Salvation Summaries

In my last post, I talked about whether Christians should share their faith.  In this one, I share my personal testimony.

If you’re not a Christian, a testimony is a story of how a person became a Christian. All Christians have one.  Some may be more dramatic than others, but that doesn’t matter.  What matters is the person changed, or more accurately – God changed that person – from a non-Christian to a Christian, or from a non-believer to a believer, or from being unsaved to saved. The Bible describes this as being “born again” and made into a “new creation.”  Many people claim to be a Christian but are not because this change has never taken place within them (and if you’re not sure it has, you’ve come to the right place to find out).

For some, the spiritual change of having one’s sins forgiven and receiving God’s Spirit leads to immediate and noticeable changes in that person’s life.  However, I would guess for most, changes in desires, deeds and lifestyle take place gradually.

I’ve shared my testimony many times over the years, and probably more to Muslim taxi cab drivers on business trips than to any other group (Bible study groups, Sunday School classes, family gatherings, etc. included).  I’ve not shared it with my current co-workers, as the environment is not conducive for that, but I have with some former ones.

If you are a Christian but not shared your testimony because: 1) you don’t know how to, or 2) you’re uncomfortable in doing so, feel free to use mine as an example of what one looks like and some of the things you might want to talk about.

So, without further delay, here’s my personal testimony…

My Personal Testimony

Many years ago, when I was in high school, I attended church most Sundays, but didn’t really like it. I went to a Methodist church where the minister told interesting stories in his sermons, but I didn’t feel like I learned much.  I also participated in a Methodist Youth Fellowship group, but I really disliked like that. Why?  Our teachers loved to play games and laugh and have fun, but as an introvert, it made me very uncomfortable.

When I went to college, I experienced the “college life” for a while.  I went to bars, drank beer, even got drunk a few times, all of which was new to me.  When I was in high school, I didn’t do any of this, for I lived in a small town, went to a small school and played sports.  Back then, if a student drank beer, partied, or “did drugs,” they were viewed as an outcast, and were not allowed to participate in sports, which was the highlight of many. So, I didn’t have the opportunity, nor the desire, to do those things.

During my freshman year, a campus minister visited several dormitories, including Wiest Hall where I stayed, and a new friend of mine from down the hall encouraged me to meet with him. I didn’t think much about it other than I’d be doing this friend a favor, so I agreed.

When I met with the minister, he reviewed with me a little booklet called the Four Spiritual Laws, which was an abbreviated gospel message of salvation (I typically don’t recite each of these laws to someone I’m witnessing to, but I included them below for your reference).

1. God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
2. Man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for his life.
3. Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. Through Him you can know and experience God’s love and plan for your life.
4. We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.

I had never heard of these “laws” before, but they made sense to me. At the end of our short meeting, I prayed (or he might have prayed with or for me…I really don’t remember) to have my sins forgiven and be saved.  I left the meeting feeling like I was, but didn’t know that much about salvation or what might happen next.

Within a few weeks, I started to change.  I continued to go with my twin brother and roommates to bars, but refused to drink beer.  I bought a necklace with a cross on it, and wore it.  I also started to attend a Bible study with a leader of Campus Crusade for Christ, and I renewed my commitment to attend church. I not only felt different, I was starting to act differently too, and this was the first sign to me that I had become a Christian.

Also during that year, there was a particular Sunday when the Methodist church I had attended in high school allowed college students (who had previously attended the church in high school) to lead the service.  As an introvert who was scared to death of public speaking, I did the unthinkable – I volunteered to give the sermon!  Why?  I wanted others to know about salvation, and experience what I had experienced.  I remember asking the Methodist minister for help in giving a sermon on salvation, but he didn’t want to, which I thought was odd.  I also remember my parents’ reaction when I returned home after the church service, which was…silence.  I’m sure they didn’t know what had happened to this particular son of theirs while at college, and didn’t really care for it, but at the same time didn’t know what to say, so they said nothing.

During the rest of my years at college, I’d love to say that I continued to grow spiritually, but that wasn’t true. I “backslid” at times, and my biggest mistake was joining a fraternity for about a year (I had joined to gain some new friends, but none of them were like me, and most of our dues simply went to the purchase of beer so my non-academic frat brothers could get drunk).  However, I continued to attend church and periodically went to a Bible study.

After graduating from college and for a few years, I made baby steps in my faith from going to church most of the time.  Some time later I met my future wife, and we both began to grow spiritually from attending Sunday School class and church each week, and participating in Bible study groups.

If you were to ask me the biggest changes I have experienced in my life since becoming a Christian, I’d say they are these:

• I have an earnest desire to grow as a Christian. Like my wife, I read and study the Bible about every day, and pray several times throughout the day.  Also, I have a strong desire to witness to others.

• I listen primarily to Christian music, and have become more aware of the inappropriate content of songs I used to listen to before becoming a Christian (though I periodically listen to some of my favorite songs from the 80’s).

• My wife and I are more sensitive to the sexually immoral content and foul language that pervade most movies today, and too many TV shows. As such, we watch relatively little TV and limit our movies to G, PG and select PG-13 ones.  We can’t watch some of the movies we liked from many years ago, for if we try to we are often surprised by the language and inappropriate content that we simply did not notice back then.

• I can more easily feel the temptations, and see the sin, in my own life.  I can also more easily see the sins other people commit (I think a person simply becomes more aware of the sin in our world; they can see it more clearly, once they become saved).

• My willingness to tithe has changed.  My wife and I donate 10% of our gross income to church, different Christian organizations and a number of missionaries (a person does not need to tithe 10% to be a Christian of course, and we know of some who tithe more than this).

• My goals in life are probably different than most. It is not my desire to make a lot of money, or have a big and expensive house, or drive a new car.  Rather, my main goal is for our children to grow as Christians, and I’ll do anything I can to help with that (this included sending them to Christian school and, when they were younger, having weekly family times where I’d share something in the news or something I had learned that related to Christianity).

I don’t know how many of these changes are the result of my own desires and efforts, or God working in and through me via His Holy Spirit.

So, in conclusion, I became saved, or a Christian, when I was a freshman in college.  I didn’t grow spiritually while in college, but started to after I met my wife, and this was primarily from attending Sunday School class, church and Bible studies.  I have made progress in my spiritual growth, but have a long ways to go. I want to experience God in a much greater way, pray more effectively and continue to witness to others.

P.S. If, after reading this, you remain uncomfortable with the idea of sharing your testimony but still want to witness, you might read my post, “How to Witness in a Nutshell.”