Wilson Performance

Maybe some of you reading this were like me growing up. Maybe not, perhaps you have never heard of God or Jesus or anything of the sort. It is hard to believe in our go go culture and world that anyone in the US especially has not heard these things before. Well there are those who haven’t so don’t feel alone if your one of them.

Growing up I was a typical kid in a family of four, one older brother and both my parents. We lived a decent lower middleclass lifestyle, never wanting for anything. My dad was a structural steel, Ironworker, by trade for most his life. He built street rods in my young years and taught me a lot about working around the garage. A perfectionist he is and every project he put his hands to was near that. Many of the cars he worked on in the 70’s won best engineering in the shows they went to giving him a lot of clout in that community. My mom was a stay at home mother and housewife. She was always a great source of encouragement but allowed us a lot of freedom, we probably shouldn’t have had.

We rarely went to church, not even Christmas and Easter. When we moved from Raytown to Lee’s Summit in 1981 our parents tried to visit a few churches but never really got into it I guess you could say.

By the time I was about 12-15 I was having more and more difficulty “behaving”, remember the freedom I enjoyed above. Well kids need boundaries, I was proof of that. Tensions between my dad and I erupted and I spent more time with friends than at home just to get away. While spending much time with a good friend Aaron Watson he began to ask me some of those “life” questions. “Do you know what’s going to happen to you when you die?” “Do you believe in God?” “Do you believe in the Devil, Heaven, Hell?”

Although I hadn’t spent hardly anytime in church I’d learned enough to know I believed in something bigger, more powerful than me that created me and all this we see, hear, smell and feel. I had sort of a reverence for such a “higher power” if you will, never using curse words that used God in them, even as a youth.

All his questioning got me thinking about it more and more. I believed in a god, just hadn’t been introduced to him or comed to any realization of who he was or how I should react to him.

Late one evening while out on my 10-speed riding over to friends I stopped by Aaron’s house as his garage was opened and he was working on his car. I started asking him questions for a change and he gave me a small pamphlet about God, Jesus and the Bible.

Later that night I read it at home and on the back it had a prayer one could pray to ask Jesus to come into their heart and forgive them of their sins. I prayed that prayer that night and to my amazement nothing changed. No bells went off, no lights flashed, I didn’t feel anything different and I wasn’t acting any different either. So I went on like nothing happened for a few weeks. Around the end of November beginning of December of 1989 Aaron invited me and several of our friends to his churches youth meeting on a Wednesday night. I was thinking about it while still living this pretty fast lifestyle for a 15-year old.

The week before the meeting I had a dream. Looking back now, after studying the Bible for many years and attending Bible College after high school, I see the many prophetic things my dream had in store to bring me to Jesus Christ. In the dream I was with friends out 4-wheelin at a popular backwoods mud and trails area. It was a night, dark, with only a hint of horizon. All the people were silouets on that horizon and I was deep in the middle of a large group of them. At this point a huge explosion errupted on the horizon above the trees in a huge mushroom cloud towering over all of us. In the dream I knelt down and begged God for forgiveness, penitent in my heart and pleading for his salvation from an eternity without Him. Unfortunately in the dream it was too late. God’s Spirit was now removed from the Earth. His judgment was hear for all who did not turn to Him to endure.

I awoke in complete fear and realized I needed to be forgiven of all I had done to wrong God and others in my life. The following week I went with Aaron to the meeting. That evening was about Satanism and how it’s many forms had been illegally demonstrated in our and other local communities in Missouri. They played the Geraldo video that was a documentary on victims and perpetrators of Satanic killing. They then had the Sergent of the Lee’s Summit Police task force investigating Satanic crime speak. At the end the Youth Leader asked us if we would bow our heads and close our eyes. Now there was about 135 people crammed into this room. There was three sets of seat sections and I was on the second row to the left of the speaker. He asked if we knew what was going to happen to us when we die, if we knew. He asked if anyone didn’t know to raise their hand. I’ll tell you it was the hardest thing I ever did to raise my hand as a 15-year old young man. He then asked if there was anyone else, there wasn’t. We talked after and I told him about praying the prayer before at home and the dream. He asked if I wanted to know then, and I did. I prayed a prayer to ask Jesus Christ into my heart forgiving me of my sin. That night Wednesday December 6th at 10:10 PM I was forgiven.

Remember how the bells didn’t go off before when I prayed? Well, they still didn’t go off but I was different. I awoke to go to school the next morning, looked in the mirror and said out loud to the guy looking back at me “I can tell Jason and Chris about Jesus.” I took a step back, wow “where did that come from???

That was how I came to be a Christian. Now some of you reading this, if you made it this far might be laughing, or sneering, or questioning such a descision. That’s OK. I want you to consider a few things before you leave this world, some real philisophical stuff everyone must answer at some point in their life.

1. Why am I here?

2. Who created me?

3. Who created all there is?

4. Is there a God?

5. Who is Jesus?

6 Is there a Heaven?

7. Is there a Hell?

8. What happens to me when I die?

If you answered most of these questions from a man centered perspective you may be in trouble when you really get to number 8. See we all ask these questions. Some look to science for the answers, some look to “religion”, some look to humanism some to newage and satanic occultic beliefs. All religions of the world save one have man seeking after a god or multiple gods and working their tails off to try to please him or her enough to attain to godlyness or enter into somekind of eternal bliss with them when they die. Christianity is the only religion where God through his Son Jesus Christ comes looking for man. See, man is sinful this is self evident. Just ask a child why they tell a lie when no one taught then too, or the mass murderer why he killed. Man sinned, Adam that is, and all of his decendents with him carry a curse from the edge of the Garden of Eden to this very day. A curse of sin that carries not only man but all creation into chaos. A curse of sin that separated man from God his creator. Even after Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden God came looking for them. It was that very day he promised Eve that from her seed, not mans, would a child be born to save man from their sin. That seed was Jesus. Jesus was born of woman only, not of a man and woman. God himself placed Jesus inside Mary. Jesus later went on to die a death on a cross of wood, killed by the Romans but forced by the Jewish leaders of the time. His death on the cross was our payment for the curse we have. The only problem is most don’t even ask for the payment to be applied to their curse debt.

Now you might be asking this all sounds a little too Sunday School. Sure, see God is all Loving and Kind. But, He is also Just, Righteous, Moral, Without Waivering and the optiomy of Character. He does not change. The one thing he will not do is drag someone kicking and screaming into Heaven who does not want to go. However, consider the alternative. An eternity separated from our creator. Remember God is not an abstract power floating around outside the universe somewhere. He is intimately involved in all that is. He is desperately seeking a restored relationship with His most loved creation, man. Deep inside man we are seeking this relationship too. This is why there are so many religions, beliefs and sects. Satan knows man want to be restored and covertly influences man to create systems of belief to lure man away from the one true God and his Son Jesus Christ. That is the reason for so many religions and belief systems.

Just like in the cartoons we all used to watch, good and evil are very black and white. Man tends to justify his own means through mingling the two. But if we truely want peace and joy in our lives we must accept what God has done for us and be restored to a right relationship with him through Jesus Christ and his payment for our sins on the cross.

If you’re interested and have questions please don’t hesitate to contact me via phone or email. I live to help others with their relationships, both with God and each other. My engine building is fun but it only lasts as long as I’m alive. Helping others find true peace and joy through Jesus Christ lasts for all eternity and that is reward enough, over all the wins I could ever gain racing or helping someone else winning.