Testimonies can be a great encouragement to believers both new and experienced. I personally love hearing how people got saved, it’s such an encouragement to me. So, with that being said, “How did you come to know Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour?”
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Rather than typing it all out, here’s the blog post I wrote on this very issue!
Hatfield’s Fellowship Hall: Some of my personal testimony
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Thanks for sharing, Hatfield. I can imagine Beth at that moment because your testimony brought tears to my eyes as I read it. Glory to God for opening your eyes to the truth that set you free. Jesus saves,Jesus saves:heart:
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Dude, that’s a great testimony! Thanks for sharing it with us!
I was ten years old when a young couple knocked on our house door with an invite to their newly built church. The church was in the next county over. They were beginning a bus ministry. My mom allowed me to go. She was a Christian and unable to drive ,with health issues. I think back now and smile because that couple was probably an answer to my mother’s prayer. In 1977 at the age of 11 I felt the knock of Jesus at my heart’s door and under the guidance of my Sunday school teacher,I accepted Him as my Lord Savior. I remember the time and place as if it was just yesterday.
I still enjoy going to Sunday school. I’ve taught children’s church for the past 27 years.
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Thats amazing! Praise God!
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For me it was when somebody told me Jesus was going to return. He showed me Mathew 24.
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Praise God for making you so receptive to the truth! I’ve spent my whole life in church yet didn’t get saved until 2 years ago. Praise God for your testimony!
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I was baptized when i was 18 months old.
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I’ll be honest: I don’t remember. I know that there is no such thing as someone being “born a Christian”, but I’m close. 
Jesus has just always been an important part of my life. I remember being around 5 years old and asking my mother what the difference was between “Catholic” and “Christian”. I even shared Jesus with my best friend when I slept over her house when I was 6 years old. (She didn’t “get” it, but it DID plant the seed in her mother, who was saved many years later; she shared that fact with me.)
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Wow! That’s amazing! Praise God!
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September 1998, I found myself at a rescue mission in PA. One evening during an outdoor chapel service an altar was made, & I felt that small still voice call out my name. Went forward & the pastor prayed the Sinner’s Prayer w/me. When I returned to my bedroom that night, I felt something missing, then I figured it out. It was that weight on my shoulders of all the sin, guilt, resentment anger, & self pleasing attitudes I was had.
It has been a bumpy ride, I’ve backslid, stop going to church & praying, but the Lord has never left my side. I now attend a great church, made new encouraging & uplifting friends. The relationships w/ my children & grandchildren have gotten so much better. I know it’s one at a time, & being on open to the Lord’s will & time, I’m all in this time around.
Stay blessed everyone.
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I Amen to know Christ as a young girl with my farming family. We were country people and very religious. My parents kept us praying, talking about the Bible going to church all the time. There were so many revivals every month and guess what? We were always there. Many times because it was our old country church, we would walk to church and always every day pray to Jesus Christ. We were taught that Jesus Christ and God the Father love us sooooo very much and we should love one another.
I was baptized at an early age and a accepted Christ Jesus as my Savior. Bless God. Thank you.
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My grandfather was a hellfire and brimstone southern Baptist preacher. I went to church with him on the weekends that I stayed with him which was quite often as I remember. So I was exposed to Christ at a young age. When I hit about 22 years old I began to doubt the existence of God. I even set out to disprove the Bible. I began reading the Bible and making a list of errors, inconsistencies, and misunderstandings. And quite the list it was too. After about 20 years of reading and studying the Bible I came to a realization. The Bible was not the one in error. It was those that taught it without understanding it themselves. So many things that have separated the body of Christ are actually not one way or the other but both. So the contradictions I found actually were puzzle pieces that people tried to fit where they didn’t belong. Once I put aside all that I was “taught” and allowed the Bible to say what it says, I came to realize that God IS real and Christ DID die for me. My favorite verse now is faith comes by hearing and hearing by the WORD of God. No truer words has he spoken. The truth really does set us free. Amen
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Amen! Praise God! I’ve been having a similar experience with someone. But God will break through! I believe it!
My name is Sicario Raw on facebok.I begin to kno christ more why being away from my love ones.Sitting in a 6by9 cell replaying the bad choices I than made in mylife.I have became a very strong person threw out the few years I been away from my love one.I will not let any mistake I made in mylife control my life.I knows Christ and he is real.
Born again 1974. Didn’t even know who Jesus was until a Christian hippie asked me to pray in his VW.
Then I had no idea what to do, I had never met a Christian before. I really was basically a heathen. I was a jock in school, never did drugs or booze.
Then to my shock I had a vision like Paul says in the body or not I do not know. But I was no longer at my parents house.
That kinda sealed the deal for me, I was pretty sure God was definitely real. Then in school while in class He spoke to me, and I looked behind me thinking there was someone talking to me. He asked me to share Jesus with these kids, but I had no idea who Jesus was. He said don’t worry, just open your mouth, and I will give you the words to speak.
That is how it began for me…
A few months later hitch hiking, He spoke again and in a 20 minute drive, all 5 kids in this car that picked me up were crying hysterically and prayed to receive Jesus into their hearts. All except the driver, which did scare me a little bit.
Then a few months after that He spoke, and I disobeyed His spoke voice… That sent me into a very long, and very bad, backslidden, sinful lifestyle for decades.
Then after 30+ years of that mess, He spoke again, and said I am sovereign over your life, do you have a problem with me USING sin to accomplish my will.
He made me free from my daily, sinful, lifestyle, that was 20 years ago +/- and I have had no failure, or temptation since. He revealed Romans to me, and Hebrews CH 4 (rest from your own works as God did from His)
I have mine online. If interested, Click Here
I can’t remember how old I was when I started praying. Maybe I was four or five? But I often prayed many times before falling asleep. Talking with God just came easy at that age. I would pour out my heart like God was my closest friend.
I remember pondering the difference between saying a prayer out loud and thinking it in my mind, switching between both, and attempting to say one thing while thinking something completely different.
And I remember questions that would come to my young mind late at night that would provoke my thoughts. Questions like “What does it mean to be a good friend? What kind of husband do you want to be? Was I being honest when I said such and such? What is the right thing to do with this and that?
God and/or I fostered deep introspection at a very young age.
But I did not begin to become an official Christian- Baptised in the Name of Christ, Dedicated to reading the Bible and learning the teachings of Christ, going to Church etc- until I was 17. I mean, sure Christ was always in the background during the holidays and every Sunday and during the Gospel radio hour. But When it was time, May of my Freshman year of high school, I said the sinner’s prayer and within weeks I was handed a Bible from the friend of a friend in high school whose parents owned a Christian book store.
Shortly after that, I was invited to a Lutheran Church by a friend of my Mom’s who lived down the street, an older woman who became like a Church to me, who talked about Scripture and Faith and God with me. And within a few months I began attending her Church and was eventually baptized according to Lutheran belief. And when I joined a nondenominational Church a few years later after high school, I was baptised again according to their views. And when I joined a Pentecostal church a few years after that, I was baptised according to their views (but mostly as a rededication to Christ at this point as I was in college studying Christian Ministries.)
Throughout my life, I have been a senstive person. I feel nudgings, find myself guided toward some things and away from other things. And along the way, various people have either ignored me like I did not exist, were drawn toward me like I was handing out gold, or exited the room very quickly like their lives depended on it.
But that was when I was younger. Now my encounters are mostly neutral. I don’t go out like I use to. I feel as though I have sown all my wild oats, so to speak. And occasionally I might draw trouble makers to me who are looking to prove something, but even they serve a purpose of some kind in my life. Or I prove to serve a purpose in theirs.
I have what I will call a covert ministry of sorts. I go where I am guided, say what is on my heart, and then go on to the next place. I believe in a very hands off approach. Like those questions that came to me as a child, I am a voice asking a question for someone else to hear and ponder. Speaking a word or two that might provoke a question. And also measuring the heart, letting it reveal what is inside. And doing what I can if it is given to me to do so. I measure frequently.
But I have never perfectly succeeded at any of this. I have had to grow exponentially to become a tiny bit effective at what I do, shedding selfish unnecessary pursuits and surrendering to the ebb and flow, the nudge and pull, of the rod and staff of God.
And I had to seperate the experience of those sometimes rapid changes in my life from my sense of self worth and the reality of being consistently LOVED by God. Many people left when I wanted them to stay, especially when I was younger. But my calling called for them to leave me, or for I to leave them.
I was meant to spend many of those early years friendless with just my parents, who adopted me. Even my own mother, who for the most part always lived close by stayed away from me and did not bond with me. All of this so I could grow into the person I am called to be. To understand the hurt that dwells in the human heart so I could speak to it.
Sometimes, not getting that thing we want more than anything brings us a far greater blessing in the long run. But only maturity and time grants us the ability to see that. Sometimes, the denial of our heart’s desire leads us to look beyond ourselves and to take responsibility and care for all those things we come to see.
It is not just about us but a whole world full of creatures and thinking/feeling people who cannot do anything to save themselves from the dangers and the darkness moving in this world right now. They can’t even see past their own laptops or phones or all the fantasies in their heads of what they believe will make them happy, all while missing out on all the Blessings and Joy that God has for us in this life and the next.
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I will share mine as many others have done. Not sure the space limit here. ** TAG: My Story ** Well, let’s try.
One of the very few times I will talk about myself.
My name is Peter. I was born on August 17th, 1969. I have pretty much always known God. Well, I have always known that God exists. I never accepted that all there was to life was going off to school, work, paying bills, and going home. That reality had to be more than merely existing.
I grew up in a small town in America, specifically a hamlet called Salisbury Mills, NY. It was a different time back then; I don’t believe my grandmother even had locks on her door. My father left when I was just 13 months old, so I never got to know him. My mother, my aunt, and I all lived with my grandparents in a large three-story home.
Growing up was the best time of my life. My grandmother taught me the importance of caring for others. We always had a big, Thanksgiving-style dinner on Sundays, where we took turns bringing dinners around town to certain others who had no one to cook for them. Billy and I would be outside and playing all hours. We never had to worry about the evils in the world. We would just live. Play. Have fun. Get involved. I would not change a thing.
My grandmother also “made” me and my best friend, Billy, go to Sunday School on Sundays. We were in church plays, took part in bake sales, learned to sing songs, and learned where to find the books in the Bible. My grandfather had Parkinson’s Disease, so Grandma didn’t go often, but she did attend the big occasions. With the help of others, in my early life, even Grandpa made a couple.
However, I did not really understand who God was, or who Jesus really is, until I started, completely unintentionally, a spiritual quest. I was 19 years old. I was working as a Security Guard at a local Mall. I was working with two individuals. Both claiming to be Christians, both claiming to be “Born Again.” Both are telling me two COMPLETELY different things.
First was a young man named James. He told me that he was attending a church in the inner city. When I asked him about it, he asked me, “Ever see the movie ‘Blues Brothers’?” Yup. He said. That’s it. Signing, dancing, healing. Praising God for hours. It was a true celebration. Every Sunday. He told me about Jesus dying for me, and that I had to be born again, receive the Holy Ghost, speak in other tongues, to be saved. I agreed to attend. It was, without doubt, an experience. Not really my cup of tea.
Then there was an older gentleman named Dwight. He shared with me that Jesus died for me, and that I had to be born again, receive the Holy Spirit, and learn the ways of God, to be saved. I asked him about this “speaking in tongues” thing, and about baptism. He told me that speaking in tongues was simply changing your language to speak about spiritual things. He showed me where the Bible talks about it serving no purpose to speak unknown tongues. If people, including you, do not understand what you are talking about, what profit does it have? Good point. So what about this baptism thing? He told me that it is a step of obedience and an outward sign of my faith. I was showing the world that I decided to accept the gift that is Christ’s sacrifice through water baptism. He told me that God baptizes with the Spirit. But that man could by no means do that. He invited me to attend his church. I did.
Now this was the church I knew. Sing songs. Sit, listen to the teacher teach. It was indeed through that church that I accepted Christ into my life, and was indeed baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Now, about this time, I hungered for knowledge. I wanted to grow in faith. I wanted to learn all I could. I still listened to James and heard of amazing things that God was doing, not just in my life, but in the lives of many around me. Then I started seeing supernatural things happening all the time. Things that had no other explanation but God. Perhaps I will share some in time. However, there was one that was a major shift in my journey.
One day, while working now as a Corporate Investigator, a young lady who worked for one of the businesses I was part of came to me and said. “Pete? I know you go to church. I understand that you know about this God stuff. My sister, who is ten years old, has just been diagnosed with Cancer. Could you ask your church to pray for her? Please.”
Of course. So I asked to meet with the Pastor. I asked him if he thought God gave man the power to heal. He said, to my absolute shock, “No.” I asked him to explain. He told me that he believed that the signs and wonders of the Bible were that. In the Bible. They were only granted to the 12 to justify them and prove that they were truly sent by Jesus and that when Jesus was raised from the dead, the miracles ceased. Still amazed, I asked if the church could at least pray for the little girl. Of course.
So that Sunday, the church did pray. The following week, the young woman came out of nowhere and wrapped both arms around me, sobbing. I thought the worst. I asked her how her sister was. She said that they just came back from the Doctors, who had to run extra tests, because they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Her Sister? Completely cancer-free. An answered prayer for healing, from a church that doesn’t believe in healing. THAT is God.
You want true hope and change in your life? “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Matthew 6:33
Peter
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