10 years ago, God saved my life. I was fresh out of high school, not knowing where my life was headed or what I wanted to do about it. I had recently started attending a gap year college called Montana Wilderness School of the Bible, and I was having a difficult time. I had all the major questions, and I couldn’t find good answers for them. Everything from “What do I believe about the world?” to “Why would a good God send people to hell?” was racing through my mind.

I was wrestling with my worldview while attending a Christian school, and wondered what to do about it. I decided that if I was going to try and figure it out, the first religion I should confront would be the one I was supposedly a part of: Christianity. If I dug deep and decided it was false, then I could be satisfied knowing I did my due diligence. To do this, I told myself I would read the entire Bible on my own.

Up to this point in my life, I had not read many large sections of the Bible by myself. I grew up in church, but I focused on memorizable verses or passages that were read for a sermon series. I knew about the Bible, but I didn’t really know it. That year, everything changed. I started with Genesis, the beginning of it all, and worked my way through, checking off book after book as I worked through the giant text. It was slow at first, but I soon found that I enjoyed it. I started around late September, and by the time I got to January, I had made some serious progress and was enjoying seeing the arc of the Bible’s story. There was even more profound truth and connectedness than I had guessed. But it was before I even finished the Bible that it all clicked in my head. It was one simple paragraph from Paul in the book of Romans:

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.*”

This is one of the pillars that makes Christianity stand apart from other world religions. In Islam, Hinduism, or Mormonism, you have to perform to get to heaven. Your works must be pleasing to God before you can receive salvation. But in Christianity, we are saved by the work of God while we are still sinners.

This short verse from Romans made a lightbulb turn on in my head, and my life has never been the same since. Some people know the day and time they became Christians – I have never been that precise. All I know is that at some point that school year, God made clear the sacrifice of his son Jesus and how that influenced my life. I felt his presence and impact on my life through his salvation. That was about 10 years ago, and everything has only gotten better. Like everyone, I’ve had my trials, struggles, and temptations, but like Peter mentions in his New Testament letter, they have refined me like fire refines metal into gold. Life is so much clearly better with Jesus. There is nothing more important than loving and knowing him, and I can say that with full confidence after 10 years of walking with him.

*Romans 5:6-8 (NIV)