Today, I posted on a Christian chat board about my testimony of being saved. It is not dramatic like some, I was a full fledged sinner, but was more like the rest of the world. So, I figured I would post it hear as it might speak to someone out there. Remember, if you would like to make a comment to me, use the “Contact” button at the top of the page.
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I was somewhat raised around a home that believed in God. At the least my grandmother a strong Christian who would preach of God to anyone who would listen to her, a wonderful woman of God. My father and mother was not quite the same. My mother was kind of backslidden most of my young life, so while she would take us to the Assembly of God church a little, my parents did not live that Godly of life.
Okay that was some background. Throughout my years I earnestly prayed to God to be saved. I had heard that once you were “saved”, then you would feel this great and grand feeling and suddenly the world would all change. Well, it was supposed to be something like that. I would pray this simple little prayer and feel nothing. At times throughout my life, that prayer would be with tears, but still nothing, I felt nothing. One time I pushed it a little more and actually got a case of the “do betters” (you know, where you try to do better and then end up quitting) for about a week.
From the little bit of the Bible my grandmother taught me, I knew that they believed Jesus would come back at an event known as the Rapture and take His people away. She also pounded in my head that this time known as the Tribulation was coming and it was going to be a very bad time of seven years. In my earlier years, I actually read the book of Revelations (yes, the ‘s’ was at the end at that time since I did not know it was actually the “Revelation”). Of course, the book of Revelation, painted a strange picture that ended with all the good guys in heaven and bad ones in hell (as far as I could see at the time). While I had no clue what all of it meant back then, I did know that if there was a God, I sure would not want to be caught in all the stuff it mentioned, but hey, I was still young so no real worry, I thought.
By 1989, my mother had already come back to God in a big way for a number of years and would try to talk to me about God. My father died when I was 10 years old so he was not in the picture. My dear mother would give me all this stuff about God, I am a 28 year old software developer at the time, and I would always throw it right back to “How do you know God exists?” She would just say, “Because I know”, lots of help there. Then it would move to the death blow to the conversation “Well, where did God come from?” which she would reply “I don’t know, I just know He has always been there and you just have to accept it.” By the time our talks were over, she would get on the phone to my grandmother and tell her they needed to pray harder for me :)
In Nov 1989, I had watched a documentary on the Berlin wall, which talked about how if a person even came close to the wall, they would be shot. There was this space from the wall to a fence and if they got past the fence they would most likely be shot. Within just a few days, I watched as the Berlin wall fell and people were all over it and breaking it apart. It really shocked me as I just watched that documentary a little earlier.
I thought, it was weird and wondered if it had anything to do with Bible Prophecy, so I pulled down my Bible which my grandmother bought me many years earlier. Yep, I headed straight to the book of Revelation again to see if there was anything that would match up to this event. While it did not match up, it did get me reading the Bible and that did something to me.
In Feb 1990, I was out on our bike path walking at night and I got down on my knees and prayed to God again under a beautiful moon (the more I think about it, I think it was full :) ), a simple prayer yet again with a slight change. It went something like “Jesus, I want you to come into my heart and change me. I repent of all my sins before you and want you to be my Lord. I do not care if I feel anything, I will live for you and be a Christian for the rest of my life.” I got up off my knees and guess what I felt? Yep, absolutely nothing just like every other time I prayed. This time though I walked away talking with God telling Him it did not matter, I was going to serve Him.
The next day I went to the Bible bookstore in our town and picked up a Christian tape (yes, tapes were still popular back then). I did not really know what to pick up but someone had mentioned Carman to be in the past and so I picked up Carman’s “Radically Saved” tape. I played the tape, read my Bible (more like consumed it) and watched several good Christian Bible teachers on TBN. Within about a week I ended up “feeling” more than I would have imagined. I had become so emotional and tearful because God had performed a new birth in me and knew He had taken up home within me.
So, what was the difference between that prayer and all the others? Basically, on this end of that road, I can see that I was praying that prayer and looking to see what I “felt” as a method of proving God was there. The last prayer was accepting Him as existing without the demand to prove Him. Later I would find the passage in the Bible:
Heb 11:6 ~ But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
The “he that cometh to God must believe that He is”. All those prayers where testing God, not really accepting Him. The last was Accepting, believing that He does exist. This does not mean I did not have any doubts as I would frequently have thoughts cross my mind if what I believed was true or not. I did not realize that it was the enemy who was plaguing my mind with those thoughts. It is the enemy that sows those seeds of doubt on many different topics of God that we are to stand in faith.
Anyway, instead of battling the enemy with the “I just know He exists” stuff, I sat down and tried to put it out logically as my mind viewed the issue. I wrote a quick article on that thought process:
http://theawakening.com/Articles/I_AM_An_Explanation_of_Existence.aspx
Basically, the article describes what I wanted to know when I would ask my mother “Where did God come from?” It goes through the view that something has to be eternal for any kind of reality to exist and then sets forth some requirements for that eternal being(s) to allow for existence and then looks at those requirements from a Biblical view of God and how it matches up. Of course, I have many more things now that locked down my faith over the years and more are added every year, it seems I never stop learning about God.
One other key factor of a Christian walk that some overlook, you must make God “Lord” in your life. Everything is to take second place or lower compared to God. I once heard it put this way “you cannot say ‘no Lord’, if you say ‘no’ then He is not Lord”.
Many lessons have been learned since those early days. The first of which was tarrying for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit which I managed to drag out to nine months. I think I hit every church in town that believed in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit along with ready about any book on the subject. Finally, after nine months I found out what the word “yield” means ;)