What event turned you to the Lord?

well I realized that christianity is the way to go!

I mean burning abortion clinics seems like my thing so why not? thumbs up

joke calm down guys

My Transformation

A few months ago, after our Consistory meeting, Pastor Garnett asked if I would give my testimony. “It is so simple, I replied, hadn’t really summarized it further than the threat of divorce, turn to Jesus!” But, oh, there is so much more, by His Grace. We serve an awesome God. Some of this short story brings no glory to our Lord, may the rest of my transformation bring glory to You, Lord. I was born into a believing home, God love my wonderful loving parents whose foundation is the Lord, brought me to Sunday school, church, confirmation, (ours was the first in this building, I can still recall the aroma of the new wood and freshly glued carpet) and Dad, who taught us to give Jesus thanks before eating. The mid teen years were trying for me and especially them. I had a drug problem, I was drug to Sunday school and drug to church. “Time to get ready for church,” Mom would call out. “Oh, here we go again,” I came back with…once. She came rushing up the stairs to spare the rod? Not quite! Our senior class labeled ourselves as a bunch of non-conformists. There sure isn’t much here that is positive. I put everything before God and did I function OK? After a few years (five) of college and the party scene, I settled down back at the ranch, only to drive 60 miles to more weekend parties. And in ’83 and ’84 back to back New Year’s Caribbean cruises-enough alcohol already-it is an absolute abhorrent for me. None of it tastes any good, never really did. I was just told that I was behind and needed to catch up with the others. Peer pressure. Young ones, listen to your well grounded parents, elders, friends in Christ Jesus. Keep your standards as the Lord’s. Other things by which we hang our heads low, knowing I was lower than a snake in a rut… I stole things…gasoline (tempting again at these prices), 22 shells…which restitution times seven was laid on my heart to Melanie Stine. And from women…which I know I have been forgiven for the asking through Jesus, and repenting by turning away from all that junk, or mire, or dung heap, as the Bible uses for the things that don’t bring glory to God…and foul mouth, oh it was. You know how when a sneeze would come on, I just couldn’t wait to snort out horse…, now it’s “Yashewa…Saves!” Then there was the time when I was sent to a “healer” lady in Casper referenced by some ladies in Ten Sleep to find out what causes me to clear my throat so much and some back trouble. When I arrived, there in the drive was a bright red car and a bright red pickup. A big hesitation arose in me. Inside, both of the couples’ hair was jet black. Another red flag! Sitting there, a few questions were asked and with one in particular, I said “The Bible says,” and I was interrupted with, “Put away your belief in the Bible for now.” Right then, a funny feeling came over me, the hair on my neck bristled, and my conscience told me this isn’t passing the smell test,…leave. Now I know that it was really God saying, “RUN, RUN to Me!” Of course, I stayed and faked a self hypnosis session because I needed something right now. When I got out of that snake oil couple’s house, I didn’t look back, didn’t gain a thing. Told Pastor Bud about that experience…and his response was utter disgust, head shaking and all. It has already been described; “snake oil.” Now I pray for the Kantor family. There was a wedding in 1990. My former wife asked if we could go to church. We live 60 miles from town, and what, waste half a day? I jerked back with. Like I said, there was a wedding…and the ranch. All I could do was work, I thought if I could put in a day and a half, things would get done. Trouble is, no matter the hours, the pay is the same on the ranch. More hours-more money doesn’t quite work like that in our business. Through all that, two precious boys whom I love and am well pleased were conceived and born, Carl in ‘91 and Alec in ’94. My, are they growing by leaps and halves of beef. Early, family togetherness suffered. Spouse togetherness really suffered. Oh, there was some quality time when my boys would ride with me and fall asleep in the tractor as I did when riding with Bill Hefenieder! Separately, we would read the “Bible for Toddlers” to our sons when they were tucked in at night, but not to or with each other. The spiritual milk at that time would really have fed us plenty, also! In 11 years of marriage, and a few proddings for more quality time, to no avail, I was left with…myself…my sons, and…oh there is time for God now, Hallelujah! When sorting through and dividing our stuff, Barbara said, “Here’s your Bible.” It was my confirmation Bible. In complete shame, literally blew the dust off, wiped more off, sat down, and when opened, it fell open. It had been used/loved! Then shoved aside for too many years. How the change from then to now? I knew this man who came to the ranch fishing a few times and that was about it. I saw him again when he prayed over me in the ER in ’99 when I thought something was up with my heart. But that was just bacterial ulcers…or was it? I look back in total amazement of how and who our LORD puts in our path. Before my divorce, I sought council with Pastor Bud. This was near the end of July of ’01. I had to turn to Him. Him with a capital H. God’s Holy Spirit is forever calling each one of us into a closer relationship with Himself, and I am forever thankful for those who were praying for me. Thank you LORD, Carl, Alec, Mom, Dad, pastor Bud, and all of you, I love you. Put everything before God and things will work out…for a while. Then you can lay everything before God and reap His benefits!

Nothing misleading there! God is using His messengers truthfully. Hard heartedness is man made and allowed by Our Creator… for a time. The evil spiritual being is us, for, the only thing good in us is Jesus!

My crisis of belief began when I decided to read the entire Bible, basically as an act of faithfulness. Having never really read the Old Testament before (other than Psalms and a few other bits and pieces), I found it very disturbing. I couldn’t believe the same God I knew as Jesus, ordered the massacre of entire populations, found favor in individuals I consider sociopathic (such as Abraham and David), and was all around pretty much a petty tyrant.

So I figured I just needed to understand it in context. The second time I read it, I began looking up apologetics for the disturbing parts, and found them woefully inadequate and obviously contrived.

For a while, I fell back on the Catholic position, which is that the Bible records the viewpoints of men, and is not inerrant. I satisfied myself that the writers of the OT simply had the wrong view of God and had attributed wicked deeds to him that he actually had no part in. But it continued to haunt me, and eventually I started panicking over the idea that the New Testament might be in that same boat.

So, having heard repeatedly about all the mountains of evidence there were for things like the resurrection, and such, I decided I would research it to crush the doubts once and for all. I read books by Lee Strobel and others, and discovered there was no meat in them. They simply start with the assumption the Bible is credible and go from there. I was looking for hard evidence - archaeology or whatever, and found there wasn’t really any.

By now, my doubts had turned into agnosticism. But over the years, I continued to read and study layman level articles and books about archaeology, the cultures in which Judaism and Christinity developed, and comparative religion. That pushed me from agnostic to atheist, once it became clear that there were perfectly natural explanations as to how the concept of gods developed, and how the religions that wrote the Bible developed.

Silverwings, when you previously said “Whenever opposition arises to the gospel, you can be assured that the spirit of the unholy, the profane, or the AntiChrist is present.”, were not referring to being under the influence of some evil spiritual being?

Now you seem to be using ‘anti-christ’ to simply refer to anyone who isn’t for Jesus.

This has the appearance of an attempt to equivocate.

todaly, if you don’t mind, would you please read the post again that you commented on? It says nothing about people being “with me”, it is talking about opposition to the gospel, or good news, of Jesus Christ, or the bible.

Jesus own words” You are either for me or against me”

If you are of Christ… you are for him…

If you are against Christ… you are Anti… or against… Christ.

That makes the lines pretty clear.

For or against.

No inbetween.

silverwings, if I expressed a hope for you parallel to the one you expressed for me, I think you would take it as an offense. It comes across as patronizing, especially in light of your first post that basically accuses anyone who isn’t “with you” as being controlled by the anti-christ.

Warmheart… beautiful testimony…

toadaly- I hope and pray that somehow, someway, you find your way back to God.

rnealw-by being born into a Christian family, you have been spared much grief, that many of us have to walk thru. I doubt that you could ever know how truly blessed you are.

Thanks!

thank you to everyone for their answers. I must add that there are different ways to witness. one is to live the live He has given us and through our actions and our faith we witness. another is to seek out and talk to others about our love for Him and our belief. yet another is to preach “AT” others. preaching “at” someone isn’t what I believe He wants us to do. yes, we are called upon to witness but there is witnessing through love and sharing and there is witnessing through forceful intimidation. unfortunately there are those who do not see or understand the difference. and I must thank warmheart and toadaly for sharing their beliefs in a kind and respectful manner.

Well, I think it must have been a series of events. Brielfy:

I grew up with a liberal Christian mum, a lapsed-Catholic dad and two pretty traditional non-conformist Christian grandparents. We went to church, learned Bible stories and talked a lot about the news and what was going on in the world, and how that related to our (various) faiths. We did a lot of charity work and that kind of stuff.

They decided (somewhat bizarrely) to send me to a Catholic school, where I spent a lot of time arguing with the nuns, but made some good friends and got a basic education.

I carried on going to church through my teens because I’d fallen for a guy there - we started going out together when we were 15 and church was a good place to meet up. I also payed (a bit of) attention to the occasional sermon, and I loved the music. I believed in God and pretended to be good.

I went to university to study archaeology and met some interesting Christians there. Their faith was distinctly different to mine. They talked about knowing Jesus. Weird. I decided to watch and see if this made any sense in their lives. They seemed to be kind and helpful, and I liked them. But I wasn’t sure if ‘knowing Jesus’ was anything that could be real for me.

My relationship with the guy from the home church began to peter out and I fell BIG TIME for a guy on the edges of our friendship circle - a biological scientist who had recently become a Christian. Once the boyfriend from home and I had finally split up, I got to know the new guy better and we ended up going out together.

In all the dramatic, romantic, traumatic, confusing events of our new relationship, one thing stands out. My new boyfriend knew what it was like to stand and look at a ‘relationship with Jesus’, and try to decide if it could be real. He talked to me about his own experiences, and how they combined with his scientific knowledge and his agnostic upbringing. I tried his church for a change, and we went on long midnight walks around the campus, hashing out all that he was learning and what it might mean for me.

I came to a crisis point where I realised that I loved him but couldn’t stay with him under the false pretence that I was actually a Christian too. My prayers to God were quite selfish about it, but God turned them until I actually wanted God even more than I wanted my boyfriend. I came to the point where I just wanted Jesus and called out to Him, and as he always does, He answered my prayer.

That’s the story of my ‘turn’. It would be a brief note in my history if that’s where it ended, though.

In fact, it was the beginning and not the end. After university my boyfriend and I got married. We found a church in the new town we’d moved to, and began to work with the youth group (someone had advised us this was a good way to keep on learning for ourselves). We had a real ‘family’ in that church, aged from about 3-90. Since then we’ve gone on with God wherever we’ve lived. We’ve continued the traditions of charity work and faith that I learned from my family at home. Often it’s been pretty difficult, but this archaeology student and this profesional scientist have found that God has been the sure foundation in our lives.

I grew up in a family that believed in God, they did not walk in freedom, as there was much bondage, but, they had faith. And that faith was real. And they loved God. They also had a healthy respect for his word, and his ways, even if they were too weak to walk in them. My father was an abusive alcoholic, my mother had her issues… due to sexual abuse as a child, and then by marrying an alcoholic, who had once been saved, and taught Sunday School.

However, Satan, somehow tripped him up, I always thought it was thru loosing a boy child, when that baby was 2, however, I do not know this for sure. But, something took him down. He had a beautiful family, with 2 lovely daughters, a very good job, a nice home. And he ended up loosing all of that… and coming down to poverty… and alcohol…he is dead, and so is my mother, and there is no one else left to tell me the whole story…

But, my mother married him… and then me and my sister were born, both parents were older than most, when this happened. My childhood was rough. I was sent to church, but, they did not take me.

Somehow, I developed a love for God, in the middle of all of this. I can still remember being on my knees at the kitchen table, reading from the big family bible, learning the 23rd. psalms, and the Lords prayer. I suppose that my parents led me to these two things, I am not sure, I just know that they were very precious to me, and I memorized them both.

They are still as precious to me now, as they were then.

I later tried to be “saved”… when I was about 10, my dad had taken his life by then, and my mother took us to church. This church believed in “praying thru”, meaning that one prayed until he “felt God in his spirit”. I tried, but, I could not get what they were experiencing.

Later we got out of church, when the Methodist moved the pastor, which they still do today. I suppose we had our eyes upon the pastor, and not upon Christ… however… that is what happened…

I married early.. to avoid a chaotic home life… lived life my way , for many years.

Enjoyed sin… and what the world had to offer… untill… God brought me to the end of myself… when this happened, I was empty…

I called out to God one night, asking him if this is all there was in life for me… having experienced a new home, a new car, a loving husband, etc… he met me at my point of need. And that was June 1985.

When I woke up the next morning, after that very short prayer, or heart cry… I was different…something had happened to me, overnight… I was changed. ..

I wanted to go to church, and I knew which one I wanted to go to. I also had a hunger for Gods word. All of this came from God…not me… I was not able to bring about this change in myself. But, God was, and did.

And it is still lasting… 23 years later… I could write a book about everything that has happened in between then and now. and maybe one day, I will. but, for now, I will just share this, for it fits perfectly with this post.

I have never had a fear of hell… not then… not now… but, this is only because I have a true love for God, and for the things of God. I do not serve him out of fear, I serve him out of love. And hope that you can too… God Bless…

* “The world now calls that ‘shoving down the throat’

Out of curiosity, what do YOU call it when Muslims, Mormans ,JWs, …or any other religion evangelizes to you?

silverwings and flossheal thank you also. your stories were not up when I wrote my comment.

I was born into a christian family. . .

Toadaly: Me too, between college (‘75) and 2001, when I recommitted my life, I was a backslider, doing MY own thing.