Why We Believe: Vol. 6

November 17, 2007, 9:49 am; posted by
Filed under Featured, MC-B, Testimonies  | No Comments

This and following weekends, we will share the brief salvation testimony of each Bweinh!tributor. So far we’ve heard from David, Steve, Tom, Connie and Djere. Next in line is MC-B.

Unlike a number of my fellow Bweinh!tributors, I did not grow up in a household where baptism, regular prayer or even church attendance were presupposed. I was encouraged largely to ‘do my own thing’; if I wanted to do any of those things, that was fine, but if I wanted to stay home and read or sleep on Sundays, that was fine as well.

I still went to church most weeks anyway; they had the best food (at least the best that was available to me on Sunday mornings), and it was an excuse to talk to people and make friends. I also got involved in a number of church activities like camps, summits, retreats and conferences. The summer before my senior year of high school I was invited to go to the Presbyterian Youth Triennium, the biggest event that the Presbyterian Church throws for its young people. People come from all over the world to spend a week in Purdue University for fellowship, prayer, miraculous experiences, etc.

I was fairly blown away by the whole experience; I had been disinterested in getting too involved in my home church because they were so sleepy. There was little seriousness of purpose about spreading their mission or bringing in new people to hear the good news. The business of the church lasted for an hour on Sundays (two if there was a general meeting afterward) and that was it. Nothing particularly remarkable. At the Triennium, however, I realized that God doesn’t have to be boring and that He’s rarely found without specifically looking for Him. On the first day of the Triennium, I asked God into my heart and my life.

There is a huge amount of finality to asking God into your heart; once you do, you can’t be eternally lost ever again regardless of how temporally lost you may get. In other words, your position and relationship with God have been permanently sanctified. On the other hand, there is also a progressive element to sanctification; allowing God into your heart is a process that a person has to recommit to every day. God may continue to watch over someone who strays from His ways, but trying to get His Spirit to fall when there’s something getting in the way of one’s life with Him is another story entirely.

A salvation testimony is a great story of the triumph of God over man’s weaknesses and over evil, but it is only by examining every day since the commitment of a new heart to Him that an observer could fully understand why I or anyone else believes.


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