Do you know the exact time and place?

I realized Christ as my Saviour on January 5th, 1941 at Christ's Church (Anglican) at my confirmation. I was 14 years of age. It was all of God. He provided the grace to realize that apart from the knowledge I had from growing up in church school, He had to reach out and turn my soul about. Nothing emotional, just a pure realization of Him.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Faith was revealed to me on Friday, June 8, 1979 about 9 - 9:30 p.m. in Spring, Texas at a little "coffeehouse" ministry called "The Vine."

Joe Arms was the preacher, although the Holy Spirit was the one dealing with my heart.

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If you would indulge me, I feel like sharing the short version of that story:

I was 13-years-old and for several months God had been dealing with my heart, convicting me of my rebellion against him and drawing me to Himself. However I was confused since the preaching and teaching at my home church essentially taught baptismal regeneration ("tell the preacher you want to be baptized or you will go to hell"), yet claimed it was all about faith at the same time. I didn't understand how faith worked since the focus seemed to be on "walking the aisle" and baptism. I also knew that I shouldn't ask questions of my Sunday School teachers about the subject since they had hounded me for years about getting baptized like everyone else in my Sunday School classes ("we need to have everyone saved before we promote") and had called me out in front of the class on at least three occasions demanding that I "walk the aisle" that Sunday morning or else it demonstrates that I "hate Jesus." :tonofbricks:

Fortunately, God gave me enough rebelliousness against unrighteous authority that I didn't cave, but that didn't help me with the faith issue.

I was under heavy conviction when our youth group went on an overnight trip to the Houston area and we stopped at "The Vine" to hear Joe Arms preach. While I would disagree with quite a few things that Joe Arms preached, I remember part of his sermon very well. He was preaching about Jesus walking on water and calling Peter out of the boat to meet Him on the waves. Joe Arms pointed out that Peter did not have the ability to walk out on the waves himself, but when Jesus called him and he exercised the faith to get out of the boat, Jesus enabled him to do the impossible. And when Peter began to lose faith and sink, Jesus rescued and restored him. "That's what Jesus is calling everyone here to do," Arms said, "step out on faith and meet Jesus where He walks. He is the one who makes it happen if you exercise faith."

At that moment, the whole faith thing made sense to me. I knew I wanted to turn my life over to Jesus. The invitation was given, but I decided to wait and talk about it a bit more with my youth minister and pastor. Joe Arms was really working the guilt and doing the "every head bowed, every eye closed... raise your hand if you want me to pray for you... all of you who raised your hands need to come to the front..." routine. I bowed my head and closed my eyes, but I didn't raise my hand or do the other (I was already familiar with that kind of manipulation). However, my friend Darrin had apparently gotten swept up in it and was being goaded into going forward. He asked me to go with him so he would know someone back in the "counseling" rooms. I walked forward with him and a group of us teen boys were herded into a counseling room, about 10 of us in all.

The "counselor" asked how many of us had been baptized. All but two of us raised their hands. He said, "okay, you're here for rededication" and led them in a prayer that they will try harder to be a Christian. Then he turned to the two heathen teens in the room and said, "You're here to make a profession of faith. Pray out loud after me..." He started praying. I decided I wasn't going to pray out loud, but the words he said actually resonated with some of the things I was feeling inside as well as my desire for Jesus to be the Lord of my life. I praying sincerely from the heart, although silently, for God to receive my faltering words and know my intentions. In that moment, I had a strong sense that my world had changed for eternity. I'm not one of those people who believe that it is the usual experience to have a "feeling" when one is converted, but that was my experience. I think God granted me that because of the extremely mess-up and confusing circumstances surrounding my conversion.

The "counselor" (really, just a prayer-leader) then gave each one of us a Jack Chick tract, "Kings of the East" (which predicted the invasion of Israel by the Red Chinese at any point within the next few years) and sent us on our way.

In spite of the lack of follow-up by Arms and my home church (I finally got baptized a few weeks later and the church leaders lost interest in my spiritual condition), God was merciful to me and noticeably transformed my attitudes and the way I lived. I also had a hunger for scripture and started studying it on my own since the youth minister kept losing interest in leading Bible studies. (I would ask him to lead a Bible study and it would go a few weeks with about a dozen in attendance, and then he would cancel the series in favor of something "everyone would enjoy".)

The only good part of that is God taught me from the very beginning that I have to take responsibility for my own spiritual health and following Jesus according to my faith and understanding since my church or denomination wasn't necessarily going to be interested in supporting that effort.

Fortunately, I am now in a very good church situation where I am challenged both by scripture and the pressing needs of a lost world where I can grow in knowledge and faith by actively participating in ministry organized and supported by my church.

Thank you for your indulgence! :wavey:

 

Sunday October 16, 1971, at about 12 noon, at Muldoon Road Baptist Church in Anchorage, Alaska. I had been praying all morning for some kind of sign from God. A thought came into my mind (I believe from God Himself) that a family of four would go down the aisle at church, consisting of a man and woman and their son and daughter. I was the fifth person going down that aisle!

BTW, the Sunday School lesson that day had been written directly to me (of course, by a complete stranger more than 2000 miles away, months or years earlier), and the preacher's sermon proved to me that he had been following me around all week!

Isn't our God great?

Bill

 

It was on a Sunday listening to a D. James Kennedy sermon that my conversion truly took place. I have been in Church and around Christians all my life, but never a conversion.

 

April 23, 1966, at a meeting conducted by visiting speaker John A. Stormer at the Metropolitan Baptist Church, Tucson AZ (William Bowler was the pastor).

 

December 16th 1747 3:00 A.M (jk to all the seasoned people on here)

I was born again around November 15th 2007 (age 22) in my bedroom searching scripture. I honestly cant narrow it down to an exact time and day. I thought I was saved in 1996 (age 11) when I said a prayer to recieve Christ, but I personally believe I was not. For the next 11 years of my life things gradally worsened and for about 8 years before I was saved I gave up going to church all together. Anyway at the peak of my success and joyride I was invited to church by my grandmother. The pastor Pat Campbell preached on materialism, which was my life as I had just purchased my dream car 10 days before the sermon along with going to church that day with a hangover. Anyway, I was not saved at that time but it really caused me to think things through so I decided to start going back to church to please God, haha, which was not all God had in mind. So after about ten days of God capturing my every thought, He led me to search scripture which about tore my heart out for a few days and nights. At this time I really began to see myself- my careless blind and totally foolish and sinful self, heck I was the hypocrite for the first time. At some point within the span of a couple of weeks I went from deciding to start being a regular attender again, like the fleshly church goers, to desiring to live for and serve Christ out of a new burning passion that literally stole my heart. I look back and see all sorts of biblical changes that can from my heart that are impossible. I began to love and read scripture for hours, preach to friends and family, and absolutely crave Sunday mornings. The funny thing is that the Lord completely caught me off guard when He called me to Himself, I just intended that Sunday to be a casual yearly drive by, but it changed my life completely. Praise Jesus and His awesome grace, now 18 or so months later Im 23 and cant figure out what the heck is going on within me, I keep doing what I dont want to do. I tell myself to focus on Christ who I desire to keep my eyes on and I go off and get back into theology nonsense- I drive myself crazy. I cant wait for glorification hehe

PS. I was born the first time 11-15-85