From Prison and non-belief to Christ and His Catholic Church

David Gray’s Story: From Prison and Attempted Suicide to the Catholic Church

by Steve Ray on June 23, 2013

   

 

In my articles ‘Losing and Finding it All’ and ‘The Day I Heard the Lord’s Voice; The Day I Knew Jesus Is Real’I talked about how I moved from being an Agnostic to a Christian. I wish I could say that I went to prison and found Christ, but that would not be the truth – It was Jesus who found me in very bad condition and gave me a new opportunity at life.
After Jesus spoke to me as I was in the process of trying to commit suicide and said, “I love you. I am here,” everything was different. I could no longer deny that Jesus was real and that He was interested in having a personal relationship with me, but some of those issues that troubled me about Christianity for all those years still lingered in my heart.
Ever since I was teenager, I could never understand how those Christians could be in so many different denominations, and each of them teaching so many radically different things that were at odds with what the other denominations were teaching, and, yet, all insisting that they each believed in the same God.

David Gray (click image for more about him)

I kept asking myself how could they all believe in the same God and simultaneously accept that their God was confusing them with opposing and competing truths? As far as I was concerned, that was not a God worth believing in.
Moreover, I was not very knowledgeable about the New Testament, but one thing I knew for sure was that the YHWH of Old Testament always kept His people together and for His children there was nothing more important than the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4).
I knew that in the Davidic Kingdom there was only one God, one Temple, and one priesthood. Therefore, as an Agnostic, I concluded that either these Christians were not of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as they claimed, or there was no God.
There in October of 2004 it was good enough for me to finally know that God is real, and He truly does have a Son named Jesus Christ who loves me more than I love myself; so the restlessness and questions in my heart about those Christian denominations would wait until a later time. I was on my way to prison – my new life, and I had to figure out how I was going to adjust to that.
To read the whole astute story, click here.
 

- See more at: http://www.catholic-convert.com/blog/2013/06/23/david-grays-story-from-prison-and-attempted-suicide-to-the-catholic-church/#sthash.fkYHa9qY.dpuf