Posted on 06/23/2021 1:48:10 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
I know I speak for many a believer who feels a burden for a loved one, neighbor/colleague/friend to come to the fullness of faith in Christ.
The dynamics at work in the spiritual lives of children and adults are different for obvious reasons...Simply by virtue of adults having had more life experience, more ideas to consider, etc...
So for those of you who are willing, can you summarize what made you ultimately decide to be a Christian? And if there were any individuals who played a role, how so? And vice versa: what or who may have contributed to your initial hesitancy, if any.
This is an ecumenical thread so Catholic, Orthodox Protestant/Evangelical all apply.
Too long to describe. I will just say this. I am a “work in progress”.
I am a Christian. Just trying to work through a life of pain and forgiveness. My forgiveness and mine of others.
I was saved as a child. Then all hell broke loose.
I gave up on God. He never gave up on me. 😊❤
I was 43 and had an overnight conversion.
Shalom!
Y’all are truly blessed and we’re incredibly blessed to have fellowship in Christ with you.
That picture you posted, “Mere Christianity” is part of how I came to acknowledge Jesus as my God.
CS Lewis points out in that book that all the mainstream christian denominations agree that Jesus was and is God Himself.
It is historically provable that Jesus died. It is also provable (even His enemies acknowledge) that He died for blasphemy, for claiming to be equal with God Himself.
Once I knew the historical facts behind the thing, coming to a conclusion was a spiritual conversation between me and God the Father.
Jesus promises that it takes only a mustard seed’s worth of faith, and I have seen dozens of people exclaim this faith quite loudly. You just ask them, “was Jesus a good man or a bad man?” They invariably (except once in my case) say that He was a good man.
Then, once a person is confronted with the honest HISTORICAl evidence — that even His enemies acknowledge — of Jesus dying because He claimed equality with God Himself... the faith part is quite minimal.
I recommend the book “Case for Christ” by Lee Stroebel or even the better written “Jesus: God, Ghost or Guru?” by Buell & Hyde. Plus the free-online available book “New Testament Documents, Are They Reliable?” by FF Bruce.
Yep!
Moses got shelved for 40 years after he pulled that murder stunt.
Then, the Lord call him out and the rest is history.
(Psalm 40:2)
Got saved at 22.
Was raised Roman Catholic, met a person at work whom I knew before he got saved and saw the change in him and didn’t know what he had but knew I wanted it.
Also, was in despair after the breakup with a boyfriend.
At that point, I started talking with God, certainly not in the way I was raised to, but more conversationally.
I finally reached the point where I told God that if He could straighten out this mess of a life of mine, He could have it. I told Him that I’d even become a missionary and go to Africa if He wanted me to because I’d rather be happy doing what He wanted than continuing on the way I was.
After that, through a series of circumstances, I ended up working with a Christian and heard the gospel and knew I wanted Jesus and turned my life over to Him.
Peace Be With You
I wanted my kids to have good moral values....of course my values were just fine....guess what happened.
The Holy Spirit showed up and I was no longer running the show.
It took a while for that to sink into my thick head...that I am a believer.
That was 21 years ago. I’m 58.
The wife and kids did benefit greatly and, I count it as the most important thing that has ever happened to me.
I was 18.
A couple times in my life I encountered atheists who were very strident and had very convincing arguments. I wasn’t well prepared for those encounters, but eventually built a library of apologetics and studied some of the toughest issues.
As far as I’m concerned, besides creation itself, the greatest evidences are the existence of Israel, and fulfilled prophecy written down years in advance in the Bible.
Praise God for His grace and mercy towards you & your wife.
Thanks my friend.....you too!!
Christians are Christians and I think whether people are converts or were brought up as Christians and then as adults suddenly realized it was true, we’re all convert Christians.
There are doctrinal differences between the Christian churches, but since the Catholic Church under Bergoglio seems to have abandoned both doctrine and the Faith, what’s left is just those of us who believe in our divine creation and redemption through Jesus Christ (meaning in real-life terms, our salvation from popular culture and our adherence to eternal truths).
We’ll all live together and those who are faithful will probably all die together.
And to you sister!
God bless you!
Thank You!
Have you seen my profile page?
When I was 16 in a church youth group. The youth minister had a very clear presentation on salvation. He took us into Romans and talked about how "Jesus paid the price for sin once for all" and what that meant. Once I understood that Jesus had already paid for my past present and future sins when he hung on that cross. And the offer was extended to whosoever will. All I had to do was claim the promise through prayer and put my trust in Jesus.
That was a no brainer for me. I went home and prayed to claim the promise of salvation with a clearer understanding of how. I don't think my confidence in my salvation has waivered hardly at all since then.
I'm not very disciplined in my Christian walk. I might get chastised for being a disobedient lazy carnal Christian. I almost certainly won't get as much reward in heaven as I could have for the things that I could have but didn't do. But I'm adopted and I will never lose that child of God status. I know whom I have believed and am confident that He is able to keep that which I committed unto Him against that day.
Rom 4:8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
Rom 8:38-39 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
At Presbyterian Sunday school one morning we were all sharing our church history and I told them that I had been born and raised Presbyterian, but Christian for only a very short while.
Agnosticism was a lazy man’s detour from 16 to 33.
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