They'd drone, "You need to meet Jesus Christ and make Him Lord of your life," in that nasal Southern monotone. Most of the Christians I met looked so sick, broke and bored that I felt sorry for them. I thought I should be converting them! Their lives didn't appeal to me at all! Most were fighting all kinds of afflictions - and they wanted me to get in the same boat with them!
If you happened to actually find Jesus through their witness, they'd let you in on how it was going to be, saying, "Now once you get born again the devil will beat you and bust you. He'll stomp on you, kick your head off, rip your skin off your back. So get ready, he's gonna get you soon! But remember, he that endureth to the end shall be saved."
Well, they didn't say it quite like that. But close. Real close! That is just how it was when I was a young man. I used to think to myself, "Man, I'm gonna wait till the end! When I'm on my deathbed I'm going to ask Jesus to come into my life. I'll slide into heaven on a tight home run! Whoa! Safe! That way I won't have to get run over by the devil."
It is a sad fact that most of the Christians I knew weren't living what they were preaching on Sunday. I'd hear them say, "God is love," and then criticize and fight with each other two seconds after service ended. I thought they were a bunch of hypocrites. "At least I do what I say," I'd reason to myself. I was thinking about sin, talking about sin and doing sin! No hypocrisy here! I was going to hell with gusto and figured that ought to count for something.
Jesus Reached Out to Me
When I finally came to the end of my rope, I was a rock musician, doing drugs and drinking a fifth of whiskey a day. Yet the Lord cared enough about my soul that He put it on the hearts of caring Christians around the world who partner with Billy Graham Ministries.
They put Dr. Graham on primetime national television and for that I'll be eternally grateful. Because it was through his televised crusade that I came to know God.
He showed me a loving and merciful God who was strong enough to wipe the sin out of my heart and compassionate enough to take me just as I was. That night, before a gig in Boston, I walked into a little hotel bathroom and met God. I found out right then and there that He was not enough, He was too much.
It wasn't enough that Jesus came into my heart and saved my soul from hell. It wasn't enough that He lifted the weight off my calloused heart. It wasn't enough that He miraculously freed me from the addiction to alcohol and drugs. It wasn't just enough. It was too much! More love than I could grasp and more than I could use.
God gave more than I could receive.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers