought I would be happy there. But now I had a joy and a peace in my life, even though it is far from perfect. When I am feeling burdened, condemned, disconsolate, I am able to bring it all to Jesus. He teaches me to cast off the spirit of heaviness and put on my garment of praise.

So it was that with confidence I drove my little Morris 1,000 through the streets of London, and often I would hear little children reading aloud these precious words.

Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ Now, many years later, my days of driving now past, it is still my testimony, and I pray yours too.