My Salvation Testimony
My Salvation Testimony
I was raised by a Protestant father and a Catholic mother in the 60’s. My father acquiesced to my mother regarding things religious, so it was off to Catholic Church for me and my siblings. Although we attended Mass weekly, my memory is that we attended out of an obligation to follow my mother’s family tradition. It would have been unthinkable to not attend Mass. Yet, for someone so dedicated to the Catholic Church, there was no talk of spiritual things in my family. Interestingly, my mother never missed a Billy Graham Crusade on TV. Go figure.
One of my fondest religious memories was that of sitting attentively at a CCD class in a parishioner’s home who excitedly recounted to us the many exploits of a fellow named Jesus Christ. She told us He was the Son of God and He was our Savior. She absolutely convinced me, first, that there was a God, and second, Jesus was His Son. She told us all we had to do was have faith in Him and we would spend eternity in Heaven. Mind you, this was in a Catholic Church. No church doctrine. No church tradition. Just pure Gospel. I loved watching her enthusiasm. It was contagious. Alas, I did not accept her gracious offer. And the years passed.
I was reintroduced to Jesus Christ many times during the following years, but it would require a very forceful argument for me to give up my sins and live a life full of Biblical rules and regulations. That was not for me. I was a free man … free to do whatever my heart desired.
Yet, there was one particular sin in my life for which I felt totally condemned. And rightly so. This sin was so significant that I believed in my whole heart that it was right and just that I would go to a hot, burning hell, and yes, for eternity. That was my penance (a concept that I remembered quite vividly from my youth), and it was well deserved. Surely this offer of salvation did not apply to me, and that was that.
Then I joined the military and met a guy named Brad. He was a Christian … a real one. While we would all go out drinking and carousing, Brad would come along with us and sip his diet coke. While we were engaged in all sorts of unseemly discussions, Brad didn’t participate and was just … Brad. We tried desperately to get him to drink and cuss, but he never gave in. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t drink alcohol or participate in our unseemly discussions, it was his dogged insistence at not caving in on his values that impressed me so much. That was also evident in the workplace. There was something different about Brad, and I admired it.
At the invitation of my Christian wife, I attended a Firefighters for Christ Bible Study in Colorado Springs, CO. The study leader was an engineer. He loved his Bible and knew plenty about it. Having majored in physics and mathematics in college, I fancied myself to be a scientist, an intellectual, if you will. My experience up until that time was that only uneducated people bought into Christianity. But here was an engineer and he really believed in this stuff. This was the beginning of a long journey of investigating Christianity for myself, thoroughly inspired by this unassuming engineer. Through his mentorship, I found the study of the Bible to be intellectually, and yes, spiritually appealing.
When we moved to Fort Bragg, NC the following year, I began to attend church with my wife. It was enjoyable, but not as stimulating as that Bible study was. Yet, there was an interesting phenomenon occurring at that church. There was this little old lady. And she would come up to me every Sunday as I was ducking out of church and simply say, with a very concerned expression, “I’m praying for you.” That bothered me. For some reason it made me very uncomfortable and I did not want to hear it. It was kind of insulting. I really wished she would just leave me alone. I thought my wife put her up to it. She persisted and the memory of that woman never faded. In fact, her voice resonated in my head.
Fast forward two years … two years of attending church and hearing that little old lady every single Sunday. There’s only so much a guy can take. Yet, the preacher and some of my wife’s Christian friends fascinated me. Some of them had something I wanted in my life. So I continued to attend.
Then, in the summer of 1995, during a long and seemingly uneventful drive from Ft. Bragg, North Carolina to our new home in Rochester, Minnesota, in the middle of I-90, in the dark backwoods of Indiana, God spoke to me. He spoke over the radio through a radio personality who was giving his salvation testimony at a live Promise Keepers conference that particular weekend. I found it incredible that his background was my background, right down to that grievous sin I committed. He said that God forgave his sins, and that He would forgive mine too. All I had to do was repent and believe. I heard it all before. But now it made sense. I too could be forgiven .. even me with my past. And, at that specific time, after all of the arguments I heard, I was convinced. And I believed.
I never felt such freedom in my life. I used to think that I was a free man, free to do whatever I wished, and that Christians were in bondage. Yet, at that very moment in time, I realized that prior to accepting God’s gracious offer, I was actually the one in bondage. Now, I thought, I am truly free.