I grew up a Jewish boy in a South African gold-mining town known as Krugersdorp. I remember sitting in shul (synagogue), enthralled as our learned rabbi expounded how God was a personal God—he would speak to Moses, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to many others. Growing up, I often pondered how I fit into all this. By the time I entered the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, I was deeply concerned that I had no assurance that God was indeed a personal God. I was confident that he was a historical God who had delivered our people from the hands of Pharaoh. But he seemed so far removed from the particulars of my life in Krugersdorp. Where was the personality and the vibrancy of a God who truly could speak to me?