{"id":13,"date":"2009-10-03T13:18:58","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T18:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.185.166.32\/~davidfoster\/?p=13"},"modified":"2009-10-05T13:34:34","modified_gmt":"2009-10-05T18:34:34","slug":"38-years-ago-today-i-was-hijacked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/38-years-ago-today-i-was-hijacked\/","title":{"rendered":"38 Years Ago Today I was Hijacked"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"praying-hands\"Thirty-eight years ago on this date, I became a Christian.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t become a Christian the way I thought I would.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t go down front in a church.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t sign a card.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a prayer at the end of a conversation.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t gone through a tragedy.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t buried someone, or said good-by to a girlfriend.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, I was at a great time in my life.\u00a0 I had graduated from high school, I was seventeen years old, and that summer I had entered school at Western Kentucky University.\u00a0 I was away from home, in my own apartment, had a job, and life was sweet.\u00a0 The last thing I was thinking about was God, or getting religious.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was on a Friday night, in my apartment.\u00a0 I am not sure exactly what happened, but I know a Billy Graham Crusade was on my black and white TV that I had bought (used) for $20 with graduation money.\u00a0 And something he said, or something God said that night forever changed my life.\u00a0 It was like being hijacked; only the best kind of hijacking you could imagine.\u00a0 It was the night my heart would change forever, and\u00a0 I\u2019ve never regretted a minute.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For 38 years I\u2019ve attempted to walk with God as best I could<\/strong>, to stay connected to Him in this loving, redemptive relationship called salvation.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen Him work in my life.\u00a0 And though I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever heard Him speak audibly, I\u2019ve had five or six times in my life that it couldn\u2019t have been more real if He had.\u00a0 There have been ups and there have been downs, triumphs and tragedies, and through it all, these 38 years have been the joy of my life.\u00a0 God has been faithful at every turn. He has loved me well.\u00a0 And I in turn have attempted to love Him with my heart; not out of fear, but out of love.<\/p>\n

For me, being a Christian isn\u2019t about being right, arguing, trying to convert people, trying to prove God right or fight God\u2019s battles.<\/p>\n

For me, being a Christian starts with a relationship with Jesus Christ<\/strong>, a connection from His heart to mine that has been abiding all these years.\u00a0 For me it means a change of desire, a love for people, a sense of compassion for those who are hurting, a sense of justice for those who have been defiled.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve walked with Christ these 38 years, the walk has gotten sweeter and, yes, deeper.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t mean by that more profound, complicated, and difficult.\u00a0 My faith in Jesus has not made me fitful, afraid, or worried about those I disagree with.\u00a0 It\u2019s not made my world smaller, but larger.\u00a0 It hasn\u2019t tempted me to bring judgment and try to determine who\u2019s in and who\u2019s out, who\u2019s up and who\u2019s down, and who\u2019s right and who\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n

For me, my faith has given me something worth living for.<\/strong> It\u2019s given me a task, a calling in my life to help other people, to lift other people, to inspire them, to call them to come to the God who loves them more than they\u2019ve ever imagined; a God who can redeem them and restore them, forgive any sin they\u2019ve ever committed and shine light in even the darkest places.<\/p>\n

I am a disappointed but satisfied Christian. <\/strong> By that I mean there have been promises made to me by other preachers, evangelists, and other well-meaning Christians that God has never kept.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had to learn that everything disappoints ultimately, so that I can find my ultimate delight in the God who created all of those things.\u00a0 I\u2019ve learned that beyond disappointment there is great delight, that if I find my delight in God, I can then enjoy the things He does and gives.\u00a0 But if I find my joy in the things He gives, I will miss the greatest delight of al<\/strong>l – a loving, day-to-day, unshakable, unbreakable, irrational, remarkable, redemptive relationship with a God who saw me as I was, loved me as I was, but refused to leave me where I am.<\/p>\n

Often people ask me, \u201cHow do I become a Christian?\u201d\u00a0 It sounds too simple and uncomplicated.\u00a0 But all I did that night was bow my heart and say, \u201cJesus Christ, I give all of me I know to all of you I can understand.\u00a0 Take my life, let it be shaped by your love, and motivated by your agenda.\u201d And He has not disappointed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thirty-eight years ago on this date, I became a Christian.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t become a Christian the way I thought I would.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t go down front in a church.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t sign a card.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a prayer at the end of a conversation.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t gone through a tragedy.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t buried someone, … Continue reading “38 Years Ago Today I was Hijacked”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}