A Confession From A False Convert-Part 2
From the time I thought I was saved until now, I did grow in my faith. I made great leaps and bounds. I stopped getting drunk. I no longer owned an extensive pornography collection. I tried really really hard to not lie. I tried really really hard to not commit sins of the flesh, I tried really really hard to not do alot of things. But my will was weak and my flesh was strong. It wasn't until I examined myself against the Law of God honestly, that I realized I was a false convert.
I had used the Law in evangelism with other people. as part of a witnessing encounter. I had seen it done on the Way of the Master television program and it made sense. The Law cuts through all the rationalizations and justifications of sin and goes right to the heart and the conscience of the person being witnessed to. This is powerful stuff, it is also the way Jesus evangelized to crowds. Why? Because it works. As Ray Comfort wrote in his book, "The Law leaves every person without excuse before the judge of the universe and declares all people guilty."
I have been feeling just sick for a long time now. I didn't know what it was. I thought maybe I was too stressed because I was a youth group volunteer and a moderator of a good-sized Christian forum on the internet and working hard at my job. My anxiety disorder was way out of control again. I had a major panic attack a couple of months ago. I've been feeling physically drained and ill almost every day. I've been critical of others and insensitive to them and their thoughts and opinions. I had this compulsion to always be right and had trouble admitting when I was wrong. To all those people whom I have hurt with these actions, I am truly sorry. I was not myself. Oh, wait, yes I was, because I was a false convert.
Then today, this morning was the worst. I couldn't focus at all and felt this burden upon me that I couldn't shake. I thought another panic attack was getting ready to happen. I took my pills, and did my therapy and breathing but no success. I also felt like I wanted to cry my eyes out but I didn't know why, I thought it was the depression again. But deep down in my heart I knew what it was. I have been listening to the Way of the Master podcast for a few weeks now and I have heard nothing but the Law presented in witnessing efforts. People would have all sorts of objections to the Law of God and reasons why they were good people or going to Heaven when they died, because God loved them and wouldn't send them to hell. I would shake my head and laugh when I heard this. Why? I don't know. When I stopped to think about it, they weren't saying anything that was any different than what I believed. I just believed it for a different reason, because I was "saved". Because "I asked Jesus into my heart".
I think it started to hit me last night. I play an online game called Second Life. It's a huge online gaming community/virtual reality type thing and in there I have a fellowship hall where the more conservative Christians can meet to hang out and discuss theology and stuff. Well last night a nice Danish lady stopped by and we got to chatting. Soon the discussion turned to religion when she asked if my place was a church.
I told her it was a fellowship hall and not a church, at least not yet. She told me that she didn't know that much about Christianity but believed the stuff Hare Krishna monks had told her. Well I shared what I believed and took her through the Law and by her own admission she said she knew she would be found guilty if judged by the Ten Commandments by God on the Day of Judgment. But she wasn't ready to abandon her beliefs in Krishna just yet, but she did say she would read the gospel of John. So I felt that I maybe had planted a seed in her. My job was done.
This morning though I couldn't function. I didn't know what was wrong. After witnessing to that nice Danish lady last night, I felt truly alive! I felt great! But now, I was feeling like, I don't know how to describe it. I just couldn't do anything and I didn't want to. I just wanted to curl up and cry. As a result of feeling that way this morning, I broke down and admitted to God that I was a sinner in every sense of the word. I was truly a false convert, a hypocrite and a liar. I told God I was sorry for my rebellion against Him. I said that I didn't want to live like this anymore and to please save me. I said I knew that Jesus had died for my sin and that I didn't want to live in sin anymore. I wanted to turn from it.
I was truly doing it! I was finally repenting! It felt good. I can't explain how, but I slowly started to feel better. The heavy burden I felt earlier that paralyzed me, was becoming lighter. I have felt better today than I have in a long time. I no longer want the same things I wanted before. I no longer want to be critical of others. I no longer want to be judgemental and right all the time. I no longer wish to live apart from God. It stings me now when I slip and take the Lord's name in vain. I fully believe that this time, I am truly saved. Thank you Jesus! I love you!
posted by Zecryphon | 8:10 PM
9 Comments:
Thank you.
I wonder, do you deny the validity of your original "conversion" or do you see this as a rededication of sorts?
Either way, I suppose your name is now held amoung the saints.
Blessings,
-HaKohen (The Realist)
Ha hoken, thanks for stopping by. I hope this is the first of many such visits to my blog. I can't deny the first conversion experience because there was a process of conversion that I did go through. At the time I thought I was truly saved because I trusted another person to instruct me in the ways of Christianity. He did one hell of a job too. I wound up at his church because of a cable-access televangelism show that he was putting out. It was called Give Me An Answer, you can Google that show name and it will take you right to the website.
The premise of the show was, this minister would travel to college campuses all across the country and do open-air preaching and present proof as to why Christianity was true. He answered all of their question and destroyed all of their objections. He certainly answered all of my questions, and since he was located locally about 15 minutes from my house I just had to go see for myself.
I trusted the minister of that church to tell me everything I needed to do in order to be saved. Since it was an Evangelical Free church, I'm sure he did do everything he thought necessary for me to be saved. He gave me a sound presentation of the gospel message and answered some questions I had, and we touched on the Law a little bit, but I didn't realize that I was only getting bits and pieces of the puzzle. Part of the process included "asking Jesus into my heart" and praying "the sinner's prayer".
Like I said in the post, I was convinced Christianity was true, but I don't think I was properly convicted of my sin, because there was no in-depth presentation of the Law and how I measured up to it. As I recall we spent all of our time in the New Testament and never once ventured into the Old, so things like an in-depth study on the Law never could have occured really.
But now, I have a totally different feeling. The things I wanted 24 hours before I repented I no longer desire. That's more than the "concious decision" atheists and agnostics have convinced themselves we are making when we turn from sin. I see the same movies playing on channels like HBO and Skin-a-max hehehehe and I have no desire to even stop on them for a second when I'm channel surfing. My speech has been cleaned up immensely. The cuss words don't come to mind as easily as they used to, and they certainly don't flow from my mouth the way they used to. It's just so amazing! I now finally know what everyone who I have ever heard give testimony about being saved, is experiencing. And I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Great story - nothing wrong with admitting we are wrong and can't have all the answers - thus usurping some authority for ourselves. Repentance, sometimes my weak point but I just gotta keep on at it - this faith is just so great - God is just so great - and I am like you - when I am talking about this faith I just feel alive (somewhat more than before I spoke).
I really liked the story - it was a story of humility before a God - an acknowledgment of His power and greatness - thanks for sharing.
My story is not so similar, actually quite different in a lot of regards - but the conclusion is quite the same - mercy, love, and hope - some things I have never forgotten (as of yet). I left church for 6 years to get to what I needed to find and in some senses, I am not really in the church still (but kind of am - it's strange). But I still drink, I swear, I watch dumb shows, etc...but I am quite aware (even in the sin) that God loves me - cares about me - and I don;t so things to hurt others due to this great awareness. I have chalked my love for God up to to my love for others - they kind of flow hand in hand.
Societyvs:
"Great story"
Thanks
"- nothing wrong with admitting we are wrong and can't have all the answers - thus usurping some authority for ourselves. Repentance, sometimes my weak point but I just gotta keep on at it - this faith is just so great - God is just so great - and I am like you - when I am talking about this faith I just feel alive (somewhat more than before I spoke)."
Yeah and everyday is like outta my hands, but in a good way. I know God is in control and when bad things happen, they can teach us something we need to know, so they're not a totally bad thing.
"I really liked the story - it was a story of humility before a God - an acknowledgment of His power and greatness - thanks for sharing."
You're welcome. I think what differentiates this story from my other conversion testimony is the humility before God. Like I said, I was convinced Christianity was true, but there was no brokenness before God, no true, heart-felt admission before God that I really was a sinner. I had said it, but I don't think I fully understood what full submission to God entailed.
"My story is not so similar, actually quite different in a lot of regards - but the conclusion is quite the same - mercy, love, and hope - some things I have never forgotten (as of yet)."
As long as the conclusion is the same and we are left totally broken by God and renewed by his mercy, grace and love, it's all good. :-)
"I left church for 6 years to get to what I needed to find and in some senses, I am not really in the church still (but kind of am - it's strange)."
I think I might know what you're trying to say here, and I think, if I'm right, we're alot alike in this regard. I only recently started attending church again, within the last six months and regularly within the last two. I had stopped attending church when the senior pastor of my former church retired. That was over a year ago, probably 14 months. But I still continued to serve in the church in the youth program. Since I worked with teenagers, both boys and girls, and really grew to care about them, that is why I have a problem with Nugget's recent comments regarding teenage girls at SCP.
"But I still drink, I swear, I watch dumb shows, etc...but I am quite aware (even in the sin) that God loves me - cares about me - and I don;t so things to hurt others due to this great awareness."
I still drink too, I swear, but I try not to do so as much anymore, I watch tv and movies still too, but there is just this feeling that I now have, that is indescribable... it's love, God's love. I don't know if I've ever really known it before. One reason I don't really see eye-to-eye with some of the people at SCP is I never left the church the way alot of them have. I'm still in church, going every Sunday and currently working on becoming a member of the LCMS branch of Lutheranism. To them, that would probably be pretty SCP of me. But I'm a conservative Christian always have been, and I think that's part of what drive SCP as a blog. They want the church to stop doing all this commercilization stuff and get back to something, they just don't know what yet.
"I have chalked my love for God up to to my love for others - they kind of flow hand in hand."
I believe one flows from the other, we do good works, taking care of others etc, because we are saved, because God loves us. I don't think we do these things to earn our way into heaven, like virtually every other religion on the planet. Except maybe of course Buddhism, because the Buddha never made any claims of deity, so technically it's not a religion.
Sable:
"For me, it is a thirst for the Word and understanding of it."
Ah yes, the unquencable thirst. I have it too. I'm still conducting a little research against the modern day message of the church. I'm searching the gospels looking for the verse where it says we have to "ask Jesus into our hearts". I'm on the 4th chapter of Luke and I haven't found it yet. I've been told I won't find it either, and I knew this before I started. But I didn't want to go around telling people I had read the gospels and never saw that phrase, without doing it recently to refresh my memory.
"Before I did not have even any interest in it. I want to talk to others now about Jesus and I dreaded the thought of that before."
How do you do it? What is your segue into a discussion of things of a spiritual nature? Do you use the Law in your presentation or no?
"This is a gift from God, because I couldn't have willed this desire into being without repentance."
Nope, and that is something that the atheists and agnostics just don't get. You can't just choose to do this and have any sort of success at it. They think "oh, it's just a concious decision, but continue to believe in your invisible pink unicorns and fairy tales if it makes you feel better". It's ridiculous.
"It's like I know he is real, like never before. There is so much about creation out there right now that is so exciting for me. I view the world with so much more purpose. It is like God removed scales from my eyes."
Just like He did with Saul. :-)
"Most resently because of my conversion I have really gotten into creation. I know you said that you are not really into that, but for me to find people that really believe in Adam and Eve and Noah's Flood, have guided me into exploring science and viewing the Earth in a way that before I thought was unknowable."
I think you may have misunderstood what I said. I did not say I was not into creation. I said I have seen no evidence for the "young earth" position, that is put forth by people like Kent Hovind. No date was ever given for the creation account recorded in Genesis. A day has not been proven to be a literal 24 hour period as we understand it, in that account. Remember a day to God is as a thousand years, now you could say that since God created the earth and heavens in six days, that is proof that it is only 6,000 years old. I think that's an over-literal reading of the text. God created time, therefore He is not subject to it. He exists outside of it, therefore I don't believe that He was confined by time when creation happened. The bottom line is no one knows for certain how long it took God to create all that is here. What we do know for certain, is that He did.
"Just the other day I was talking to a woman at school about all kinds of things. It was so comfortable to talk to her. I could see that we could talk about anything together, but the topic wasn't going to turn to God with out my help. So I just said, "You know what I am really into lately?...The Creation of the Earth." We talked for 2 hours and touched on so many of her misconceptions of the Bible."
Most people have not read the Bible, that includes some Bible-believin' Christians as well. Let's face it, the book is just too long for most people to wade through. Plus, they have all those scientific discoveries that supposedly prove the Bible wrong, so why bother reading an irrelevant document? Science has not disproven the Bible in my opinion, but rather proven it. People who attempt to use science to disprove religion, abuse science and what it's purpose is. Science is simply observing the natural world and drawing conclusions from those observations, in a basic sense. It was never intended to prove or disprove any position on a topic.
"It was really great, I don't know that I converted her, I do know I gave her alot to think about and changed so many of the lies we have been taught, from the age of the earth to Jesus Christ. She even thanked me and said she really enjoyed our conversation, and wants to talk on the subject again."
That's good. Perhaps one day you can work the Law into one of your conversations and get her to admit her status as a sinner and recognize her need for Jesus Christ. But one step at a time! LOL
"My father was given a whole set of Kent Hovind on VHS, by a friend of his that I don't even know. He has had them for over two years and never looked at them. I finally talked him into watching the "Lies in the textbooks". It was like pulling teeth...but one day he called me up and he said that he watched it and had so much to talk about.
I know that Kent Hovind's taxes problem looks really bad to people that don't understand, but the work this man has done has been such a blessing for me and my family that words can not explain."
Another DVD you might be interested in is "The Case for Atheism". It's available from www.wayofthemaster.com and it's a debate between Todd Friel and a top atheist. I have not seen it myself yet, but I have heard good things on the Way of the Master podcast of course. So the reviewer is totally biased! LOL The problem with Hovind's tax evasion is that it will forever cast a shadow of doubt over any work he may have done that was good. People are generally not inclined to believe a liar and a thief.
Wow! Good stuff. I think we have a misunderstanding though. I do believe in creation. I just don't believe creation happened 6,000 years ago. I'm not a new-earther. I'm an old-earther. I believe that the account in Genesis does not have a date. It simply states: "In the beginning God..." There is nothing in there that definitely says when the beginnig was.
The only material I have read of Mr. Hovind's is what appeared in The Evidence Bible as compiled by Ray Comfort available at www.livingwaters.com. Also, what I saw of a film he did in a free online game called Second Life. A cyber-church I attend in that game, has a movie theater and they were showing this movie of his. You can learn more about that at www.secondlife.com. If you do sign up for the game, the name of the church is, ALM Cyberchurch.
I have not read any of his books or articles or investigated any of his research. Since I disagree with his basic premise, that the earth is only 6,000 years old, I have no interest in looking at anything he has to say. The whole issue of when the earth was created is really a non-issue for me. All I care about in regards to creation is that we were created by God, that we have an eternal father that we will go to be with when we die, granted we have called upon the name of Jesus Christ to be saved from God's wrath, which we earned by sinning against God.
"I totally agree with you about what is really important here...but just for fun and because I am curious....how old do you think the earth is?"
I have no clue, it could be millions or billions. Since Genesis is silent on the actual age, I have no way of knowing for sure.
"The evolutionist say that it is 4.6 billion years old and getting older everytime they rethink it."
I don't know if I'd agree with that number as I have seen no proof for it, but I also have no reason to doubt it. There are fossils that are millions of years old, so an older earth would be the more likely scenario.
"As a non-issue, is that age just as far off the mark as 6000 years to you?"
What are you using as "the mark" to determine the age of the earth? Once you establish that, then we can determine how far off the mark the number of 4.6 billion years is. As of right now we have no standard.
"This is where I am coming from with the young earth age being of importance, but don't get me wrong it is not something to divide over as believers. Kent Hovind is not the first person to do the math and add up the ages of people and the years that the Bible says that people lived and came up with a time line that makes the history of man around 6000 years."
I know he's not. I disagree with all young earthers.
"Also the genealogy of Jesus goes all the way back to Adam in Luke 3: 23-37. It makes Adam, more of a real person to me, as well as the whole Genesis story a real account rather then a metaphor."
I never said it was a metaphor. The location of the Garden of Eden is given in the Genesis account. The geographical details that are given allow people to deduce where Eden most likely existed.
"We can know where Jesus has come from.
He was with God in the beginning. John 1:2
And Jesus talks about our beginnings in Matthew 19:4
"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,'"
I agree with all these things. But nowhere in there is there any scriptural support for a young earth position.
"Anyway, the cool thing about Kent Hovind is that he doesn't pussyfoot around the fact that the God of the Bible is the Creator."
Why would he?
"He is straight forward about what he believes and ALWAYS makes it clear that we all are sinners and are in need of a Savior."
Every Christian believes that, if they didn't they wouldn't be Christians.
"He is not the only one out there that brings out the scientific evidence that the earth is intelligently designed and that the Theory of Evolution is now outdated because of the new technology as well as more recent archealogical finds strongly point to a Biblical account of the history of the earth to be a more plausible explanation."
First of all there is no scientific evidence for Intelligent Design, because there is no way to test the theory of Intelligent Design. There is also no scientific proof for evolution because there is no way to test it. The theory of evolution is not outdated, it may have been disproven, but not outdated. As long as it is being taught as fact in classrooms all across the country it is still very relevant.
"Since I have been talking to atheists so much, and because they always brought up evolution, I found it important for me to work at understanding it. But all I would hear from them over and over again was that I did not understand evolution, "Go read a book." Well I study as much as I could about it, and it wasn't until I found a debate over Evolution vs. Creation, between an University Professor of Evolution and biology and Kent Hovind, did it become clear to me. Science is not really that concerned about teaching the public how radiometric and C14 dateing is done, and that it is a flawed system based on circular reasoning."
This is true. All evolution can do is make changes to an animal to help that animal adapt to it's environment, to improve it's chances of survival. It can not introduce new information. It can't change a fish into an alligator for instance. It can't take a single-celled ameoba and turn it into a monkey that turns into a human being. That's not how evolution works.
"The sad thing is in 2005 when people unearthed some T-rex bones that had soft tissue in the center of the bone, the public didn't even think to question the 70 million year old date that was put on it."
This was explained away scientifically on the Apologetics.com podcast by a Christian.
"That is just shocking to me. This was found in Montana not the Arctic, so how can soft tissue last 70 million years?. Why can't it be considered 4000 or 6000 years old?"
I will get you the info on the podcast and you can listen for yourself.
"There is so much that is being with held from us because it is unthinkable for science to view the world in a way that doesn't fit into their evolution model."
True science has no preconceived model that the world must fit into. True science observes the world as it is and draws conclusions from what it observes. It has no agenda.
"I looked at that Second Life and signed up (but I don't think I did it right)"
They had login issues for awhile and needed people to update their info. It should be all fixed now, you shouldn't have a problem.
"Then I remembered that there was a artical about that in Time Mag. So I read about this virtual life...it sounds like people are having sex all the time there?"
Not true. There is a lot of sex in the game, but you can eliminate that by not putting a check mark in the "include mature content" box.
"How does this work? You go to a virtual church in Second Life?"
I do. It's a very middle of the road non-denom church. What happens is, the pastor streams in audio from a website he has set up, and plays that audio during a selected service time on Sunday mornings. It's a recorded church service that is played in the game. It's complete with songs and a message and altar calls.
"I understand that you can buy land and build structures...but what is this really about?"
It's about whatever you want it to be about. It's a 2nd Life. It's alot like the Sims but without the story line. Or it's like a giant chat room with walking and "talking" avatars. You can buy land, build houses, buy houses already made, buy clothes, hair, shoes, furniture, cars, toys, anything you can think of. Your life is whatever you make it. Some people have businesses in 2nd Life in which they sell real world products. They have become so successful at it, that they have quit their day jobs to stay home and run their very profitable 2nd Life businesses.
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