Rocky Road to Happiness
Being a teenager in a family that’s falling apart due to divorce isn’t easy, so all Michael Cocks, 22, of Toowoomba, Qld, wanted was to be happy. Not surprisingly, when school friends introduced him to the party scene with its attendant drinking and girls, promising him happiness, it was an easy choice to make: “That’s what I want!” was his response.
After high school, he entered Gatton Agricultural College to study horticulture. There he graduated to a more sophisticated, systematic partying, getting extremely drunk—“going nuts”—weekly, as part of the “university scene.”
“I was a casual drinker: If I was drinking, my aim was to get drunk and have a ‘good time,’” he says. “We were getting really drunk twice a week. Sometimes I’d lose days to it. On one occasion, I remember drinking up until 9.30 in the evening, then the next thing I recalled was at 3 o’clock the next day, being in a rest room throwing up.”
Not surprisingly, at the end of that year with failing grades, he was politely asked to move off campus to make way for someone more deserving, so he went home. He realised what alcohol had done, dashing his hope of achieving something from university.
Michael applied for another university course, was accepted, so then went looking for nearby accommodation. The only place available was a house in which the other three members were all Christians.
“They were happy, they had joy, but they weren’t doing the things I was doing [drinking and so on] to find it. That intrigued me.
“They were also openly friendly people, so it was easy to be around them, but it was simultaneously tense because I was wanting to know about Christianity, but felt that they couldn’t possibly be right.
“For the entire year I debated, argued and disputed with them, doing everything possible to bring them down. I’d try to infuriate them at every opportunity, but they didn’t let it get to them and remained friendly and happy.
“It wasn’t what they said in the debates, rather, it was their attitude toward me and life that got me interested. But at the end of that year, with my grades much improved, I was offered a good, well-paying full-time job, so I moved away.
Within a couple of months, however, he was fired, so went back to finish his course in the new year.
“I moved back with the Christians only to discover that the group had changed. However, I made a decision to find out what they were really about. I was already reading the Bible, talking to people and even attending church. But it was still only an academic exercise and I would have been happy for it to have to have stayed that way, not letting it affect me emotionally. I was happy just being around these nice people, not really understanding what they were on about.
“Then something happened early my third year. I’d been reading my Bible and had fallen asleep, but awoke with a start in the early hours, instantly awake. I knew there was a presence beside me.
“Then a voice right there asked, If I came tonight, would you be ready? “I didn’t have to say anything, for in my heart—from what I’d read in Scripture—I knew I wasn’t. When I accepted that, the presence left me, and I went back to sleep. When I awoke later in the morning, I just lay in bed for an hour or so, taking in what had happened.
“I realised my emptiness—how empty my approach to Christianity had been. I hadn’t let it affect me in a real, heartfelt way. I knew something needed to change. And it did. From that moment, I decided to pursue Christianity with my heart, because if the presence returned with the same question, I wanted to be able to say Yes, I am ready! I gave my heart to Christ right then.”
Michael continued to study his Bible and was baptised in June 2002, and after graduating, now works in an interdenominational campus ministry.
And why should a person be a Christian?
“Since high school, I just wanted to be happy. I lived seeking it. But I discovered there’s nothing at all that you can do in, or receive from the world aside from Christ that comes close to Christianity—the joy, happiness and completeness it offers.
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