The Promise

In the beginning I was an atheist. Actually this is just my earliest memory of deciding about a shadowy topic. My dad died when I was only eight years old. Until then, he was a distant figure living in the same home. He was what the family termed a "weekend alcoholic". I have no personal knowledge of what he thought about God. My mother had stopped going to school in the third grade. She had developed rheumatic fever. The visiting doctor said she would not live though the night. This was in the 1920's. She once said to me when I was very young, "I am not smart enough to understand God, I feel I should let you find your own understanding."

Public schools had eliminated prayer just before I started. I have no memory of it as an issue. So onwards and upwards my education went, with nary a mention of God or the Bible.

So I found myself a proponent of atheism on a casual basis, possibly it was all I had to offer on the subject.

When this changed, I had a tendency to fear that salvation was not available to me personally. Conviction is a nasty thing to go through and I seem to be blessed with unfiltered spiritual insight into my own soul. Believing the gospel was all I needed and was what I had, but for some perverse reason I worried that God hated me. This issue still returns to torment me now and again.

This is my latest conclusion: the only reason that salvation is mine is because God made a promise and was, is and always shall be faithful to the promise He made. "Why am I a benefactor of this promise", my nagging insanity asks? Because I believe in the promise, because I say "yes". The promise is to those who believe.

Bobby

PS- to find out more about the promise read the book "The Bible" available at your local bookstore or from your local library.