I Found Jesus

[Or How Jesus Found Me]*

One Sunday afternoon in Kabale I was coming home from a drinking party to which I had intentionally gone because one of these balokole ("saved ones") had witnessed that I was going to be converted that day. I wanted to drink exceptionally hard so that it would be impossible for me to be converted.

As I was returning, I met a fellow schoolmaster who had found Jesus Christ during a church service just three hours before. Three hours, no more, he had been a Christian when he stopped me. He looked me full in the face and said, "When you left me in the church, I found Jesus and He is in my heart. I want to talk over the things I have said contrary to Christ."

The Lord used that special testimony to turn me completely around. I arrived home in utter misery. I knelt by my bed for the first time, and this is what I remember saying to God:

"God, if you are there, and if Christ actually died for sinners like me, and if He can change me as I have seen others changed, and if the Bible is not a mere story book cooked up by Europeans to deceive us, here I am; save me. I know I am a sinner. I know the judgment for sin is over me. Here is my heart. I accept the finished sacrifice of Christ on Calvary."

The next moment was wonderful. My burden had fallen off. Judgment was gone. I saw, as it were, my name written over Christ's on the cross. I went outside my house a liberated man and began giving my testimony, and I have never been the same since.

[Bishop Festo Kivengere, 1920 - 1988] 

* not in the original