AV Bible Believers Fellowship

Each of us has a different testimony, and the Lord used different things to reach us.

What do you feel was that 'thing' that really made a difference, and led you to accept the Lord's offer of salvation?

Elaborate a little, if you would. It will bless someone here!

I've already answered this question, in the thread entitled Karen. But I voted for "personal friend witnessing" and "book."

Karen witnessed to me for two years. But during the last couple of months before I got saved, two books made a huge impact on me. Neither of them are worth using to line the bottom of a birdcage, but God can use anything.....

One was In His Steps by Charles M. Sheldon. This was the biggest "Christian bestseller" between Pilgrim's Progress (1678) and Left Behind (1995). (Of the three books/series, only Pilgrim's Progress is a truly Christian classic, and everybody should read it.) I found this thing in my mother's bookcase one night when I was bored and maybe a little hopped-up on painkillers, and it just absorbed me. I was very much into "revolutionary" thinking by this time (it was the late 1960s), and this struck me as the most revolutionary thing I'd ever read: "What would Jesus do? Acting like Jesus in one's daily life? What a concept!" (This is where the WWJD bracelets came from, when some fool "updated" the book in the 1990s.) I didn't know, of course, that "imitating Jesus" wouldn't get anybody a single inch closer to Heaven; but the book softened up my hostility toward Christianity.

The other book - - - oh, I blush to admit this - - - was Good News for Modern Man, the "updated" paraphrase of the New Testament that preceded Kenneth Taylor's "Living Bible." My older sister gave me a paperback copy, and I devoured it. "Wow! The Bible in an easy-to read form? How cool!" (Give me a break, please; I was 19 years old, with very little church training.) After I got saved, I never looked at it again, but it whetted my appetite, like smelling a hamburger might whet one's appetite for a steak.

But mostly it was Karen, and the prayers of many people, that did the job.

Other.
I don't know how significant the role of circumstances play in the whole thing, but I would have to say my unhappiness.

Other:
My mom sending me to Sunday school, albeit in the United Church.
My mom gave me a KJB when I was 10 or 11.
Life circumstances
My sister witnessing the gospel to me around some 30 years ago
More life circumstances
My reading 'The Good News Bible' my sister gave me for Christmas
More life circumstances
In a hotel room in Jellico Tn. the Holy Spirit ripped through my understanding opened my heart to understanding and repentance, when I read and comprehended John 3:16 from the KJB Gideon Bible by the bedside.

In reality it was the Grace of God. :jesus-10:

Whenever anyone asks this, my first thought is always "This was your life" by Jack Chick. Then my second thought is "actually, I don't know". But I vividly remember reading that tract and believing every word of it, turning to God, etc. From then, it was a slow path, but a sure one.

Woo! I use that tract a lot, Luke!

God bless Brother Chick. He is reviled by unsaved as well as most of those professing Christ, so he must be doing the Lord's will... :nah:

"Other"

My loving, caring, God-fearing, KJB-Only Mama lead me to the Lord when I was 8 years old (April 1979). To this day my Mama is my very best friend!
Praise the Lord for a Bible-believing, Christain Mother!

Tracts I received from the house two blocks away, at Halloween, planted the early seeds but it was Christian radio that brought me the rest of the way home. Circumstances played a big part too, or I wouldn't've been listening to Christian radio to begin with!

While I have been in a Bible preaching church for all but the first few months of my Christian walk, the Lord has essentially raised me by Himself, with limited influence from others.

I've hesitated to post in this thread because I'm not sure when I was saved.

I believed Jesus loved me and I loved Him when I was four years old. Was I saved then? I had little exposure to church and was educated in humanistic public schools throughout childhood. I prayed to Him throughout those years but I had no theological understanding whatsoever except the haphazard stuff I picked up from school mates of various and sundry denominations all over the map and most of what I heard turned my stomach.

I began a long journey downward in college that brought me so low I care not to describe it. By the time I wound up in AA, I still absolutely believed in God but was convinced He had cursed me, hated me, and wanted me to die a horrible death. That doesn't sound saved to me, which is why I discount the notion I was saved during my childhood. I learned to trust God in AA and seek His will, but AA hardly led to my salvation. AA holds your higher power can be a door knob if you so choose.

I converted to Catholicism. Was I saved? You tell me. I slid deeply into the occult from there so I don't think so. I eventually wound up as an accidental Protestant because I clearly heard the unrelenting call of the Holy Spirit to go to church. I bounced around some mega churches without a clear understanding of the gospel, really.

I ended up in a tiny home church where one woman worked with me for hours and hours during Beth Moore Bible studies until I finally had the concept of Jesus' substitutionary salvation click. Was that the moment I was saved? I hope salvation isn't conditional on mental apprehension because where does that leave kids and the mentally disabled? During another Beth Moore Bible study, I learned what it means to believe God. Was I saved then?

Sorry to ramble, but I've really condensed an entire lifetime of being obsessed with God into a few paragraphs. I can't begin to count the number of churches I've visited and the books I've read. I've been baptized three times, would have been four but I had a terrific chest cold in Israel and it was February and I didn't want to risk pneumonia. Baptism doesn't save, but if it did, I'd sure be. I love to be baptized and would be again if the right opportunity came up.

So I don't have a date, place, time, or method. I've been relentlessly called by God since before I can remember, according to my Mom. I guess I'll say "Other -- Holy Spirit."