Born of the Virgin Mary...Continued from page 6

What a privilege it is to move beyond just the principles to a personal relationship with the God of all history, whose name is Jesus Christ, and who is present in the power of His Holy Spirit.

That's what happened when God took human form.

Hebrews 4:15-16 declares, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

Friday night at the Couples Café, we had a "any-question-goes" time in which young couples peppered me with their questions. One asked, "Give your definition of God." I cast around for some rubric and came up with Paul Tillich's definition, defining God as "the ground of all being." That's a profound definition, isn't it? It sort of says it all, doesn't it? According to this definition, God is sort of an abstract sense of force, or divine being, that always has been and always will be. That's right. But God wanted to move out of the abstract to the highly personal. He had revealed himself already through the prophets by His Spirit to people throughout human history. In the fullness of time, the Word became flesh. God became Incarnate. Jesus Christ is God.

The other day someone told me that they couldn't relate to me because I was converted at age five. They were surprised to hear that my call to become pastor of the Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church in Florida was held up for weeks by some of the members of the Pastor Nominating Committee on the basis that mine was a childhood conversion. Two previous pastors, Lane Adams and Ben Hayden, had been converted in mid-adult life and had very dramatic testimonies of how God had turned their lives around. Finally, in my last prolonged interview, when a couple of them hammered at me with this question again, I broke down in tears and said, "I can't change my story. But let me ask you, what do you want for your own children? To have them live like hell and then get converted later in life? Or to know God's love and grace in the person of Jesus Christ from their early childhood on? They'll have enough ups and downs as it is." When the conversation took that turn, tears came to some eyes. I was excused from the room and then called back with the unanimous call of that committee.

Thank God that Jesus Christ identifies with everyone. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, He has been hammered by temptation in the desert with Satan. He knows what it is to be beaten up by life and, in his humanity, even to feel forsaken by the Father.

I have been fascinated by the life of Johnny Cash. I read many of the obituaries written about him with avid interest. No man had lived harder, failed more often, been more beaten up by life and could have ended up a broken person with no hope. I loved reading the story about when his life was playing itself out that way and he met June Carter. She told him about her relationship with Jesus Christ and urged him to get God's help in kicking his addiction to prescription drugs. She urged him to join her in attending services at First Baptist Church of Hendersonville, Tennessee. This rugged, beaten-by-life hulk of a man had his life turned around by the Incarnate God whose name is Jesus Christ, who empathized with Cash and the dead end at which he found himself.