Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.
1 Peter 3:15
I was not raised in church. My family did not read the Bible. My family did not pray. We were not atheists though. My mother believed in God and taught me that He is real. I also knew about Jesus and the whole cross thing. I believed myself to be a Christian and would have said my parents were too. I went to a small Methodist church as a girl with a neighbor, and later went to a small Baptist church with a friend. I was a good girl. I studied hard. I excelled at school. I managed to avoid many of the pitfalls that my friends fell into.
I was in my first year of college and had made friends with a couple of girls that were believers. I had an audition to attend near the home of one of these girls and stayed with her one weekend. As it turned out, I stayed over and went to church with her. I really liked the church. It had a great music program and a big college aged class.
I began attending each weekend. After a few months, I decided to join this church. I went down front one Sunday morning. When I got down front I was asked a few questions. One of them was:
Are you a Christian?
My answer: yes.
(I’m a good girl.)
I stood down front with the pastor that morning and shook 400 hands. I was overwhelmed with the entire process. I went back to my friend’s house for the afternoon and did not realize how my life was getting ready to change.
Isaiah 64:5-7
You meet him who rejoices and does righteousness, who remembers You in Your ways. You are indeed angry, for we have sinned— In these ways we continue; And we need to be saved.
But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
And there is no one who calls on Your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of You.
I went back to church that night to find a guest speaker. He was a missionary that was traveling around the area raising money for his work. He stood up and said he had planned all week to preach one sermon, but he had been wrestling with God all afternoon. He knew that he had to preach another sermon because God had “pressed it upon him all afternoon.”
I sat in the back of that church and listened to a sermon called “What it really means to be a Christian.” Do you know what I discovered?
I was not a Christian!
I still was a good girl, but as I looked at the Word of God I realized that according to God’s standards, I was a sinner. I had no relationship with God. I merely had some head knowledge. My “goodness” was just a filthy rag. The God of the Universe cared enough about my condition to change the sermon of a missionary so that I would know how much I needed His rescue in my life.
As the sermon ended and the invitation began, I knew what I had to do. I had to go back down there and set the record straight.
I stood there for a moment arguing with myself. I couldn’t go back down there. I had told these people this very morning that I was a Christian! What was I going to do?! Go back down there and tell them I was wrong?
That is exactly what I did. I remember the man who was waiting down front was wearing a nametag. His name was Frank. I knelt down in the altar of Salem Baptist Church and set the record straight with God.
Then I had to do a very humbling thing. Humility has been a huge work God has done in my life and He started right away working on it! I stood there and shook those same 400 hands again. But this time, I had tears in my eyes and joy in my heart. I had had a life changing experience!
After this, I was so excited to tell others. I have spent the past 22 years trying to do just that.
Don’t just be a Baptist. Don’t just be a Christian.
Be an evangelical Christian.
Be the believer that puts your faith on each day, lives it out, and wins souls for Jesus along the way.
Wake Up, Church!
Be the mighty warriors in the army of the LORD that He saved you to be!!
-bbm
Romans 10:8-10
“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
DPOD 