Update (9:03 p.m.): This is unbelievable. I won something? I never win anything! And I beat Hugh Hewitt. Cool. Thank you very much. My peers chose my blog for Best Evangelical Blog-Politics. 
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Yesterday my pastor told us how God got his attention.
He said that as a young man, he knew better than to make absolute declarations about the non-existence of God, so he consider himself agnostic rather than an atheist. He conceded it was possible God existed but that there was no way of knowing whether God existed.
One day he was reading The Book of Acts (for some reason I wasn’t taking notes, so I can’t remember why he was reading the Bible), and two words made an impression on him: “stood up” in Acts 2:14. Those two words changed his life. Why?
Acts is a record of the early Christian church and how it was formed. We read that after Christ’s resurrection, he came to the disciples and told them to go to Jerusalem and wait for the “Promise of the Father.” Christ had promised that after he was gone, he’d send a “Helper” who would teach them all things and remind them of what Jesus said when he was with them, all the prophecies and promises he’d made.
When a person is “saved,” that is, when God has forgiven his sins, God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, comes to “live” inside him. (What is the trinity?) On the day called Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to the disciples as promised. Jews from all over were in Jerusalem for the annual feast of Pentecost, and these men spoke a variety of different languages. Through the miraculous power of God, the disciples began to speak to these men in their own languages, so that each man understood. This is where we get the idea of “speaking in tongues.”
Some of the men praised God because of this miracle. Others mocked the disciples, saying they’d had too much wine. The apostle Peter, who, out of fear, had three times denied that he was a follower of Christ, stood up before the mockers and said the men weren’t drunk. They’d been indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and this miracle was foretold by the prophet Joel.
The turning point in my pastor’s his life was when he read about the once-cowardly Peter fearlessly confronting this hostile crowd, some of whom had delivered their Savior to Pontius Pilate, and boldly bearing witness to Jesus Christ. He was struck by the sincere beliefs of the apostles (although at the time my pastor still didn’t believe the Resurrection ever happened) and how most of them were killed for the faith. Some say the apostle Peter was crucified upside down.
While he didn’t believe the biblical account, my pastor was so impressed with Peter’s sudden boldness, he became more curious about this God Peter worshiped. Many of you may have read about how I came to Christ in, “A Sobering Truth”. It was the realization that there’d never be enough alcohol in the world to satisfy me, and I’d never be good enough for God that got my attention. My heart began to soften and cry out for mercy.
I have a question for Christian readers:
How did God get your attention? How did he begin to “soften” your hardened heart?
To agnostic readers, has something happened in your life or in the world that convinces you more every day that God exists or at least has you thinking about God more often?
In retrospect, I was an agnostic. I knew there was something out there greater than myself. I just didn’t know who or what it was. Somehow I knew that God, whoever he/she/it was, had something better in mind for me. His will is that believers share the Gospel, make disciples among the nations and glorify him. It’s the same plan he had for Peter, and it’s the same plan he has for my pastor, you and me.
