The Part Where I Get Saved

Or, the rest of a story of grace

You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to prove anything. All you need is Jesus.

Those were the words I heard around twenty years ago from a street evangelist in Vienna, Austria. In the first part of this story, I shared how I came across a group of people sharing Jesus in a most unlikely place.

And how I then forgot about the experience and carried on with my life.

Fast forward to January 2009, roughly three-and-a-half years after my encounter with the evangelists. By then, I’d finished college in Montana, where I grew up, and was living in Seattle, Washington, where I’d been for a little less than a year. It was my naive attempt to prove myself in the big city.

That winter, everything seemed to be running out for me. The sub-lease on the apartment I’d been living in was almost over. The seasonal, part-time work I’d found had ended. I was out of money.

But a few months earlier, I’d made a pivotal decision. I’d started going back to the Catholic church. It was the first time as an adult that I’d been involved with any church for any length of time. And on this particular evening in January, two friends I’d made there were visiting me at my apartment. I don’t remember what we talked about that evening, or how open I was about my circumstances, but they could tell I was down. Just before going home, one of them asked if she could pray for me.

Sure, why not?

I was used to the structured, even scripted, prayers of Catholicism. And what I heard that evening was anything but. My friend prayed very freely and for at least a couple minutes, I’m sure. I can’t remember any of the specific words she said. But I clearly remember what happened. As she prayed, what I’d heard three years earlier—and then forgotten—came rushing back to my mind.

You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to prove anything. All you need is Jesus.

That last line, all you need is Jesus, wasn’t quite audible to me. But it felt like I could almost hear it. In some sense, it seemed to go on ringing in my head.

And then and there, I knew it was true.

I was awed and overwhelmed by what I was experiencing. So much so that I don’t think I even attempted to explain, at least then, to my friend what had happened. I just thanked her, said goodnight, and she left.

I sat there by myself in my apartment late into the night. I wouldn’t have been good at describing anything in theological terms at that point. But on a gut level, I’d felt the weight and awfulness of my sins in a way I never had before. And I’d also encountered God’s grace—deeply and unmistakably.

My practical problems weren’t solved. But at least for that evening, I was overcome by a lightheartedness I hadn’t felt in a long time.

All you need is Jesus.

It was like a joyful song singing inside of me. I had no idea where this experience would lead me.

But a couple of things had become unmistakably clear:

God had grabbed my attention in a profound way.

Whatever I was now experiencing, I hadn’t earned it.