My life may have a lot of similarities with yours.
I was born at a very young age (think about it) in Springfield, Illinois. I am the third of four children. When I was young, my parents divorced. As I was growing up, I lived with various relatives (aunts, uncles, grandparents, father and step-mom, mother and step-dad) and at times I was very confused and torn up inside. I can remember taking a picture of my mother that I had been given and going into a closet and crying and crying because I missed my mother soo much.
As I grew up into my early teenage years, I moved back to Champaign, Illinois. While I was living in Champaign, I began to get involved in somethings that were wrong and even illegal. I began to do things that I found out later were an offense to a holy God and God began to convict my heart over these sins that I was committing.
It was also while I was in Champaign as an early teenager that I can first remember ever hearing about God. Now it may be possible I had heard some about God prior to this time, but this is first time what I heard seemed to reach me. I remember one Sunday morning I went to a church that my cousin attended. Since I had been doing these things that were wrong and I wanted to get rid of the feelings of guilt and shame that I had over my actions, I went forward after the service to speak to a counsellor. I even prayed a prayer when I went forward, hoping that the prayer might somehow change me, but nothing really changed. I cleaned up a little of the outside things in my life, but inwardly my heart was still black with sin.
When I was a little later in my teenage years, I moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where I lived in a trailer park. While I was living there, a girl from down the street invited my little sister and I to go to church with her and to go to a competition that they held at the church called AWANA. I had always loved competition and sports, so I decided to go. As part of the competition for AWANA, you were able to get points for attending Sunday School, so I started going to Sunday School primarily to get points for my team for AWANA.
Soon, I began to become very faithful to the things going on at the church. Since I had walked forward in a church and prayed a prayer, I thought that I was a Christian and began to tell people I was a Christian and began to do things that I thought a Christian should do. I began to help out on the Sunday School Bus Route - helping other kids get to church. I began to help out in Junior Church for little kids and I even began to take a class on how to tell others how they could know God, when the fact was, I myself did not know God.
"If you were to die tonight, are you 100% sure you would go to Heaven?"
That was a question that I was tought to ask other people as part of this class that I was taking. I can remember many times thinking about asking other people that question. As I thought about asking other people that question, I began to think about asking myself that question. "Hey, Frank, if you were to die tonight, are you 100% sure you would go to Heaven?" As I asked myself that question I realized that if I was honest, the answer for me was "No." So, as a freshman in high school, I knelt down beside my bed and repented of my sins and prayed to God that He would save me, and God saved me and changed my life.
Since that time, Christ has made a great difference in my life. The Bible says "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, all things are become new" and in my life, things became new. I was given a new heart and the sins that I had been struggling with for years lost their hold on me. Not that I never sinned again, but God broke the power of those sins and no longer was I a slave to sin. He filled the emptiness and the void that had been in my life.
A special need that Christ met in my life was the need of a close friend. As I was growing up, I moved a lot. I went to at least fifteen schools and changed schools even more than that (going back to some schools more than once). I do not believe that I ever started school two years in a row at the same school until my senior year in high school. I really did not mind the moving that much, but the one thing that was a problem when you moved that much was that it was awful hard to get a really good friend. It would seem that just as soon as I would find a good friend, it would be time to move again and I would have to start all over. When I met Jesus Christ as my Savior, however, I found in him a friend that is with me wherever I go and has promised that He will never leave me or forsake me.
What about you? Does your life have some similarities with mine? Are your parents divorced? Are you confused? Unstable? Have you had some type of religous experience but had no real change in your life? Does everyone around you think you are right with God, but you know in your heart that if you died tonight you would not go to Heaven? Do you need a friend who will be with you forever? Is the guilt of sin weighing on your heart? If so, you need the same answer that I needed. You need a relationship with Jesus Christ. Won't you trust Him as your Savior today?
If you would like to know more about trusting Christ click here.
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