HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2013 / FALL / THE LIFE AFTER WITH CHRIS LEE
F A L L • 2 0 1 3
VOLUME 14, ISSUE 3
D E P A R T M E N T S
The life AFTER with Chris Lee
My wife and I recently helped our 17 year-old daughter move out of our home. It was a bittersweet experience. It was bitter because we’ve had to come to terms with the fact that our little girl isn’t so little anymore. She’s a few weeks away from being 18, a full-fledged adult in most states. She’s ready, but it’s still hard to see your child leave the nest. However, it would be just plain bitter if she were leaving because she hated our home, hated her family, and just wanted to go somewhere else, anywhere else. But that’s not the case. Helping her move was also sweet because we knew that she was leaving for something wonderful. She’s been given the gift of a free-ride university scholarship for a program into which she dearly desired admission. She left for something good. She left to pursue a great opportunity and a promising future.
So what does that have to do with the life after Adventism? Well, I’m often accused of being bitter. That might be a valid criticism if I had left simply because I disliked Adventist people or the Adventist culture and wanted to leave, but that’s not the case. I left for something wonderful. I left because I had been given the free gift of a new life in Jesus. Leaving was bittersweet. I love the Adventist people and was at home in the culture, but I left for something good. Knowing and walking with Jesus is sweet. I think that fact comes through in the faith stories in this issue.
The term “faith stories” meant something very different to me as an Adventist. At that time in my life, witnessing to my “faith” meant telling others about Adventist beliefs, especially the Sabbath. Telling my story was about telling my Adventist story: why I was an Adventist, how long I had been an Adventist, how many generations before me were Adventists, which Adventist schools I had attended, and so on.
Today, witnessing to my faith means sharing the joy I’ve found in Jesus and the rest I’ve discovered in Him. It means relating why I am secure in the assurance of salvation. Now, telling my story is narrating the events by which Jesus took me from darkness to light, taking my dead spirit and bringing it to regenerate life. It’s telling about a life changed. It’s telling about a life once steeped in legalism, fear, doubt, and shame, now transformed to a life of peace and contentment. It’s telling about a renewing of the mind that causes me to grow ever closer in my thinking to the mind of Christ.
Let’s face it, my old “faith story” really wasn’t appealing to anyone. It was dead, lifeless, and devoid of hope. The authentic faith story that Jesus has given me today is the Good News made specific to one life. It’s all about how I was sovereignly gifted salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. It’s about passing out of death and into life. It’s about being given something wonderful and completely undeserved through absolutely no merit or action of my own. Now that’s something appealing to get excited about. That’s a story I can’t help but want to tell to anyone who will listen.
So if you’ve always assumed that former Adventists are bitter people, stop for a moment and really listen to what they’re saying. I think you’ll find that, in most cases, they’re people with incredibly sweet stories. They’re simply awed to be living life in intimate relationship with Jesus. They’re experiencing the joy of the life after. †
Copyright 2013 Life Assurance Ministries, Inc., Casa Grande, Arizona, USA. All rights reserved. Revised October 3, 2013. Contact email: proclamation@gmail.com
Chris Lee lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife, Carmen, and daughters, Ashlyn and Alyssa. They attend the Lincoln Berean Church. Chris is a self-described "theology junkie" whose mission is to proclaim the unfathomable grace of Christ in a clear, understandable, and Biblical way. Chris is the editor of the Proclamation! Blog at ProclamationMagazine.com. You may contact Chris by email at ambulater@gmail.com.
