{"id":40317,"date":"2016-10-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/secular-jewish-writer-comes-to-faith-in-christ\/"},"modified":"2016-10-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-03T00:00:00","slug":"secular-jewish-writer-comes-to-faith-in-christ","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/secular-jewish-writer-comes-to-faith-in-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"Secular Jewish Writer Comes to Faith in Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The popular novelist Andrew Klavan was raised in a non-practicing Jewish home. For about the first 45 years of his life, he lived as a &quot;philosophical agnostic and a practical atheist.&quot; Klavan explains some of the steps along his journey that eventually led him to faith in Christ:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Jesus never appeared to me while I lay drunk in the gutter. And yet, looking back on my life, I see that Christ was beckoning to me at every turn. When I was a child, he was there in the kindness of a Christian babysitter and the magic of a Christmas Eve spent at her house. When I was a troubled young man contemplating suicide, he was in the voice of a Christian baseball player who gave a radio interview that inspired me to go on. And always, he was in the day-to-day miracle of my marriage, a lifelong romance that taught me the reality of love and slowly led me to contemplate the greater love that was its source and inspiration.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>But perhaps most important for a novelist who insisted that ideas should make sense, Christ came to me in stories. Slowly, I came to understand that his life, words, sacrifice, and resurrection formed the hidden logic behind every novel, movie, or play that touched my deepest mind.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>I was reading a story when that logic finally kicked in. I was in my forties, lying in bed with one of Patrick O&#39;Brian&#39;s great seafaring adventure novels. One of the characters, whom I admired, said a prayer before going to sleep, and I thought to myself, <em>Well, if he can pray, so can I<\/em>. I laid the book aside and whispered a three-word prayer in gratitude for the contentment I&#39;d found, and for the work and people I loved: &quot;Thank you, God.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>It was a small and even prideful prayer: a self-impressed intellectual&#39;s hesitant experiment with faith. God&#39;s response was an act of extravagant grace. I woke the next morning and everything had changed. There was a sudden clarity and brightness to familiar faces and objects; they were alive with meaning and with my own delight in them. I called this experience &quot;the joy of my joy,&quot; and it came to me again whenever I prayed. Naturally I began to pray every day.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>This would lead to a full acceptance of Christ as Lord. Later, Klavan was baptized and wrote a book about his spiritual journey titled <em class=\"citation\">The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ<\/em>.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3402,3419,3424,3557,3689,3690,3713,3819,3902,3915,3933,4088,4089,4181,4303,4329,4382,4394,4395,4399,4400,4537,4539,4541,4679,4699,4749,4752,4798,4858,4900,4906,4907,5046,5053,5062,5063,5065,5105,5202,5303],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-40317","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-agnosticism","tax_ctp_tags-answered-prayer","tax_ctp_tags-apologetics","tax_ctp_tags-change","tax_ctp_tags-conversion","tax_ctp_tags-conviction","tax_ctp_tags-creator","tax_ctp_tags-divine-love","tax_ctp_tags-evidence-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-existence-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-faith","tax_ctp_tags-grace","tax_ctp_tags-grace-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-human-nature","tax_ctp_tags-joy","tax_ctp_tags-knowing-god","tax_ctp_tags-logic","tax_ctp_tags-lostness","tax_ctp_tags-love","tax_ctp_tags-love-of-christ","tax_ctp_tags-love-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-new-birth","tax_ctp_tags-new-creation","tax_ctp_tags-new-life","tax_ctp_tags-prayer","tax_ctp_tags-presence-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-pursuing-sinners","tax_ctp_tags-questions","tax_ctp_tags-religion","tax_ctp_tags-romantic-love","tax_ctp_tags-secularism","tax_ctp_tags-seekers","tax_ctp_tags-seeking-god","tax_ctp_tags-spiritual-formation","tax_ctp_tags-spiritual-joy","tax_ctp_tags-spiritual-thirst","tax_ctp_tags-spiritual-transformation","tax_ctp_tags-spirituality","tax_ctp_tags-suicide","tax_ctp_tags-unbelief","tax_ctp_tags-worldview"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Secular Jewish Writer Comes to Faith in Christ - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/secular-jewish-writer-comes-to-faith-in-christ\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Secular Jewish Writer Comes to Faith in Christ - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The popular novelist Andrew Klavan was raised in a non-practicing Jewish home. 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