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Acts of Faith: God has given me a love for people

Once skeptical, now convinced, God has changed his life

By Brad Warner

Contributor

I don’t know when I first became a skeptic as a child. I do, however, remember at around the age of eight attending my maternal grandfather’s funeral.

My paternal grandmother said, “Your grandfather has gone to a better place.  He’s gone to be with God in heaven”.

I responded matter-of-factly: “There is no God and there is no heaven.”

I remember graduating from high school as an atheist. I simply didn’t believe that any sort or type of god existed. I did well in school and I believed that intelligent people are atheists.

And I believed that Christians were stupid and the Bible was a book of fables and stories. I wasn’t interested in what religion offered.

But I had a good friend who I had known since the beginning of high school. I knew he went to church, but we never talked about it. In fact, I avoided the subject.

And much to my displeasure, he invited me to church a couple of months before graduation.

I was terrified to go. I had seen various religious people on TV and, frankly, they scared me. Some still do.

It was a couple of months before I entered university. I had only been to a church for a couple of funerals and weddings my entire life. But because of a friendship, I decided I would check it out. And before the service, I was given a bible. We read something from the Old Testament. I am not even sure where it was from, perhaps from Isaiah.

Something inside me clicked. I had never personally investigated the claims of Christ or any other religion. And I decided I would be open enough to check this out.

This was a couple of months before I started SFU. I began a two-year search. Gradually over time I became convinced that God existed, that Jesus was more than a man, and that my real need was forgiveness and transformation. I came to believe that my purpose in life was a relationship with Him.

Looking back, I now believe that God changed my life. One fairly obvious way is that I once was skeptical, but now I’m convinced.

One surprising way that God has changed my life is that God has given me a love for people that I didn’t have before, especially for the skeptics out there.

Brad Warner is associate pastor at Burnett Fellowship.