My Salvation Experience

How my life was before I met CHRIST

Before I knew Christ, I was a regular participant at my church. I attended church more often than everyone else with the exception of my father. Despite this fact, I had become atheist from first grade onward, and even though I hated going to church, I went anyway. Overall, my church taught the salvation by works alone (it was like the Mormon church in many ways), and I was thus considered one of the most righteous people at my church (because of my 'good' works) even though I was not baptized and did not believe in the gospel.

How I met CHRIST

When I started going to college for the first time beginning in 1998, I had class with a college instructor that home schooled all 8 of his children, taught Sunday school at a church of over 1,000 members, and taught a double course load. This particular instructor became my best friend, and I became his disciple for six solid years. Over the years, I was mentored in the faith despite my objections to Christianity. Overall, at some point I stopped formulating objections to Christianity, and I began to experience the person of Christ working in my life (I began to believe from experience).

How my life has changed since I was saved

Now that I have become saved, I am not as obsessed about doing every little act of 'righteousness' that I had previously been committed to, and what I mean is that I have abandon the legalism of my childhood. Before I was saved, I believed in evolution, and had much of the world view of the common unsaved American, but now I realize that abortion, homosexuality, lesbianism, and Unitarian visions are all tremendous sins. Before I was saved, I could hardly read or write and was hated by most people, but now I am working on my seventh college degree and I work in the mass marketing industry in a sales job that requires me to be seen in high regard by the community.

Call to Christian Ministry

When I entered into discipleship under the college instructor, I became so well versed in understanding the scripture that my church that I attended from childhood wanted to ordain me (even though I had not yet even been baptized). Knowing this, I eventually stopped attending altogether. Many of the churches that I attended ever since have considered me for a ministry position that would involve either the preaching or the teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

One Baptist church that I attended had some people that had been willing to pay for my 'religious' education on the condition that I drop out of college at the community college that I attended, and I plainly and insultingly rejected the offer. The church basically rejected me because they saw no value in college education unless a person was going to be a pastor or a teacher of the youth. Overall, I did not attend church for a few years as a result because the condemnation of people with secular education was so incredible among such conservative churches in my community, and the unbelief of the liberal churches on the other side was equally as incredible (this is a major reason why I did not stay with my church from childhood).

Eventually, I attended a four year university after I left my community college, and during that time I flourished in an environment that promoted learning. Most all of the churches that I attended had highly valued my passion for learning. Many of the churches that I attended valued the idea of me performing the duties of a pastor teacher in my future, because the leadership of those churches that I attended saw talents in terms of skills, abilities, and passions that if developed would work great for the service of preaching and teaching.

I think that the most important point for me working in professional ministry is that I have the experience of having been an atheist and having come out of a overly liberal church, and many people that have been Christian because their parents had been Christian are often not as able to communicate and understand the problems associated with conversion salvation as what I am. Unfortunately, many pastors in my community are pastors because their father had been a pastor, or because they did not know what else to do with their lives. I however realize the reality of an eternity in hell, and I feel at comfort with even the conversion experience of people like my mother that converted from Satanism during her childhood to Christianity.