Has God Found You? (Pastor Day’s Last Letter)

I was saddened to hear today of the passing of long-time Edmond, Oklahoma Pastor Alan Day in a motorcycle accident on Wednesday. Already, a few great news stories have been written that bear testimony to the love for Jesus and the Bible that Pastor Day manifested throughout his ministry.

What really caught my attention, however, was the last article I found posted on Pastor Day's blog. It happened to be about China (western China, even!), and it was a great reminder for him to have left behind as his last public testimony! I have reposted in in full below, just in case the blog is taken down at some point. You can still find the original post here.

Has God Found You?

I was in Chengdu, China meeting with a group of bright, talented university students. Only the top students are considered for this university, and I recognized from the start that those who were in the little apartment with me were part of that elite group.

My host for the evening was a professor and his wife – Christians who had to keep their Christianity under cover. I was told the apartment would be "bugged" and that I should speak in code. I thought that would be easy, but I discovered just how difficult it is to refrain from mentioning the name of Jesus or to quote Scripture.

The professor introduced the group to me and allowed each of them to speak. I was surprised – given my instructions to be careful what I said – at how bold and honest they were. They talked about the hopelessness of the Communist philosophy, how it reduced people to cogs in a machine or spokes in a wheel. They had been taught that there is no ultimate value or meaning, that there is no God or future life, that life was to be lived to perpetuate and elevate the state and the people of China. The state, they said, was godless, materialistic, and ruthless in pursuing its goals.

One bright young man told me how he had become restless after his years of study. He asked himself why he should work so hard to help China to prosper by becoming an intellectual when, in a few years, he would die and cease to exist. He said he thought about the value of the Chinese folk religions and their veneration of ancestors – but he said it wasn't satisfying to think that the only thing left of him in 50 years might be the memory in the hearts and minds of his children and grandchildren.

I heard similar stories from the mouths of one student after another. Communism and materialism teach us to be producing machines who have no purpose other than to prosper the nation and who have no hope for life after death.

Each of the students in that apartment had come to faith in Christ. Their faith was not convenient. In fact, it was dangerous and could have cost them their positions in the university. Their faith was not simple-minded; they were intellectuals whose grasp of science, history, and philosophy was informed and keen.

But they refused to be cogs in a machine. They rejected the foolish notion that we are the products of mindless, godless evolution. They hungered for meaning and purpose bigger than a Communist state. They all had found that meaning and purpose in Jesus Christ.

God is spirit. You and I are spirit-inhabited bodies. We hunger for truth and spiritual reality. We cannot be satisfied just with a college degree, a good job, a nice house and a loving family. As important as these are, none of them is ultimate.

We meet and worship the God who is spirit and truth when we come to faith in Jesus Christ. In fact, He is actively seeking worshipers, pursuing them in love.

Has He found you yet?

Alan Day, Senior Pastor

-The original article was posted on Mon, February 14, 2011 by Alan Day, Senior Pastor