Robert Chamberlain's Testimony of the Exchanged Life

The following is from a letter written by a stockbroker, Robert W. Chamberlain (part of the letter is recorded in Norman Grubb's book Yes, I Am). It was originally published in the form of an article called "The Culmination of a Search":

"On February 20, 1973, at the age of 21, I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and come into my heart. Twelve days later, in a Charismatic church, I indicated my desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit. So I was taken to the prayer room along with a few others and we all received instructions about how to 'receive.' Shortly after several people had laid their hands on me and began praying, I experienced what Charismatics frequently label as 'the baptism with signs accompanying.'

"Two years later, in January, 1975, I was involved in the biggest decision of my life. I had just informed my employer that I was going to quit my job and go back to college.

"'What are you going to study?' he asked.

"'I don't know for sure,' was my reply.

"'Well, what do you want to do with your life?'

"'I haven't decided yet.'

"'Well, my son is the same age as you, and he . . . blah, blah, blah, etc.' (No criticism intended.) 'You ought to make up your mind and get started.'

"I felt that he was right, but I didn't want to make plans for the future without knowing what God's will was for my future. I wanted to do His will. So I decided to fast and pray for three days so God would reveal His plan for my life. I had one week between my last day at work and my first day at school, so this worked out very well. I know my motives and attitudes were right, even if my theology wasn't.

"On the first day of the fast, I arose early in the morning and began to pray. After praying for a couple of hours, I decided to read my Bible. At the time, I was working my way through from Genesis to Revelation; so I just picked up where I had left off. The first chapter that I read hit me like a ton of bricks. (The exact scripture is irrelevant, and I have chosen not to share it here.) Wow! But, I reasoned, 'That can't be what God wants me to do. That's impossible!' So I read on, about 30 or more chapters. But that first chapter kept coming back to my mind. So I read it again.

"'This can't be. It's impossible,' I reasoned. But, I said to God, 'God, if this is what you want me to do, you'll have to confirm it, because I just can't accept it.'

"So I prayed some more--perhaps another hour or more. I told God I just had to know His will for me. I asked Him to make it very clear to me.

"I didn't want to take any chances on what the Bible would say next, so I decided to listen to a cassette tape that I had purchased just the day before. The title of the tape had nothing to do with the message that I received from it, but the speaker used, as his first illustration, that same chapter that had just hit me so hard. I was amazed. What a coincidence! (?) I had received an exact, specific confirmation, and yet I couldn't believe that it was God. So I prayed some more, again asking for confirmation.

"As I prayed, my wife returned home from work. This was late in the afternoon. I immediately told her what had happened and asked her if she thought that was what God wanted me to do. Without hesitation she replied, very matter-of-factly, 'Yes.' But that wasn't good enough. So I called a friend who was a minister and teacher at our church. We knew each other well because we used to share a house before I got married and we continued to have lunch together quite often after that. I told him what happened and asked him if he thought that was what God wanted me to do. 'Of course. I've known that all along. Haven't you?'

"We had special meetings at our church every night that week and several things were said by the guest speaker that seemed to confirm what that chapter said to me. How could anyone doubt after all that? I don't know how, but I did doubt. I looked at that chapter over and over, again. Impossible! How can God tell me to do that? I can't. No matter how hard I try--I can't. No matter how much I study and prepare--I can't. No matter what--I can't do it.

"So after awhile, I just forgot about it. I had written the chapter out on a couple of 3" x 5" index cards, but I threw them in a drawer after a few weeks because I just couldn't believe that it was God. After all that, I still couldn't believe.

"About two years later, in the Spring of 1977, I came across those index cards again. 'I wonder if that's what God wants me to do,'" I thought to myself. A couple of days later I was having coffee with a friend and I related this story to him. Until then, only 4 or 5 others knew about it. I asked him if he thought that was what God wanted me to do.

"'How should I know? If that's what God wants you to do, He'll let you know.'

"So I prayed again, 'God, if this is what you want me to do, you'll have to confirm it again.' (Can you imagine such audacity?)

"Two days later, a friend called me and said, 'Bob, I have a bomb shell to drop on somebody at the lunch meeting on Tuesday.' (I'm president of the local Full Gospel Business Men's Chapter and he had called to ask permission to speak at the next meeting.)

I said, 'What is it, Paul?' And he began reading that chapter to me--that same chapter. Wow! So I told him that he had already dropped the bomb, and he had hit the bull's eye.

"So here it was again. What could I do? I still couldn't understand it. There was no rational interpretation. There was still absolutely no way I could ever accomplish this impossible task. But I accepted it anyway--in a way. I accepted the fact that God meant what He had said to me even if I couldn't understand it.

"At this point I recognized that up to that time in my life I had not experienced what Norman Grubb refers to as the second crisis. But I was unfamiliar with his books at that time. I just knew that 'before I did not do God's will, and now I realize that I can not do God's will.' What a predicament. I prayed. I read. I searched for the answer.

"One evening I called my pastor (at a different church than before, because we had moved) and shared my burden with him. He invited me to his home. There we prayed together for awhile and then we just knelt in silence. He said, 'There's your answer.' I didn't know what he was talking about.

"'Where?' I asked.

"'There, on the radio.'

"All this time, unnoticed by me, the radio had been playing in the background. It was on the local Christian station and they were playing the song which is taken from Jeremiah 29:13: 'If you will seek me with all your heart, you will find me.'

"So, for the next 17 months, I did just that. I prayed--I read--I listened--I sought--I cried. During this time I read about men of God, such as Charles Finney, Dwight Moody, Hudson Taylor, Guy Bevington, John Hyde, Rees Howells, and many more. I noticed that most of them spoke of an experience with God, apart from salvation, that drastically changed their lives. After they were saved--after they had done works for God such as starting missions, churches, schools, etc.--after all these things--something happened. They met God in a new way. They called it by various names, but they seemed to share a common experience. This is what I needed. This was what I sought--a deeper experience with God which would radically transform my life to be able to perform that impossible task which was set before me.

"In my searching, I came across Norman Grubb's book, The Spontaneous You, and was greatly blessed. I discovered that Norman had a more recent book entitled, Who Am I?, so I bought a copy and read it and underlined it and read it again and again. I knew that this man had what I wanted, and he was trying to share it with me. I prayed the prayer that he recommended about acknowledging 'Christ in me', but nothing happened. Still, I persisted. I read more of his books and the books of others, mostly biographies of men of God. My hunger increased, and my yearning grew more intense. When would God answer my cry?

"I began to have serious doubts about God and about myself. I came dangerously close to turning my back on God, my wife, everything. If God was real, why wouldn't He answer my cry? If He wasn't real, I wasn't going to waste my life 'playing church.' I was really getting desperate. I had already made preliminary arrangements to have Norman Grubb and Dan Stone come to Hawaii in several months, but I was ready to give up the whole thing.

"On the evening of November 8, 1978, a Wednesday, I was troubled, as usual. I went into my study and shut the door behind me. I talked to God. I don't remember what I said. I flipped through a few books I had on my shelf about men of God. I read Dwight Moody's account of his 'baptism in the Holy Spirit' again. I read Hudson Taylor's account of his experience with God after he had been a missionary for many years. I read the book of Romans. And in the fourth chapter of Romans I came across the story of Abraham. The following excerpts seemed to come alive to me.

"v.3--'Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness' . . . v.5--'to the man who . . . trusts God . . . his faith is credited to him as righteousness.' v.10--'Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before.' v.11--'And he received circumcision as a sign and seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them.' v.12--'And he is also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.'

"v.13--'It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith' . . . v.17--'He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed--the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.' (New International Version)

"God had given Abraham a promise. By all human means, it would be impossible for Abraham to ever obtain that promise. And yet, Abraham believed. He didn't understand. He just believed. And because he believed what God had said--even though the task was impossible--he was righteous. He walked in the truth that God had declared. He assumed the role of the 'Father of many nations' even though it was impossible for him and his wife to have a son. They were much too old. God even changed Abraham's name to let the world know how He saw this man. God 'calls things that are not as though they were.'

"Because Abraham believed God and walked in the TRUTH, he was righteous. Did he feel righteous? Had he any outward signs of being righteous? I think not. He received circumcision much later. The inward reality existed long before the outward evidence appeared. But he was righteous as soon as he believed.

"God was telling me to BELIEVE. The task was impossible for me to perform. But I didn't have to perform it. I had now come to the point where I could appropriate Galatians 2:20: 'It's Christ that lives in me.' God was going to perform this impossible task in me and through me. I didn't have to do it. God would do it. In fact, it was already done. Right from the beginning, I had always been what 'I' couldn't become. The truth of Galatians 2:20 became real to me. I now saw what Norman and the others came to see. I read on in Romans 4.

"v.18--'Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations . . .' v.19--'Without weakening in his faith . . .' v.20--'he did not waver . . . but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God.' v.21--'being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.' v.22--'This is why "it was credited to him as righteousness."' v.23--'The words "it was credited to him" were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness--for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.'

"Now, for the very first time, I could see what it was all about. I called to my wife and shared these things with her. I told her that this was what Norman Grubb had been talking about when he spoke of a second crisis. We reread a portion of Who Am I? and Norman said that when you come to this point, you say a prayer acknowledging that it is Christ now living in you; not yourself any longer. I asked my wife, 'What shall we do?' There was a long silence. I answered my own question, 'I think we have to.'

"She replied, 'We really don't have any choice.'

"As we realized that Jesus wanted to take over our lives it seemed exciting except for one fact: in order for him to live in us, we had to die. That wasn't so exciting. But we prayed the prayer, one at a time, in our own words. I really believed. Before I prayed the prayer, I expected that at some time, several years later maybe, I would receive a sign or seal of what God had done. But, immediately upon acknowledging that Christ was in me now, something happened. I received a seal upon my heart. No lightning. No choirs of angels. Nothing had changed. And yet, everything was different. It wasn't just a profession by faith. Christ in me was me--is me! He was there all the time--I just hadn't let him 'be' before. At this point I have a hard time trying to explain just what happened. But it happened to my wife, too. Everything is different now for both of us. There is a world of difference between life as we live it now and life as we lived it before.

"I had many questions in my mind before this. Questions such as 'Who am l? What am I? Who is God? What is life?' and many, many more.

"As I related the details of my new life to a friend, he said, 'I guess you have the answers to all those questions now.'

I replied, 'Yes.'

"'Well, what are they?' he inquired.

"I paused. I realized then that I didn't have all the answers. But it was O.K. now. I didn't need all the answers. Before, these questions haunted me. Now it didn't matter. What matters now is Christ in me. Everything else is O.K. The problems are still there--maybe more than before. But now it's O.K. Christ is still there, too; and he'll take care of them."