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| FOR THE rest of the month, I want to talk
about famous conversions. Some of them might not be well–known to you,
but they are still well known. The first person I will talk about is St Augustine, who is well–known for being the bishop of Hippo in North Africa and for his writings against a heretic named Pelagius. But first I want to discuss why I have chosen this series. I will start with the end of the book of Acts. Acts is a strange book. The latter part is almost entirely about Paul and his life as a missionary. Towards the end of his life, Paul was arrested in Jerusalem and spent a couple of years being dragged around Palestine from court to court. Finally he appealed to Caesar, asking Caesar himself to hear the case and to decide whether it was a criminal act to be a Christian. Paul’s trip to Rome is a very dangerous one. People try to murder him, he gets shipwrecked, and he is bitten by an adder. You sit on the edge of your seat, wondering if Paul will manage to survive to a ripe old age, or even survive until his case is heard. In Chapter 26, Paul is in Rome, still awaiting a hearing. He is under house arrest, but is able to preach to people who visit him at home. And then Acts ends. We read that Paul stayed in his own rented house for two years, and that many visited him there, so that he had opportunities to present Jesus to them. End of story. Except that it's not really the end of the story. It's the last definite thing we hear about Paul, but it's the beginning of story after story of people who have believed and found life through Jesus Christ the Lord. In a very real sense, the book of Acts will not be finished until the last believer enters the Kingdom, even as Jesus himself returns with the trumpet blast and the shout of an archangel. Every believer’s story is an addition to Acts, because God’s Spirit is still carrying out his mighty saving deeds. So the story of Augustine is part of the book of the Holy Spirit’s acts, and so is your story. But I also have other reasons for telling you the story of a conversion. It’s a good thing to hear testimonies in church. One reason why I give opportunity for sharing is that it is a chance for you to share your testimony. So why not let dead people share their testimonies, too? Every time you or I hear of faith, it creates more faith in us. We need to hear stories of faith! Finally, I want us to hear stories of conversion, because it encourages us to hope for more like them. It reminds us of our own conversion, and it might even challenge someone among us to say, “By God’s grace, I can become someone like that person I just heard about.” That’s an honourable goal. We know a fair bit about St Augustine, because he is a first. His Confessions are a new kind of writing. Before him people had written about their own deeds or the deeds of others. Others had written about debates they had taken part in and the responses of their hearers. But Augustine told the story of his own inner life. Consequently, he is better understood than just about any other Christian writer between St Paul and himself. All conversions are different. I was converted as a 16 year–old at a kerbside in the city when I heard the gospel presented by Open Air Campaigners workers. I grew to expect that all conversions would be something like my own. But my grandfather on my mother’s side was quite different. He said, “I remember a time when I was not a Christian, and then I remember realising that I had become a Christian, but I can never remember when that actually happened. I probably wasn't even five then.” And his father was converted while he lay in a rented hotel room during the Gold Rush, when a band of Methodists began preaching on the verandah. Everyone is different. So we read about Augustine, and we read about his life and his conversion. Augustine was born in 354AD at Tagaste in North Africa. His father was Patricius. He was not a religious man. His mother was Monnica, who was one of those totally determined Christian mothers who would not take a “no” from the devil himself. He left home to study, and it seems as though he also intended to keep as far from his mother as he could. He took a mistress and they had a son, Adeodatus. Augustine joined the Manichaean religion, and taught others to be Manichaeans. When Augustine was about 30, he travelled to Milan in Italy together with his friend Alypius to study with Ambrose, who was one of the greatest Christian teachers of the time. In fact, Ambrose was a great teacher generally, and many of his pupils were not believers at all. While he was there, Augustine began a great spiritual struggle as he realised that his efforts to become a good person failed over and over. At one point, Augustine prayed earnestly to God, “Lord, grant me chastity — but not just yet!” In other ways, he was like Paul, who cried out, Wretched man that I
am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?
Here's Augustine’s story. I’ve modernised the language a little in places for the sake of clarity. [Parts of this story
are taken from Augustine: Confessions
and Enchiridion trans and ed Albert C Outler London SCM Press
1955, as reprinted in Famous
Conversions eds Hugh T Kerr and John M Mulder, Wm B Eerdmans
Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Illinois 1994.]
I fled into the garden, with Alypius following step by step; for I had no secret in which he did not share. And how could he leave me in such distress? We sat down... I was greatly disturbed in spirit, angry at myself with a turbulent indignation because I had not entered your will and covenant, O my God, while all my bones cried out to me to enter...” Augustine realised that God was never far away, yet he still did not find the way to him, because of the turbulence and indecisiveness in his heart as he struggled with himself over God. Augustine felt tears welling up in his frustration over the whole situation, and decided to move away even from his great friend Alypius so that he could weep as much as he needed to. Alypius let him go to where he felt comfortable. “I flung myself down under a fig tree — I don’t know how — and gave free course to my tears. The streams from my eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to you. I cried to you — not, it’s true, in these words, but to this effect: ‘And you, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever? Oh, remember not against us our former iniquities!’” In an agony of desire to find God, Augustine cried out, “Why not now? Why not make an end to my uncleanness this very hour?” Suddenly something happened. “I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy or girl... coming from the neighbouring house, chanting over and over again, ‘Pick it up and read it, pick it up and read it.’ Immediately I ceased weeping and began most earnestly to think whether it was usual for children in some kind of game to sing such a song, but I could not remember ever having heard anything like it. So, damming the torrent of my tears, I got to my feet, for I could not think anything but that this was a divine command to open the Bible and read the first passage I should light upon...” “So I quickly returned to the bench where Alypius was sitting, for there I had put down the apostle’s book when I had left there. I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell, which said, ‘Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.’ I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away.” Immediately, Augustine began explaining to Alypius what had happened, and Alypius also surrendered his heart to Jesus as Lord and Saviour from that moment. “He joined me in full commitment without any restless hesitation,” Augustine writes. You can imagine how excited Monnica was when she heard that her son and his best friend had just become Christians, true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ! Augustine says, “... she leaped for joy triumphant...” Augustine was convinced from that time on that God is always the one who takes the initiative. We view our lives from within as though we ourselves are the centre of the universe and as though we were totally responsible for our relationship with God. This is not so, according to Augustine. God acts first, and he keeps on taking the initiative. All that is left to us is the choice, whether to respond or continue rebelling. It’s a stark choice, but it is in our hands to make it. Augstine said it, because he had experienced it. It was not his choice to discover his alienation from God, and it was not his doing that the message came to him to take and read. And it was certainly not an act of Augustine’s will that took him to the passage which spoke to him of his need to exchange a life of pleasure–seeking for a life filled with Jesus Christ. From beginning to end, it was God who did it all. What Augustine saw in general terms, John Calvin worked out in detail 1200 years later. Calvinism is the direct descendant of Augustinianism. When I led the youth group at Fairfield Church, George, a neighbour of ours, came fairly frequently. George had a Presbyterian friend who was a church–goer, but not a Christian, and George was talking to him about his need of Christ. I didn’t know about Dave, I only knew that George had been discussing Christ with a few of his friends. One evening, George brought Dave to the Baptist youth group. George only introduced him as his friend Dave from the Presbyterian Youth group. Dave didn’t have a Bible with him, so, when we came to the Bible study section, I gave him a pocket New Testament from my own back pocket so that he could participate fully. We finished the study early. “Would anyone here like to share with us how he or she became a Christian?” I asked. Dave shuffled around a bit. I thought he might be shy about speaking in an unfamiliar group, so I said, “Was there something you wanted to share with us? When did you become a Christian?” ”Tonight,” Dave said. “What — before you came here tonight?” I asked. “No — during the meeting.” It turned out that he had been aware of his need to surrender to Christ, but had been resisting the prompting of the Holy Spirit. When I gave him my little pocket Bible, it was worse than just opening it at random. The tops of several pages were dog-eared, so the book fell open at that page. And the point of the dog ear fell on a verse from Revelation, If
you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstick from
its place.
Dave knew it spoke to his need. He repented on the spot and asked Jesus
into his heart!God always takes the initiative to bring us to himself. Are we willing to respond? It was not we who brought Jesus among us, but it was a sovereign act of God. We didn’t even know we needed Jesus until we saw him. It was not our choice that he should bleed and die on the cross: it was God who, in Christ, began reconciling the world to himself. Nor is it we who choose to have the Holy Spirit fill our hearts with a conviction of sin and a desire to know Christ: once again it is the initiative of the Spirit of God. One of my favourite verses of the Bible is this: God
commends his love to us in this: that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.
Augustine never to my knowledge tried to present any favourite verses to us. But he would have agreed fully with what that verse is saying, that God took the initiative when sin had rendered us powerless to do anything in our own interest. While we were still sinners, while we were still powerless, Christ died for us. If the Holy Spirit is prompting you to turn to Christ, do the one thing you can do: surrender to him. Repent, decide to turn away from your sin and your rebellion, and turn to Christ, who will save you immediately you turn to him in faith. Augustine shows the way; strive to follow the same path! AMEN |
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| © Peter R. Green 2003. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. | |
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