Growing up my parents brought me with them primarily to Assembly of God (Pentecostal) and Baptist (Free Will) Churches. I cannot recall Arminianism ever being taught formally, that I would even know what Arminianism is. However, it was assumed and taught informally through and through. While we attended the First Assembley of God Church, at the age of 8, I made public confession of Christ as my Lord and Savior and two months later Baptized in a swimming pool owned by Church members and friends of my parents. Looking back, from that time forward, I learned much about indwelling sin and human nature of both the regenerate and unregenerate. I had become quite a rebel in my teenage years, of my choosing though my prior experienced conditioned my choosing. In many ways I had a wonderful childhood, but in other ways, especially when it came to socializing with other kids, I had a difficult time, and too often became a target for unkind words and or deeds. Certainly the actions of others cannot and did not excuse mine, but they had "hardening" effects on me. Anyway, I was a great sinner as a teenager, even doing many unlawful things. After graduating high school, and efforts to further myself failed, I stooped even further, with the help of countless bad influences and a little pressure, I succumbed to using illegal drugs, and this went on for a couple of years until I reached the end of my rope so to speak. At the age of 20, God miraculously brought me back to the fold, and the difference was like night and day. I "got serious" about God and my faith, read "my Bible" daily, went to Church every chance I could. God cleaned me up, like a dish, inside and out, I was a "brand new man". For the next 8 years I would follow in the teachings I was raised and brought up with, but not because it's what I was taught from youth, because that was what I believed, and I never really gave serious consideration to question it, because I could defend my network of beliefs fairly well. As I recall, it was between the ages of 25-28 that I learned what Arminianism and Calvinism are. In fact, I had never even heard of John Calvin, until I went to a local Presbyterian founded community college where this young (Calvinist) lady by the name of Lindsey brought up his name. Needless to say, learning and growing comes very slow to hard headed stubborn people like me.
How did God change my heart, and break through my stubborn mind? Well, in many different ways on many different fronts, through many different sources, and it was not easy, in fact, I was fearful, but the choices laid before me only left me with one real choice. But to get there allow me to explain. I had been posting on CARM for awhile, heavily debating atheists for a couple of years. I had done a thought experiment, to the best I could, put myself in the shoes of an agnostic (for a day anyway), maybe because I came to realize all those classical arguments I loved and used to debate with, fell woefully short, exactly how my opponents helped me to realize. None of them could prove Christianity as a whole to be true. In fact most of them could not prove any particular God, just a generic "higher power", "man upstairs", etc. What really shook me was when I realized that my Arminian defense of the faith, could not account for the certainty of truth, that I knew to be true. I always believed in both subjective and objective truth, and that certainty of truth could be known, but I could not justify it within the apologetical methodology historically and commonly used by non-Refeormed apologists especially. While many have and do accept faith as a bridge for the "gaps", I could not resort to a fideism, knowing that faith and reason are like marriage partners. It was also during this time that the expectations of others and years of brow beating myself for every slight of sin and imperfection, of every way I constantly fall short of God's glory, of battles with secret sin for years and years, failing God over and over countless times. I had become exhausted from focusing on myself and my failings (and other people's), rather than focusing on the ONE who had predestined, called, justified, and sanctifies. I had read much Scripture and could quote much Scripture, but I did not understand them like I thought I did. That was perhaps the biggest mountain to climb, I had to come to terms with misinterpreting so much Scripture for so many years, and realize the Arminan proof texts were not case closed, that they can be difficult texts, but must be interpreted in the context of the rest of Scripture. I had become friendly with Calvinists, and several helped in opening thine eyes with proof texts strongly supporting Calvinism and giving Arminianism much to try and explain and counter...without success. I had recently (2002-2003) purchased the works of Van Til for Libronix (Logos), which included about 60 of his lectures in wav (mono) format. Because my Arminian defense had been all but crushed by subjectivism and it's probabilities, always leaving a back door, I decided to start listening to the late Dr. Van Til, and although I could only partially understand, at the same time, what I could understand, I had no counter for, no reply. I listened to all or nearly all of those lectures, at least in part, mostly complete, despite the poor quality, which is understandable considering the time period and equipment used to record . Despite my ignorance, I managed to learn a good deal from the brilliant Dr. Van Til. I did more research, buying a sizable portion of Dr. Bahnsen's recordings from CMF, and listening to them. Somewhere between in listening to Dr. Van Til and Dr. Bahnsen, I surrendered to Calvinism. I prayed about it, still with reservation, out of not wanting to be led astray, but it came down to either Calvinism or agnosticism, and I could not commit the intellectual suicide that agnosticism would require, so there you have it, some detail included, some excluded.