I Want What You Have

“Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)

“I want what you have.” I remember those words like it was yesterday. I said them to myself about my wife, then just a friend, when I was lost and did not know Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Life for me was a tumble. I just went from one crisis to the next…nothing ever seemed to go my way. I was tired of being in crisis. I had no peace.

But Robbie had just as much going wrong in her life as I did in mine – perhaps more. Yet, she just seemed to smile her way through it. She had peace – peace that I could not understand – especially given the circumstances she faced. How could she face what she was facing and have such peace?

She later told me why she had such peace and how she found it. It was in the parking lot of a McDonald’s one day when a co-worker of hers boldly told her that she was playing church but did not know Jesus. It was that day that she asked Jesus to come and live in her heart. And since that day, she has lived for him. I’m a witness to that change. But when she told me that story 22 years ago, I thought it was the hokiest thing I’d ever heard. We even joked about that day as the day she got a “Happy Meal”.

I didn’t come around for quite a while because I just could not believe that the answer to all my problems could be so simple. I know today I was under conviction then, but my mind was fighting off what made absolutely no sense to me. A lot of lost folks get where I got and decide that it just can’t be true. They make the fatal mistake to face the challenges of life without Christ. I hurt for them. Maybe that’s why God spoke to me to write this very personal account about how I came to the realization that I could no longer live without Christ.

You have to think like a child to become a Christian. As adults, we think we can work through and solve all of our problems on our own. We are taught to be strong, grow up, keep a stiff upper lip, and carry on. Life brings trouble and we must learn to live with it.

That’s what I thought, too. But I saw something very different in Robbie, and I realized it was something I did not have. I also knew it was supernatural and that frightened me. Something I could see, but could not understand, was giving her joy in the middle of a storm. To many adults, and to me at 38, I just couldn’t make any sense of it.

Robbie’s explanation she later gave me is the reason I am saved today. “Quit trying to figure it out,” she told me. “You won’t always have the answers. There is something out there bigger than you, willing to give you the same peace I have, no matter how complicated your life is getting.”

But it was what she said after that that made the most sense to me: “What have you got to lose? You’ll live your life a better person and if it’s not true at the end, you will be remembered as a better man then than you are now!”

Strangely enough, that made sense to me. Today, I stand saved. After salvation, I soon realized what Robbie told me was all true. Because I knew on the inside I had something to help me face my problems that I did not have before I asked Christ to come live in my heart. I had the inexplicable peace the Bible talks about. It’s the peace that passes all understanding. That is the same peace that I saw working in Robbie. I could feel it, and over the last 22 years it hasn’t solved my problems, but it sure has helped to face them without fear.

Keep praying for your lost friends and family. Don’t give up on them. God is still in the salvation business. And remember, the peace they see on your face may very well convince them to want what you have.