Interview March 7, 2012: My first encounter with Jesus

- Omar Soto: Since this whole series is based on the person of Jesus, I want to ask you, how was your personal experience, of that day, of that moment, when you decided to give your life to the Lord Jesus, what did you feel? What happened to you, how was that meeting?

- Greg Bishop: Well, at 15 years old, I decided that Jesus was really cool. I decided that Jesus was cool. And you know how, I was listening, I was listening to music called Jesus Christ Superstar (translate: I was listening to a song called Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus Christ the Superstar). That I don't recommend it, theology is terrible in that matter, I don't recommend it, and for me Jesus was really cool, yeah, I'm going to become spiritual, I'm going to be a spiritual person, I'm going to think that Jesus is cool , and I asked a Christian friend to do a painting for me, he was a Christian friend dedicated to the Lord, and an artist, and I asked him if he could do me a special painting, with three great figures from history, one, Martin Luther King, no, that man of peace and reconciliation between the races, and the other character, Mahatma Ghandi, who represented non-violence, and put my cool friend Jesus next to him, next to Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi , and for some reason, my Christian friend didn't want to. My christian friend had a problem with that, and he said Jesus was not Mahatma Ghandi, but I said but how can it be, Jesus represented peace and was a teacher of goodness, and my friend said Gregory, either Jesus is God or not he is nothing, he is not a prophet of peace, he is not merely a teacher, Jesus is the Son of God or he is nothing.

And I was a little offended by this, I said wow, he's not cool like me, this guy is not as cool as I am, but I continued with my Jesus Christ Superstar music, and I read transcendentalist philosophy, and also a Hindu philosophy, and I thought I was very spiritual at 15 years old, I was a little bit, I didn't have such an interesting life, I had to fill myself with something, but I thought I was very spiritual in that, I said my rosaries all night, why so good? luck right? So if I wanted something I would pray, and not without sincerity, but well, my understanding of Christ was very limited, right?, and at that time my friend talked to me about believing in Jesus more than as a historical figure, if not about believe that Jesus was someone real, the son of God.

And he suggested that I give my life to God, and I thought, well, I'm a Catholic, so there's nothing wrong with that. So I prayed to give my life to God, and well, I waited for lightning from the heavens, and it didn't come, I was there ok well that was cool, whatever, then I continued exploring other spiritualities and all that, and one day reading from spiritualism, from Hindu spirituality, I was a little scared one night, because in one night I could feel that the spiritual world is real, that there is a world around us in the spirit that is very real, in a certain way, more real than the physical, and it occurred to me, I'm not sure that everything in that world is nice. I don't know, if everything in that world is so cool and so cool, and I got a little freaked out.

And I put my philosophy book, Hindu next to it, and I grabbed a new testament, that a Christian cousin had given me, I decided I know that Jesus is cool, so at least I'm going to read from Him first, and I went to a Christian study with my friend, and I prayed with them to accept Christ as my Lord and Savior, and once again I waited for lightning from the heavens, and it didn't come, I said ok, whatever, so we continued like this, and then in At that time, 16 years ago, I went to spend the summer on vacation with some cousins, the same Christian cousin who had given me the New Testament, and to play on his church's baseball team, you had to attend his Pentecostal church , and I went, look, I panicked again with the holy noise that was unleashed there, and but I liked that they spoke of the Bible as a book with life, they spoke of Jesus as someone they knew personally, I liked that.

And I remember that there came a time, that after a sermon I felt something strange, I didn't know what it was, and I remember looking at the floor and saying, I feel something strange, I don't know what it is, and at that moment after the sermon a person began to speak in a language that I did not know, speak in languages that I now recognize, and then there was a translation of the message, it was a profound message of God's love, and I felt moved, and I returned home , I spoke with my cousin, but what was that? I don't understand, and he says well, God spoke in an angelic language, I thought it was Spanish at first, look, I was a Latina in a church, but no, why God has to speak in an unknown language, but he taught me, I didn't know, and he began to change my paradigm of reality.

For me Jesus was a real and important character but human and distant, but if this was real, that God could move in the here and now, now, then my view of reality had to change, my perspective of reality had to change, The next Sunday the sermon the pastor prayed to accept Christ, and I thinking that I was not allowed to approach the front to accept Christ because I was Catholic, I stayed in the chair, and prayed for the third time, keep trying, given up, and I already began to feel something, I don't know, I think God heard me the first time but at least I began to understand, and I returned home, I spent a month, two months away from home with some cousins, I returned home and my sister and I are very close, I love my sister very much, she is three years older than me, and we both talked about personal things a lot, and she had written me a letter a few months before college, saying: Gregory , I feel like a Buddha, waiting under a tree, waiting for the truth of the universe to reach me. i mind.

And so we waited, right? So I went back home saying look, I have to talk to my sister about this, and I didn't know how to open the subject with her, but I sat with her in her room, I will never forget , and says: Loreley, I have something to tell you, I don't know where to start, and she said, I also have something to tell you, I don't know where to start, and we looked at each other, well, you start so I said, and she said, I You are going to think crazy, but I have started to attend a youth group in a church, and I have come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that we have to have a personal relationship with Him, I told you that I expected the truth of the universe, well, I think it's Jesus, and with tears I told him, Loreley, I was going to tell you the same thing, ooohh!

And that was my miracle, and that night I went to my little room, and kneeling there I gave myself up, Lord, I know that You are real, Jesus You are not a Ghandi, You are not a Martin Luther King, You are the Son of God and I am Yours, do with me what You want with my life, I truly receive you, I gave myself, so that's when I entered the meaning of what it means to be a Christian, although I believe that the first little step that God took He heard me, but there he was. And look Omar.

- Omar: I was going to tell you something, Greg, we know in the scripture, Jesus at one point says in John chapter 16, he says that one of the many roles of the Holy Spirit is to be able to bring to our hearts a revelation of who he is Him, and in these three stages that you mentioned from the first moment you decided to give your heart to the moment you met Loreley, your sister, we can understand that the Spirit of God was there, somehow giving know Jesus into your life, and into your sister's life (Greg: amen, thank you Lord).

As we understand this, Greg, I ask you, what were some experiences that you lived after that moment, what were some events in your life that in one way or another marked the person of Jesus in your life in a deeper way, more intimate, like saying what images, what things happened around you that marked the person of Jesus in a more direct way?

- Greg: Amen, amen, two things I didn't plan to say but I'm sorry to say: one is that I always forget that at 15 years old it was not the first time that I prayed to receive Christ. My parents, when I was 5 years old, sent me to a Protestant school, and they taught me to pray like a Protestant, close your eyes very hard, right?, and look, my mom says you came home praying like a Protestant, what did we do wrong? At 5 years old, in nurtury school, I say that I met at 16, but I say that Christ met me at 5. And He did not forget, the time we had, because a 5-year-old child is a valid human before God, and I believe that the Spirit touched me and I responded to the 5, and the Spirit, as you say, is guided by working until it leads me to understand the reality of who Jesus is, so when we do ministry with children and young people Brothers, let's be serious please.

But something that I was not going to share, but now I feel like sharing, is that this first year after knowing Christ, was a year of great growth, and I remember 6 months after that year, I remember it was in December of 1984, about Christian friends, that same friend who denied painting Jesus next to human beings, I was in a group with him, and they talked about the filling of the Holy Spirit, that you can pray with one to be what we called, baptized in the Holy Spirit, saturated, and I thought again, cool, we want that, right?, sounds like fun, so we started praying once, everyone screaming like crazy Lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit, nothing, a few months later they put hands on me, praying in tongues this time, nothing, one day, December 5, 1984, after a time of prayer with some charismatic Anglicans, they prayed for me, it was 9 at night, I never forget, and some adults, a pastor and others prayed for me, a friend, and we felt a calm peace, there was no lightning n i nothing like that, but we feel a peace.

And that night on the way home I began to experience speaking in some words that I did not know, and when I got home I was coming out of a language that I did not know, I had to rehearse English to speak with my mother when I entered the home, she looked at me, and what do you do in these meetings?, are you drinking anything?, and she says that I was all red, and then I told my mommy, mommy, I have received the filling of the Spirit and I speak in languages now, and mom looked at me and said, don't tell your daddy, he's going to call a child psychologist, we knew a child psychologist, he still hasn't changed his mind I think. But I share that because we are talking about the interaction of the Spirit and Jesus, these days I couldn't sleep, I got up at night praying, I was drunk for a few days, I confessed all the sins I could think of, there were many, I put them to death. burn in the bathroom, I set them on fire, I listed my sins, a big one, one leaving the bathroom door my dad, what are you doing there? I'm not with God, what are you doing there?

And I felt in love with Jesus, in love with Jesus, first love, drunk with love, drunk with love, and I want to be like that, I want to live in love with Jesus, obsessed with Jesus, I couldn't stop talking about Him, and it's the work of the Holy Spirit, I believe that it fills us, not only so that we have an experience of Him, but rather, the Spirit exists and lives with us to focus our lives on Jesus, so that we fall in love with Him, and so it was at that moment of my life, and a little later, I passed, I was a fairly intense young man with ups and downs, and well, in the summer I had a low, I don't know, I felt very introspective, I don't know if you have analyzed a lot inside my things, and I felt oh, I'm a sinner, and one day I was so low that I decided to stay at home, and the head cleaner told me look, you're no use anymore, take a day off, I'd do better without you that day, I went back to the I spent the day at home praying, and I felt at that time, I punished myself a lot for my failures, and on that day I had an experience, as if he could see Christ on the cross, it was not a vision, but a strong impression inside of Jesus on the cross.

And I felt the words I love you Gregory, I love you, there is no love like the love of Christ on the cross, I love you, relax, I died for you, what else can I do, so the work of the Spirit revealing Christ to me in this first year as a Christian baby and I believe that the Spirit does especially when we are new, works to reveal to us who Jesus is.

- Omar: Greg let me ask you another question, when did you decide to give yourself to the ministry and respond in this way to the call that Jesus was making on your life?

- Greg: You know that I tell you that there was never a moment for me of a strong, mystical call, to tell you like that, I never had a sign in the heavens or anything like that, nor an experience of God telling me you have to be a pastor. We take it for granted among young people, you are going to be a missionary, and if not a missionary, we settle for a pastor, we were young people who were too crazy, radical, and we thought we were better than others, well, that's something else. I always took it for granted that I always knew that I had to pastor, there was never a time of a calling, but, since then, there have been times when I had to decide if I was going to continue to embrace this calling or not. Moments of risk, moments of insecurity of my future if everything is going to work out, how am I going to do it, and there is an image of Jesus that always comes to me, that God brings this image to my mind, at various moments of decision or commitment in my life, and I say this with a little caution, because we don't believe that we can invent our own Jesus.

Some say well, for me Jesus is, well, it's okay that you have an experience with Jesus but Jesus is who he is, I am who I am, I cannot invent Jesus according to my imagination, there is an experience that I have with Jesus, that is very personal, I don't talk about it much, but it is based on the parable of the talents, when the boss, the owner in this parable gives talents to his servants, and says that he has to be faithful and negotiate with what he entrusts to them while He is on a trip, and when he returns he goes to ask them to account, one negotiates and wins one more, and he says well done faithful servant, another five more, another hides it out of fear, and he says you have done wrong, you would have invested what that I handed over to you, and he punishes that servant.

For me there is a scene that comes to my mind with some regularity in my life, and it is of a table, almost a business table, and I know in my heart that Jesus is sitting at that table, I do not have a visual image, I only have an impression of this table, and Jesus is seated, and there is an atmosphere of solemnity, because I know that on that table there are documents that have to be signed, documents of delivery of my life, documents of responsibility for what God has given me. given, they are commitment documents, I don't know if you have had to sign an important document in your life but it is so, I know that Jesus is sitting there, and is waiting for my answer, how am I going to sign or if I am going to sign.

And it is a sober, strong dinner, and it is interesting because in this church I each look at this flag with the Lion, and these eyes, and they are serious eyes, and I feel the impact of that experience I have with Jesus, what are you going to do? to do Gregory, what are you going to do with your life, are you going to be careful, are you going to serve me or not, are you going to give your life? And I feel this experience not once, but many times, because for me it is a commitment that has to be renewed. So my experience of Jesus in those moments is a solemn experience, there is a certain fear, it is not anxiety, as I fear, but there is something serious, something weighty that He is asking of me, and I feel that scene.

- Omar: Pastor Greg, I know that many of us, many of those who see us on the internet as well, daily find ourselves in situations where we have to respond, and respond in a way that the Lord expects us to respond, and many times We compromise, but in the sense that we ignore what Jesus is asking of us, like we lower our standard, and we decide to continue as life requires or demands of us, so to speak, if I were to ask you to see part of the church, what would you say to us so that we do not lower that standard and be able to respond as Jesus expects, that image that you say when the owner of this kingdom comes to claim us for what He has placed in our hands, how should we respond ?. I remember that we even talked today about the image of this part where Jesus is at the door and knocks. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter him. What is required of us to respond? I would like you to elaborate on that and take us in that direction.

- Greg: I know that in Crown's ministry, I don't know how many have taken that course, but they ask people to sign a document symbolizing giving all their goods to Christ, and in level three discipleship there is a lesson when we pray saying Lord, I I give everything, my heart, my mind, my body, my dreams, my everything. I remember teaching level three, I was a little scared, to pray for the delivery of children, it's one thing to deliver, but to deliver something so intimate, such as children, and I could hardly pray for fear, but no, I can't, in every moment of life you have to make a decision, and during that prayer I am supposedly the teacher, right? But every time I teach discipleship I am a student with everyone, every time, no matter the level.

When I arrived at the prayer to give the children to Christ, my children, my family, I was surprised that I felt a sense of relief, of joy, as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, I felt joyful and relaxed, like ahh, I give them to you, and I believe that signing the documents and giving your life to Christ is good because everything has to be in His hands, when my life is in Him there is peace, He says take my yoke and this does not guarantee that everything will be easy in life, there are never promises of an easy life, but there are promises to take my yoke upon you and learn from me that I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls, it is up to you to take the yoke we rest.

So this would be my word of encouragement. There is nothing more miserable than living a double life. It is when we cling to the child that we live with anxiety, when we let go, Jesus never guarantees an easy life, but He does promise peace and rest for the soul, because we have given our lives to Christ, we have signed the document, and then we feel wow, thank you Lord, it is better that You own everything because You know what you are doing.

- Omar: That last word you used is good, to see and know that He is in control of all things, I would like you to pray Pastor Greg for the church, and I would like you brothers to stand up too, so that I can summarize with these words, and I know you had something else to say but I want us to start focusing on where Pastor Greg is taking us with what he is sharing with us, and as he delivers his last words with the prayer that he is going to to do, think about how you are going to respond to Jesus, how I am going to respond to Jesus, how you who see us on the internet are going to respond to Jesus. He is at the door knocking, in the midst of the routines of your life, in the midst of the turmoil that you may be experiencing, He is there knocking on the door, how are we going to respond?

- Greg: Amen, if I can add, finish with one more image that I have in my mind of Jesus, and it is in the scene of when Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes, do you know the story? I put myself in the shoes of the disciples, who were tired, they had received bad news that John the Baptist had died in jail, they were exhausted, without eating, and then a crowd came in the desert, looking for food, and the disciples Worried, they began to give advice to Jesus, you have to send those people to look for food, imagine, giving advice to Jesus, I am like that many times. Overwhelmed, how are we going to find food for all those people? We have to send them away. Jesus looked them in the eye and said something to them, he said, give them something to eat.

There is another look that I see on Jesus' face at this moment, it's almost a smile, of Jesus saying, why don't you feed them?, but how, take out the calculator, it would cost a lot of money, 5,000 more children and women plus 5 pesos for food, and this adds up, how are we going to do it? Trying to find solutions in the flesh, Jesus I see him with this smile, because He was going to teach them his power, that if you give me the little he has I can multiply it, and I am going to thank God for the little that you have and I am going to multiply it and I am going to give it to you and you are going to give it to the crowd and then you are going to end up with a basket full, and this look of Jesus says why don't you give something of eat?, why don't you give them something to eat?, but how?. And He tells them I am with you, I am going to do something that you can never understand, that I am the good shepherd.

These people sit on the green grass, and I am going to feed them. And over and over again in my life when I say yes Lord, I'm going to give you what little I have, He multiplies it and uses it, and He teaches that He is powerful through me, with all my weaknesses, and I I believe that we are like that, Jesus looks at you, He expects you to sign and He expects the little you have to be multiplied, and I invite you on this day to take this step of faith, to say Lord Jesus, I want to sign with you, enough is enough to already be in two waters, I want to be a true Christian, I don't want to think, I don't want anything else, just to think that you are cool, to accept that you are the Son of God, my Lord and Savior, I am not going to have you as I want you to be, I am going to receive you as my Lord and I give myself to you and I really want to know you.

Today is a day, a time of decision, to give ourselves to Jesus, truly, to know him, and there is a Holy Spirit here who longs to reveal that Jesus to your heart. So we open, He is asking to enter, and we are going to open the door for him, amen?

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