FollowI love reading testimonies from people who have come to faith in Christ and I am always struck by the diversity of these experiences. As a scientist, the stories that involve a sceptic weighing up the evidence for/against Jesus being the Son of God and coming down in favour, are those that resonate most with me.
Whilst there is a lot of commonality with my own experience, one of the joys of being a Christian is knowing that we have a personal relationship with God and that God makes His presence known to each of us in different ways, as the variation in testimonies bears out.
One of the common threads in all these experiences appears to be that much of our life is an apprenticeship, so that when the invitation from God comes for us to know Him, we might accept and make the most of that opportunity. For me, that apprenticeship was through the study of science, interrogating evidence and in logical reasoning. For C.S. Lewis, it was via the study of ethics and philosophy and his path to enlightenment was via reasoning about universal morality.
In this respect, God reveals Himself to be the perfect teacher: building on what we already know; meeting us where we are; and inspiring us to dig that little bit deeper in our search for truth.
As disciples of Christ, that apprenticeship continues for the rest of our lives – indeed, we would argue that this apprenticeship is the very purpose of life.