Originally Posted by
FurFlyin
This is going to be a long read, so I’m going to go ahead and apologize up front. I don’t know how to condense this story and it still convey the story that I wish I could change.
We’ve been doing the “Red Letter” challenge at church and that’s coming to a close this week. Todays challenge is to share your salvation experience/testimony, via social media. Since I don’t do Facebook or any other form of social media other than a couple of Internet Forums, you guys are now my avenue to complete this challenge.
I was raised in church. I was never a very compliant child at home or anywhere else. I wasn’t a bad child I guess, but I always wanted to do things my way. I still haven’t grown out of that but at least I recognize and admit that now.
The summer that I was 13 years old, we were attending a summer revival at the church that I grew up in. I don’t remember who the preacher was. I don’t remember any specifics of the sermons, but I do remember that during that week, the Lord called me to be saved. I resisted so very hard. I remember hanging onto the pew with every ounce of strength that I had. The revival came and went, and I had denied God. I still remember that next Saturday like it happened yesterday. I can take you to the exact spot in our back pasture where I wrestled with God. This wasn’t a physical act but it was definitely felt like it. It seemed as though I couldn’t move. It was so hard, almost impossible to accomplish. I remember telling God that I didn’t want to be saved. I was a teenager and I intended to party and if I was saved I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. That was a bad decision.
The next summer, I started hanging around with the popular crowd at school. I wasn’t popular but I so desperately wanted to be popular that I did things I knew were wrong just to impress people that in retrospect didn’t matter a bit. To impress them, I’d get drunk. I got drunk for the first time in my life just before my 15th birthday. It got to the point that I got drunk every weekend, then to the point that I got drunk every Friday night AND every Saturday night. By the time that I turned 16 I was drinking 2 5th’s of Vodka every weekend. I’d get drunk of Friday night, work all day on the farm on Saturday, get drunk of Saturday night, then get up and go to church with my parents on Sunday. Going to church wasn’t an option while living in my parents house. At the time I wished that it was, now I’m glad it’s not.
When I was 14 my parents had changed churches in an attempt to get my brother and I involved in a church with a youth group. We had been going to that church for a couple of years. One Sunday when I was either 16 or 17 I checked the box on the bulletin saying that I’d like to join the church. I figured if we were going to go there, we might as well be members. Later that week I got a call from the pastor. That was a big deal back then, since a kid didn’t have a phone number or a cell phone to get a call on. He asked me to come to his office the next afternoon. He asked me if I believed that Jesus Christ died on a cross to save me from my sins. I told him that I did. I really did and still do, but I didn’t understand anything about that, at that age. He told me that I’d get baptized and become a member of the church. So to celebrate that, I got drunk the very next Friday and Saturday nights, then got sprinkled the next morning, probably still hungover, but I was saved because the pastor told me I was.
I’ll condense this next part as much as I can. I moved off to college, got a job after college in Troy, got married, then my wife got pregnant with our first child. My wife and I were not in church. She urged me to visit a few churches while we lived in Troy, and we did, but I never wanted to go.
We moved back to Albertville in 2000 and when my wife was pregnant with our 2nd child we decided we needed to be in church. We ended up joining a Baptist church just south of town. In order to join that church I had to be Baptized by immersion. The pastor asked me if I believed that Jesus died for my sins and I said yes. I got wet, the congregation clapped and I was a member of the church.
We went faithfully for several years. During that time, I kept hearing “You’re not saved” in my head during the sermons and especially during the invitation at the end of the service. One Sunday the “Power Team” or someone like them was at church and at the end of the service during the invitation one of them said “If you’re not saved raise your hand so we can pray for you. We won’t embarrass you or call you out.” I raised my hand. When the prayer was over the guy said, “If you raised your hand a minute ago, come on down to the front of the church, lets get this settled today. The guy lied. That made me mad. I didn’t go down the aisle.
In time I got tired of hearing that in my head and I stopped going to church. Thankfully my wife kept going. She got more and more involved. She was teaching Sunday School and helping with other thing like VBS. Several years later, my kids got saved at VBS. I decided I wouldn’t let my shame, or anger keep me from seeing them walk down the aisle to profess their beliefs. I didn’t tell my wife I was going to church with them, but that was my plan. That morning in the shower I prayed that if God would call me to be saved one more time that I would not resist the call and that I’d make things right that day.
Well He called and I answered. I went down during the invitation and told the pastor that I had been living a lie. I wasn’t saved and I wanted to make that right. I had been fearing the ridicule of the church members but I didn’t receive any ridicule, I just received love and compassion. I was Baptized, with my children, the next Sunday.
Since that day, my walk hasn’t been easy. There was a time early on that I stopped going to church for a few months, but God reined me back in. There have been lots of ups and some downs along the way. We ended up getting very discouraged about the direction our church was going in and that led us to make one of the hardest decisions we’ve made, which was leaving that church. It was a miserable time for both of us and very Spiritually taxing on me. God knew what he was doing all along and led me and eventually all of my family to a different church. We have been blessed beyond measure.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading my story. It’s not been easy, it’s been long, but Praise God I know I’m saved!
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