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Growing up as a boy, I didn’t attend Church regularly, although I had been on occasion to both a Pentecost and a Nazarene church.
At the age of
thirteen, my parents began taking me to a Missionary Baptist Church on a regular basis.
This is where I first heard about God and salvation. I was a very shy boy. Many times my
parents would take me to revivals where I would here the call to the alter, but
wouldn’t go. Not fully realizing my condition, I would let my shyness keep me from
seeking God publicly. However, I can remember going home and praying from my bed for God
to save me.
I have seen many people get saved over the years. At some revivals, I would see several
get saved the same night. It worried me that it seemed so easy for some people, and yet so
hard for me. Many years would pass by.
On the morning of February 6th, 2001, having been troubled by a physical ailment, I sought the Lord for help. I had been seeking salvation more often over the past three years and must have repented thousands of times, but hadn’t been successful at getting saved. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t under conviction and the Holy Spirit wasn’t drawing me. However, I did feel like something was missing. It was like a weight pressing on my heart, like a sadness that I had done something terribly wrong and I couldn’t escape from it. On that particular morning, I prayed more intensely than I had ever done before. I had a physical ailment at that time, I thought I was going to die, and I was praying for God to help me. I was going back and forth between different rooms of the house, begging and pleading to God to heal my ailment. I prayed as hard as I possibly could and didn’t feel like my prayer was getting through to God. I remember reaching a point of desperation. If I was going to die, it would happen knowing that I had prayed as hard as I could. It was at the point, when I gave up trying to make it happen and laid myself at the feet of God. I cried out, “Lord why won’t you hear me”. Instantly, I knew beyond any doubt that he heard me. I was so happy. I was crying and laughing at the same time. I knew how to get a prayer through to the Lord.
It wasn’t long before I started to analyze what had just happened. I thought to myself would God answer my prayer without having been saved? Did I just get saved? Was my name just written in the Lambs Book of Life? No, it couldn’t be. That must be Satan trying to make me think I just got saved so that I would no longer seek God. Or, was Satan trying to trick me into thinking that I didn’t just get saved, when I really did? But, I know God just heard my prayer. I just know it. I could not recall a previous time when I experienced the happiness that I just experienced when praying to God. And, I knew I wanted to remember this day, it was a Tuesday morning, February 6th, 2001.
Could Satan intercept a prayer to God and deceive a person into thinking God answered it? That was the question I sought an answer to. Anyway, that would have to wait. For now, I was so happy that I had gotten my prayer through to God. All the way to work, I was laughing and crying tears of happiness. And all I could think was Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Since then, I had prayed to God many times for an answer to this confusion. Little did I know, he was telling me the answer, but I wasn’t listening.
Even before this experience, I felt like I should be in church on Sunday. But after this experience, I felt more so. I began visiting several churches. I started attending one particular church regularly, searching for an answer to my question. The pastor, Bill McElroy, a soft spoken and humble man, advised me to test the spirit. Testing the spirit was something that I would do several times over the next year. But, before I was able to reach a conclusion, several events occurred that deeply troubled me.
The first event happened on Saturday July 26th, 2003. While returning from an afternoon drive in the country with my wife and parents, an oncoming car veered into my lane just in front of me. Having swerved to miss a head on collision, my car became airborne nearly killing my wife, my parents and myself. Was this a wakeup call? Was this a sign from the Lord telling me something? I think so, but I didn’t know what.
The second event occurred about a year later. I had started off to church on what I thought to be a typical Sunday morning, December 19th, 2004. Upon arriving at church, I was notified that something terrible had happened to the pastor. I later found out that he had been killed at the hands of mentally disturbed man. This deeply troubled me. My heart was in so much pain. My search for the meaning of my experience had not completed. I was testing the spirit, but I hadn’t reached a conclusion. And the pastor, my friend, the one who was helping me find the way, was gone. I was left with yet another question. Was this another sign from the Lord? Could this tragedy, be a sign telling me something? Was the pastor’s job complete? Did he finish his work? Would the Lord call him home knowing he wasn’t finished helping me. Could it be a sign that I have salvation and I was to move forward as a Christian? Or was it a complex web of trickery weaved by Satan?
I continued my search for God, sometimes praying deep into the night and many times praying in my car as I traveled to and from work. I had repented so many times. Yet, on several occasions, when at Church, a feeling would come over me and engulf my heart. Not a feeling that I should be praying for salvation. Not a feeling of guilt or hopelessness. It was a feeling of how wonderful God is. It was an overwhelming feeling of joy. It felt like my heart would jump out of my chest if I didn’t hug someone or just stand up and say “Praise God”. Usually when I had this feeling, others at Church were testifying or expressing their joy of salvation. Was I feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit or was it again Satan’s deceptive trickery, drugging my conscience to make me think that I was saved so that I would no longer seek God?
Now, thinking that something was keeping me from fully trusting Jesus, I looked for the answer in the Bible. Almost every night, I would read as much as I could about the people in the Bible. I studied all the accounts of salvation described in the Bible, searching for the missing piece that would point me in the right direction.
More time passed by, and then during a revival, I called my Dad and explained my frustrating situation to him, as I had sought an explanation from him numerous times in the past. He told me the Bible story about the “woman with an issue of blood”. If she could just touch Jesus’ garment, she would be healed. Because she believed, when she touched his garment, she was healed both physically and spiritually. That was it! Now I could see through the haze of confusion. I felt like a weight has been lifted from me. Jesus did save me that morning on February 6th, 2001. I am going to heaven. What a glorious feeling! What a wonderful Savior. Praise the Lord.
Looking back, I can see how I let Satan cheat me out of over four years of joy from my salvation; four years that I could have been praying for friends and family. What took me so long to realize, was the times, when at Church, that I felt overwhelming joy in my heart. That was the Holy Spirit. That was God telling me everything is ok!
I thought I could pray hard
enough to get saved. But, that didn't work. I got saved when I surrendered my
heart, my soul, my life, and my destiny into His hands. To do that you must
believe and trust Him completely. Only God knows when you do it. And only God
will let you know when you have been saved.
If you haven’t been saved. I pray that you don’t make the same mistake that I
did. It took me 32 years to get into a position whereby I could be saved. I could have
died at any point during that time and you wouldn’t be reading this testimony now.
Instead, my story would have been told by others. A story of so many opportunities to make
peace with God; opportunities that I let slip away.