In Search of the Real Jesus

Written by Ben Cox

How God’s Word and the Holy Spirit Changed Our Lives

John 5:15- “I am the vine and you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Today is Monday, June 5, 2023. It’s time for me to write my introduction to the Magazine you’re holding in your hands or reading online. And it just so happens that my personal Bible study for today is John 15.

46 years ago the Lord used John 15 and just one phrase from this chapter to radically change the direction of my life. It was in July of 1977, three months into my new marriage to Constance (Connie) McBride Cox. We were not truly followers of Christ at the time, but we were spiritual seekers.

I had grown up in a Christian home as a Pastor’s kid and “walked the aisle to receive Jesus as my personal Savior” but I knew then that I wasn’t really sincere. It’s something my 8 year old self did, just trying to please my parents and the church people I grew up with.

But, when I was in High School in 1972, the Holy Spirit moved in the youth group of our Baptist Church and I did get truly born again! Jesus was moving by His Spirit in our town and region as well as in many other parts of the nation. Numerous people, young and old alike, got saved and experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit in similar ways as Jesus’ first disciples did at Pentecost. It was exhilarating to be a part of!!!

My parents were relieved at what happened to me because before that amazing transformation I was on a very bad path. They didn’t quite know what to think about what had happened to me and my friends, but they did know that this son of theirs was lost but now he was found, transformed and on fire for God!

At this time in my life, at 17 years old it was time for me to think about my future. Where was I going to go to college? What was my major going to be? What career path would I pursue? My dad told me to pray about it and I did.

Much to my surprise I felt the Lord speak to my heart in a very clear way that I should pursue pastoral ministry. One thing I had always felt strongly about is that I would NEVER be a pastor.

I realize that some of that had to do with the fact that my dad had members of the church who were hard to lead because they had their own agendas about what they wanted the church to be. I hate to say this, but some of them were stubborn and belligerent at times. For example, I remember well when a group of people in the church did not like it when we were beginning to attract lower income and mixed race people to our Summer Bible School and other Summer outreaches.

My dad, along with other Christians in the church, had to withstand some strong opinions and meanness of spirit. And, I must admit, it really turned me off. But I was grateful that my dad was faithful in his calling to the church and he endeavored to teach them how to follow Christ, while demonstrating Christ-like character whether they did or not.

So, in spite of my reservations about being a pastor like my dad, I answered the call I received from God to be a pastor. I went to Mars Hill College in 1973 and I enrolled as a Philosophy and Religion Major with the intention of attending there for 4 years and then enrolling in Seminary.

But for a number of reasons, my plans and my faith got derailed. So, at 21 years of age I transferred to another school, changeed my major to english and then decided to drop out of school. The reason I dropped out is because I was in a very dark, depressed space and considering suicide as an option to escape my self-imposed suffering.

That’s when I reaffirmed my faith in God by asking Him to help me. But I was now alone in a new town and confused. So I started writing lots of God seeking poetry and decided that I was going to start all over again from ground zero to find truth and peace in other religions besides Christianity. I met my wife in that time period and what attracted us to each other was that we were very spiritually-minded and quite sincere about seeking truth.

Connie is one of 7 children and she had a brother and sister who were also “seekers of truth” when we were. But their search had led them to Jesus, who they never got to really know in their Catholic upbringing. They knew the rituals and traditions of the church, but they did not know the real Jesus until their search for truth led them straight into His waiting arms.

Because of this, Connie’s brother, Bob, strongly resisted my claims that “all paths lead to God.” He made me angry when he told me that Buddha and Krishna and Mohammed were dead but that Jesus was alive. He challenged us to read the Bible again and to simply pray that God would reveal His truth to us about Jesus. We did and it blows my mind that Jesus pursued me like He did when I had forsaken Him.

It was at Cape Blanco State Park on the Pacific Ocean coast of southwestern Oregon where I was reading a Bible my mom had given me before we departed for our West Coast honeymoon. I’m in a meadow on a beautiful cliff overlooking the ocean when these words from John 5:15 caught my attention: “I am the vine and you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

At that point, it was as if the Holy Spirit lifted the last 6 words of this passage off the page and said to me “APART FROM ME YOU CAN DO NOTHING” and then Jesus said to me by His Spirit, “not who you have tried to make me to be or not your version of what you want Me to be, but who I really am!!!”

At that point I dropped my Bible and lifted my hands in surrender to Jesus, realizing that due to my own pride, prejudices and sinful nature, I had created a version of Jesus that was WRONG.

Ben Cox, owner of High Country 365 & publisher of The Journey

I, like many others have done and continue to do, had created a “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” version of God, who would never hold anyone accountable for rejecting Him. But that’s not the complete picture of who Jesus is and it does not fully square with what Jesus says about Himself or what the Scriptures proclaim Him to be. I’m so grateful that Jesus Himself used His Word and spoke to me by His Spirit to straighten me out and pull me out of deception and darkness and into the light of His truth.

Furthermore, I’m also grateful that He will faithfully work in all our lives to do that on a daily basis if we will devote ourselves to reading the Bible and asking the Holy Spirit to reveal truth to us or teach us truth on a deeper or different level than we knew before. Through the Spirit and the Word working together Jesus will conform all of His followers into His image which is so much better than trying to get Him to conform to what we think He should be.

I recently read an article about the Jesus Revolution of the late 1960’s and early 70’s. I can’t remember who said this and I’m not sure that I’m going to quote it right, but it went something like this: “The Word without the Spirit will puff you up. The Spirit without the Word will blow you up. But the Word and the Spirit working together will GROW YOU UP.”