When I first accepted Christ I thought that was it, that I didn’t have to do anything anymore. Wrong! I didn’t know that it was just the beginning.
It has taken me over three decades to realize what I knew and what I didn’t know. Let’s be serious: how are you supposed to know what to learn when you don’t know what you need to know? It’s like someone giving you pieces to a puzzle and saying “put this together” without giving you a photo to refer to. How do you even start? Okay maybe if you were experienced at doing puzzles, you could at least try to piece together the sides because you would know they are the edges. Maybe you could fiddle with them long enough to create the border. But then what? You still wouldn’t know what the picture looked like, so where do you start?
This is similar to what I had to do when I was a young Christian. I knew there was a Bible because I saw people reading from it and knew that I should probably read it. I liked what the pastor said: that Jesus loved me and forgave my sins, and that I would have eternal life in heaven. That part was great! All I had to do was to profess that I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, so I did. Done! Nope. I had no idea what to do or where to go from there. I did not grow up in a Christian household and had no one to guide me or a community of believers to hang out with.
When I first went to buy a Bible, I had no idea that there were different versions of the Bibles. Like any other book, I assumed that there was only one Bible and that everyone read the same one. I ended up buying a King James Version (KJV) only because that was what the woman at the bookstore offered me. It sounded pretty when I read it but was very Shakespearean. I could not understand much of it at all, and if you’re familiar with the KJV, you know what I’m talking about. I wish I had known then that there were easier versions to read and understand.
It has taken me my whole life to discover these little nuances that I wish I had known from the beginning. It would have helped me build a firmer foundation for my spiritual journey instead of having to fill in the gaps along the way. Even with this challenge, I eventually surrendered my life to God and have learned to listen and obey Him willingly and joyfully, trusting that He will provide for me.
I was raised in a non-Christian home and wanted to share the word of God with my parents but found that difficult too. Where do I start? What could they read and what message should I have shared with them to make them understand how wonderful God is? I ended up starting at the beginning with the book of Genesis but soon found that all the details and underlying messages were too overwhelming for my parents to understand, so I stopped. I wanted so much to share my faith with my parents and wanted them to be saved but didn’t know how. I prayed and prayed that God would bring others to bring my parents to the faith, because I couldn’t. I felt I failed both my parents and God and prayed for forgiveness.
Language was one of the other huge barriers in bringing my parents to the faith because English was not their first language. Reading the Bible in English was difficult for them, but I could not read Chinese, so I could not help them read the Bible in their native language either. I gave up on reading the Bible to my parents but decided to focus on a few main points that I wanted them to know: that Jesus loved them, that their sins would be forgiven, and that they could have eternal life in heaven if they accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. I kept sharing these same messages with them over and over for more than 20 years.
My father passed away this last April but a few months before he died, he accepted Jesus as his Lord. Praise God! What a miracle! Now the only person that was left was my mother. I kept praying for her to find Jesus so we could all be together someday.
Talk about the mysterious ways of God. My mother somehow found a copy of the book The Purpose Driven Life in her house, in Chinese too, and started reading it on her own. The first day she spent five hours reading it and couldn’t put it down. Mind you, my mother has not read a book for the past 24 years because her vision is so bad. I don’t even remember how that book got there. Did I give it to her? I don’t remember and it really doesn’t matter; I was just happy that she was reading it. When she finally finished, she asked, “Is it that simple?” I asked her what she meant and she said, “Is it really that simple that God would forgive my sins and I’d get to go to heaven just by accepting Jesus as my Lord and that I don’t have to do anything?” I said “Yes. Jesus died for our sins so that we could go to heaven.” I knew it was a very simple answer, but it was a start. After my mother read John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” I asked her if she wanted to accept Jesus as her Lord and Savior and she said “Yes,” so she did. We prayed over my mom and she accepted Jesus. She smiled afterwards and looked like she was at peace. Praise God again! I am so thankful that God never stopped pursuing my parents and am so grateful that they found Him.
Throughout my years as a Christian I came across many people who wanted to learn about Jesus and read the Bible but found it daunting and difficult to understand. I have prayed for all these years that God would show me a way to share His word so that people would love Him like I do. If only I knew how.
Be careful what you pray for, I guess, because God put it on my heart to write this series of books. I’m not a theologian or even a writer. I’m only doing this because I feel God is asking me to. I intentionally wrote these books in a simple way so that it would be easy for everyone to understand in hopes of bringing more people to God.
“Each day proclaim the good news that he saves. Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does. Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise!”
Psalms 96:2-4
Grace C. Osborne 