[ Testimony ] How did you get saved?

[jwoods4290]

to be technical on this question, it was my grandma who always spoke of the lord to me. but "saved" is this definition to me.


I became a believer when i was say, 16 years old but i wasn't a very big believer. it wasn't until i got a little older that made me deliver my whole self to god. when i was 20-21 (only a year or two ago) i went through this really bad time. i was living by my self and i was fired from my job. i had no electricity and i was living on the 2nd floor in the middle of summer. i had no food to eat, i had no gas to go on interviews and i was about to be avicted within a month. i had my dog and my two cats who i would get food before my self. i felt so bad my dog had to breath that heavy due to him being that hot.

However i would read my bible everyday and every night. no matter how hot or how dark. i wanted to get closer to the lord. i made a decision at this point. i had the option to sell my dog (who would of easily given me 1000 dollars or keep him and we live out of my car). i choose to keep my dog. i loved my dog and he was the only thing i had. i guess this love showed god that i wasn't selpish anymore or caring only about my self. i put my dog before my own.

However, i was still getting closer to god. i would read and prey, and even talk to god about simple things. like how my day was going, and thank you for that beautiful walk outside and etc. but i was deep down depressed inside knowing the soon to be circumstances of my life.

One night it was a nice night, somewhere in the 80s with a slight breeze coming through the window. i was getting ready for bed but i had to use the bathroom before i did. i had candles light and all, and was going to splash my face with some water to cool down more.

all of a sudden, there was this "stop" moment. the candles flames rose a little higher, my body and mind we're in a freeze. i couldn't move nor could i say anything. i felt this warm, loving prescense grab my heart and my insides. it was so calming and beautiful, it took away my depression and sadness and worries within a second flat.

the manly voice had said to me directly "do not worry for i am the lord, your god". and it went away. i was appauled by this. i never felt something so beautiful around me at that moment. it was like a hug that never ended or just felt so beautiful.

i stopped worrying. i knew god was going to take care of me right then and there. 2 weeks later, i found out there was 500 dollars just sitting in my bank account.. out of no where.

i had 200 dollars on a food stamp card that i was disqualified for.


and i found out i had a house to go to, being a big house where i didn't have to pay rent and i was gonna be able to live by my self and all. when god came to me that night, i officially called my self "saved".

 

[GKC]

I chose "sitting in a church service" although that isn't entirely accurate.

I was raised in the Southern Baptist church, although my parents rarely went themselves by the time I was in high school; I attended sporadically, but not regularly. I had been baptized while I was in elementary school, although I really didn't know what it signified, but I did so because everyone else did it and it was "expected." After high school, I went in the Navy and then after my service, went to college. I got my degree in Biology, and considered myself an agnostic at that time (I graduated in 1976.) In 1980, the company I worked for transferred me to a small town, and as they commonly do in small towns, the local Baptist minister came to visit us and invited us to come to his church. I didn't immediately go, but I would see the minister frequently about town, in stores or in the local diner, and he would always talk to me, ask about my family, and extend an invitation. He was such a pleasant guy, and seemed so sincere and genuine, that we decided to try his church...our oldest son was about two at that time, and we felt like we should start taking him to church. At first, we went occasionally, but as time went by, I became more and more interested, until it reached the point that I looked forward to each Sunday service, both Sunday School and Worship Service. (We went to a couples Bible study class on Sunday mornings.)

In December, 1982, in several services I felt the Lord speaking to me, calling me to Him, but I was uncertain and didn't "go forward" at the alter calls. Finally, on a Tuesday, January 4th, 1983, I met the minister at his study, and we knelt in prayer together, and I accepted Jesus as my Savior. I was fully immersed in water baptism in front of the church congregation on Sunday, January 9th, 1983.

I would like to be able to say that I have been steadfast in my walk with God ever since, but I can't. I have had many ups and downs, many times of coming together with God, and many times of walking my own way. I've never "lost" my faith, but I sure have put it on the back burner, so to speak, many times, in my pride and arrogance.

While certainly not free from problems, I must say that God has blessed me far more than I could ever deserve, and that chief among all those blessings has been my loving wife, who has stood beside me for 34 years now. Her faith in God is simple, deep, and unquestioned, and she has surely earned rewards in Heaven simply for putting up with me!

 

[josefnospam]

Trust in Jesus Christ the Lord. He did it all, for his people.

 

[jesusbefore you]

I was saved after I had been homeless in California at 18. I was in jail with nothing to do but think. I thought about suicide but wouldn't do it because I believed in God. Even though I didn't think he cared or knew me. Sitting there on my bunk I hear Jeremiah I say what into the intercom. I hear Jeremiah again, and I ask,"what do you want?" The last time the name is like a whisper, but somehow this is louder to me than the rest. Like it reached down into my heart. I cried is that you Lord, and began to ask for forgiveness for the way I led my life. I then said,"Here I am Lord lead me." I looked down at the track in my hands and the words changed they said I love you Jeremiah. I cried I couldn't believe God could care about a nobody like me. Since then I've learned just how great God's love is for us all, how far it reaches, and how often he stretches out his arms to draw us back into his grace.

 

[AirDancer]

Welcome to CFnet, JesusBeforeYou ... beautiful testimony & how true! Our Lord God loves and accepts us just as we are, even when we feel we aren't worthy. He knows we will strive to earn His smiles and to make our personal relationship with Him closer daily to what He desires. None of us is perfect, and yet He loves us!

 

[Carolyn]

I was raised in a liberal church and from the age of 4 I did not believe that Christ could have risen from the dead. I quit sunday school after the 3rd grade. As a child I had to be very quiet while my Grandma read her Bible every day. Afterwards she would tell me how much the Psalms meant to her. My mom and she attended church regularly. Mom taught sunday school but never testafied about her faith. It was private and not to be discussed. My dad was a a deist..
In the 8th grade I read 2 books that my teacher leant me. One was God's graves and Scholars, about archeology, some of which validated claims of the Bible. One was on ESP, but the research by a Dr. Rhine mostly invalidated any claims of those claiming to have ESP. But through that book I learned the importance of scientific method and statistics: the odds that something was a chance occurance..

One night after reading these books there was a thunder storm. I was in my second story bed room watching the fury of the wind swirling leaves between my window and our neighbor's house. Huge trees bent over, street lights flickered and then total darkness but for the ghostly shapes revealed by flashes of lightening. There was something beautiful about it. The street lights came on again. I found myself praying, God, if there is a God, please turn the lights back off so I can see the beauty and wonder of your creatiòn. Within seconds they blacked out again. Cooincidence. I repeated that prayer 20 times. 18 oùt of 20 times the lights turned off within 5 seconds. Without prayer, they stayed on 3 to five minutes. I recalled things I had learned about the chances of this happening. This was way beyond anything they had talked about. There was a God, and one that heard my prayer. As days went on I became aware of sins I had committed. I asked God to forgive me. Immediately a voice came into my head, "what makes you think He will forgive you?" The words of Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so started going through my mind. God will forgive me because Jesus loves me. More days went by and I felt the urge to make restitution for things I had done as far back as the 3rd grade. I obeyed, but it wasn't easy. Then I had a hunger to read God's word, but I couldn't make any sense of KGV. I would stumble over the strange words and couldn't see the forest for the trees. That summer I bought an Amplified New Testament and read it from cover to cover in a month. I used a colored pencil to highlight verses that were meaningful. And I started attending sunday school and church. But sunday school was over run by rowdy boys, and church was really boring. The sermons were not inspired and not applicable to my life in any way. It was all theory. So I attended the church across the street till my mom talked me into coming back so I could be immersed in baptism. The pastor at my mom's church was very haughty and treated me with scorn. But in spite of this God gàve me the peace that He gives when we obey Him. My mom finally gave me permission to attend adult confirmation çlasses in the Lurthean Church. There I received a solid foundation using a book called "What does the Bible Say?" We looked up verses covering the Trinity, the attributes of God, salvation by faith, the reliability of the Bible to reveal God, and other fundamental doctrines. I still thank God for giving me that foundation built on Jesus Christ, the chief çorner stone of our faith.

 

[vocalyocal]

The book Devine Revelations of Hell by Mary Baxter was given to me by a christian, and it's about this women who the Lord took in the spirit to Hell so she would write about it so people knew hell did exist, but more than anything that Christ our Lord existed too for the unbelievers, though there were some things HE would not allow her to view due to them being horrific to the soul. It took her I believe about 3 years to recover from the experience physically, mentally, and emotionally before she could write the book. Though I didn't complete the book, I got about half way and I read something so profound that it literally made me get out of my bed and immeditately down on my knees. I was reading it, and kind of got a chuckle and said to myself "this book is like some horror movie I've watch" and was about to just throw it down in one sense and at another say well it's just another horror book so whats the difference. And as I turned the page to continue reading almost word for word I had just spoken was being acknowledged on the next page. For some reason I broke out in the shakes and got real scared, scared about dieing and going to hell, scared enough that I got up and down on my knees saying: Lord I don't want to go to hell, but I don't know what to do, will YOU help me Jesus? And I began to cry so uncontollably, shaking, fearful, crying Jesus please help me, save me from hell. Then this peace came over me and calmed me. From that point on there was something different, I felt like the Lord had this huge rope with the knot tied to the end of it and handed it to me to hang on, and the next two weeks I felt like I was hanging on to this rope and I was tossed into this rough sea in a storm and desparately with all my might hanging on for dear life.

The next weekend when I got home the Lord led me to this church that I still attend and due to my background I was not familar in what to do, but for some reason the Lord led me down to the altars on my knees, and I remember crying my heart out, and this little woman coming up and getting down on her knees and placing her hands on mine, and I found it so odd that it about made me pass out when she did. But it seem to intensify what I was already experiencing which at times was unbearable, and the storm got worse while hanging on to that rope. The next weekend when my husband was releast from the hospital and I knew he wasn't ready and I fled to my friends house that I've always had a key and a bedroom at their house for quiet times to think. We had a double wedding together, and they're lifetime friends, though that husband then and our son was killed by a drunk driver. And I go to their house use my key, peeped in through a slightly cracked door and everything seemed so different thinking they don't live here anymore, so I yelled out anyone home? And I heard Tammi said come on in girl, how have you been, and I mentioned how their home had changed and she said honey were Saved!!! And I told her everything that is going on and she said would you like to go to church with us and I mentioned that I would like that and that I had went to the church the previous weekend and I liked it but something was going on inside of me that I didn't quite understand. I remember hearing Tom and Tam that night praying and crying, and I thought I hope their Ok.

So I go the next day with Tommy and Tammi to church and of course I'm sitting way in the back so I can be the first one out the door. Pastor Livingston, was preaching and the whole time I'm thinking this man needs to shut his mouth cause he's scaring me to death. I "was" an alcoholic a fifth of liquor a day addiction, drug addict, in perversion, cussed, smoked, read tarot cards, palm reading, witchcraft though I didn't practice spells as such but witchcraft none the less, believed in reincarnation, quiji board user (stupid), believe that Jesus was an alien sent here to straighten us all out, materialistic, judgemental, violent, suicidal, knew it all (so I thought), molested by my real dad from the time I was 5 to 18 and haven't seen him since then and I'm now 55, etc. etc. and just plain rotten to the core of my being, and praise God forgiven and instantly delivered from with no withdrawl/cravings/desires in those 25-30 years of addictions through HIS forgiveness. HE had instantly cleansed me from all of it, everything! I felt so brand new, like a new baby being birth into the world.

( I have to take a break for a moment, I'm just overwhelmed with tears now from HIS love and forgiveness).

And as the pastor is preaching I'm thinking if I die now I'm going straight to hell. I was so scared, I kept thinking please someone shut this mans mouth he's scaring me. And the funny thing about it, a couple of months later I listened to the audio tape and for the life of me I couldn't grasp why I was so fearful because he was saying nothing as I remember him saying. But at the end of the sermon he had altar call for those who needed prayer and those he said feel that God is calling them forward to accept the salvation of Jesus. I felt like I was being pulled up out of the pew, and I placed my hand on Tammi to let me by and I said to her, that's me, that's me. As soon as I stepped out into the isle, it was like this river was running through me of all mercy, all grace, all love like no other I had ever felt and it had me in full tremble to the point that couldn't hardly stand, or walk. And this river running through me was so powerful, (you know like when your looking at a river and it's trashing over the rocks with such force that if you went to stick your foot in, it would just grab ahold of you and pulled you in by the power of it?) This is what was running through me. I walk to the front and got down on my knees and this man knelt biside me and asked Do you want to accept the Lord as your personal Savior? For some reason I wanted it more than anything in the world, so he walked me through the sinners prayer, thank you Jesus. And then he asked me do you accept the baptism of the Holy Spirit? Not knowing what it was but I knew I wanted it more than the next breath I took in and I said YES with such urgency, and then he asked me did I accept my prayer language, and to me that was now I lay me down to sleep, but I knew I wanted it more than the next heartbeat I'd have, and I said YES! And then he said speak your prayer language and I said I can't, and he said don't worry about it, it will come. And as soon as he stood up, this langauge started coming from my mouth, and this sense that I was like a brand new baby, clean like no clean I had ever felt, and this language coming out and Tom and Tam came up and I had to fight to speak english just to ask what is happening to me, and Tammi said you are baptised in the Holy Spirit, and again I had to fight to ask what was I saying, and she said this is not my gift to interpet, and the power of what was coming forth from me was nothing I ever felt, (satan's power doesn't hold a candle to Gods holy power), and this man was waving his hand to get our attention said I know what she's saying, she's speaking Hebrew, I know this language, I know I'm from the Holy Lands, I'm from Jordan. And at the awareness of that I instantly was down on my face literally just knowing that Jesus loved me so much to save me, accept me as I did HIM, and that HE loves this once wretched creature like me, and that HE had me speaking HIS language, a language I've never heard, or spoke, and I'm just sobbing on my face feeling like I was in this bubble of the most purest love, of mercy, grace, compassion, forgiveness, words don't do it justice in discribing this love like no other, there's just no earthly words that can discrible it, and I'm sobbing and this language lasted hours, knowing Feb. 9th at 9:58am 1997 I am HIS, and this is now my true birthday.

I couldn't keep my face off the floor even after we left church and I felt like a computer being downloaded with all this information I didn't understand. And the thing was the humbleness that I had just saturated me from inside to out in completeness, and all I could do is rock and cry and give in to the language. I went a couple of hours later back to the church I first went to, the Lord was leading there, so I knock on the door to the house next to the church not knowing for sure if this is where the pastor lived, sobbing and as he opened the door, he said praise God a new child of God, and invited me in. How he knew I don't know. He took me to the kitchen, and the whole time this language is still happening and as I walked into the kitchen there was that little lady who placed her hands on mine at the altar just smiling from ear to ear, crying halleluyah, thank you my Lord. Pastor Kemp placed his hand on my head and prayed Lord let me help her if it's your will that I do, and I almost passed out when he touched me, and the language stopped finally where I could talk english. So they sit me down at the table and he ask what are you experiencing? And I told him I felt like a computer being downloaded and these things are going through me head, and I don't understand what it means, and so he ask me what was my spirit hearing. I started telling him and he opened his bible and is flipping through the pages back and forth marking them with paper, and I was quoting scriptures word for word out of a bible I had never read. From that moment the Lord placed me in choir, prison ministry, youth leader, a van ministry where I went around picking up children whose parents didn't go to church, homeless ministry, you name it, HE has placed me with such a fire in my bones to spread the Truth of Christ and HIS Word. I have never been the same since Feburary 9th, 9:58am 1997 when my Lord snatched me up from the talons of satan with HIS beautiful love and forgiveness, and the awesome gift of salvation. And the funny thing the christian that gave me the book to read, that's her daddy's birthday.

(I may get this post done eventually, I can only cry with thank giving that we serve such an awesome God).

Since then I have led my step daddy and my mother to the Lord, my present husband, and step daughter, my friend that was in a homosexual relationship that cost him his physical life by his jitled partner because he chose Christ over him, my friend of 35 years, and her children, just by being who HE has made me and living the example of HIS love and guidence.

When I got home all I could see was port holes of the enemy in my house and I started pulling antique beer sign, light up beer signs, all the books, quiji board, alcohol, drugs, pipes for my drugs, books about spells, palm reading, my tarot cards, runes, and toys of monsters like pinhead off of hell raiser movies, throwing them out into the trash after I had taken a hammer to them. My husband was just in full fledge panic, saying honey what are you doing we can sell this if you don't want them, you're destroying hundreds of dollars this is our life, and I turned around and grabbed his hands and asked him, do you trust me? And he said yes I do baby. And I said trust me honey these are portholes for the enemy to come through into our home, and he continued to let me frantically throw the destroyed pieces into the trash. I can not sell these, or give them to another human being whether lost or save, their blood will not be on my hands or yours, I love them and us more than that. My home was completely changed within the week and started becoming that wife my husband should have had the whole time. A wife he saw in a complete new way and began treating me with a new profound respect and love that I hadn't seen before, and me too toward him. A love that led my husband to the Lord.

The Lord quietly removed every single person in my life that practice the same habits as me, without missing them or even desiring to see them, and replaced them with christian friends by the droves. But the thing that was amazing that when I would hear music at work and it was the old kind I listened to, I would hear different words other than what was being said, words from the Lord....HIS music. And I had people just coming to me out of no where for prayer everyday, and he provided me christian companionship everywhere I went blessing me and using me to bless others. And another wonderful things was that I had no withdrawls from the 25-30 years of addiction, but I could smell someone who had been drinking 30 feet from me before they would get to me and literally made me sick to my stomach and gave me the strength by my mere presence to lead them to the Lord no matter where I went, whether it was a gas station, hospitals, store, just everywhere I went, and gave me such a love and passion to lead as many as I could, whoever crossed my path to the salvation of Jesus. And this is who I have been in HIM ever since..........

Thank you my precious Savior for loving me. I will forever love YOU my Lord for you have always loved me.....Amen!

tears in my eyes as I praise God for what He has done in your life!