This Magic Moment

Our kids got new bikes for Easter this year and we spent much of Easter Weekend teaching them how to ride.

Our son Andrew had a really hard time learning. After the first day of trying to master it with no success, he had given up. That evening, with bitterness in his voice, he said, “you know how, in the movies, when a kid learns to ride his bike, there’s that Magic Moment where the Dad is running beside the bike, holding it steady and then, all of a sudden, the Dad lets go and the kid keeps peddling off into the sunset. We’ll I didn’t have that Magic Moment…I want my Magic Moment!”

Have you ever listened to other’s testimonies about how they came to know Christ and felt like you missed out on your Magic Moment? I’m talking about the kind of person who was living the worst kind of life imaginable until he had this Huge, Life Changing Encounter with Jesus that instantly turned his life around, never returning to his old, sinful ways.

These kinds of transformation are amazing, and Praise God for them. But, if you didn’t have that kind of drastic experience, you may question why your salvation story is less than spectacular. When others had an experience that left them immediately able to turn away from past vices completely: smoking, drinking, sex, drugs…why do you still trip up sometimes? And, what about the very emotional experience that others have? Why don’t your eyes fill with tears when you talk about the day you accepted Jesus? What if you can’t even remember the day clearly, you just know that when you were a kid you asked Jesus into your heart and you’ve been serving him ever since.

Here’s the deal…God knows us each personally well enough to know exactly what it takes to get inside our hearts. And, he approaches each of us differently. Some people are like the Apostle Paul…they need a drastic, physical, supernatural event to open their eyes to Jesus. But, many experience a more subtle, more gradual awakening to the Holy Spirit. When you think about your testimony, don’t worry that you’ve missed out on your “Magic Moment”. Because, In the end, it doesn’t matter how you found Christ…it only matters that you found him.

By the way, the next day Andrew gathered up all the determination left in his scraped up body, he and his dad gave it a try, and he finally got the hang of it.