I was raised in the Reform Jewish religion, but I was very skeptical and in college I questioned whether God existed and whether God created man or man created God.
I did not have enough evidence for the actual existence of God, so I decided He was a figment of man's imagination.
Then, about 8 years later, a co-worker who had prayed for me for 3 1/2 years preached the gospel to me.
She shared a tract with me that said that God desires to express Himself through man and that we are created in His image to contain Him.
It said that we have a body, soul and spirit and that the spirit is the innermost part of man made to contact and receive God. It said that sin entered into man and deadened his spirit so God became a man called Jesus Christ who died on the cross to redeem man and take away his sin. Then in resurrection Jesus became the life-giving Spirit so that He could dispense Hiis life into man's spirit and that man only needs to repent to God and believe in the Lord Jesus in order to receive God's life into his spirit.
Then it had a prayer to Jesus confessing that we are sinners and asking Him to come into us and fill us with His life.
I did not believe any of it.
I asked some questions and her husband told me the only way to find out if it was true was to try it.
That made sense to me.
Since I did not think it was true anyway, I figured I would only be saying empty words but I did it anyway.
The gospel tract that they shared also said that baptism is the next step after regeneration (receiving the Lord into yourself).
Baptism begins the process of transformation - of the Lord spreading from the believers spirit to his soul which is a lifelong process. When Christ returns, God will fully saturate the believer's body with His life, which is glorification and the end result is that man is fully filled and saturated with God, which is salvation.
So, they asked me if I wanted to be baptised.
Right then.
At their house.
In their bathtub.
And I did.
I had no idea why, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.
I went home thinking that was a very strange evening unlike any I had ever had.
I still did not think that God existed nor did I really believe what the gospel tract said.
But, in the next few days, I felt different.
I did not know why.
I was incredibly happy for no reason.
I cannot explain how different I felt other than it was different than I had ever felt in my life.
I thought maybe I was pregnant.
I took a home pregnancy test.
I was not pregnant.
But, there was a new life within me.
It was the life of the Lord.
That weekend my friend invited me to her church with her.
It was very different and strange to me.
I did not understand any of it.
But, that did not bother me, I felt peaceful about it.
Then over the next few weeks and months my friend took me to church home group meetings and church meetings and she began reading the Bible with me and teaching me about the Lord.
And I began reading the Bible on my own and praying on my own and I knew - I really knew, felt and understood that the Lord is real and He lives in me!
It is a knowing, a feeling, a reality that I don't think can be described to someone who has not experienced it.
But over the years I have had the wonderful opportunity to grow in Christ with others and even to share Him with others and to share in the experience of other people who are coming to know Him for the first time just like I did.
And it is so incredible and amazing!
I did not have enough evidence for the actual existence of God, so I decided He was a figment of man's imagination.
Then, about 8 years later, a co-worker who had prayed for me for 3 1/2 years preached the gospel to me.
She shared a tract with me that said that God desires to express Himself through man and that we are created in His image to contain Him.
It said that we have a body, soul and spirit and that the spirit is the innermost part of man made to contact and receive God. It said that sin entered into man and deadened his spirit so God became a man called Jesus Christ who died on the cross to redeem man and take away his sin. Then in resurrection Jesus became the life-giving Spirit so that He could dispense Hiis life into man's spirit and that man only needs to repent to God and believe in the Lord Jesus in order to receive God's life into his spirit.
Then it had a prayer to Jesus confessing that we are sinners and asking Him to come into us and fill us with His life.
I did not believe any of it.
I asked some questions and her husband told me the only way to find out if it was true was to try it.
That made sense to me.
Since I did not think it was true anyway, I figured I would only be saying empty words but I did it anyway.
The gospel tract that they shared also said that baptism is the next step after regeneration (receiving the Lord into yourself).
Baptism begins the process of transformation - of the Lord spreading from the believers spirit to his soul which is a lifelong process. When Christ returns, God will fully saturate the believer's body with His life, which is glorification and the end result is that man is fully filled and saturated with God, which is salvation.
So, they asked me if I wanted to be baptised.
Right then.
At their house.
In their bathtub.
And I did.
I had no idea why, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.
I went home thinking that was a very strange evening unlike any I had ever had.
I still did not think that God existed nor did I really believe what the gospel tract said.
But, in the next few days, I felt different.
I did not know why.
I was incredibly happy for no reason.
I cannot explain how different I felt other than it was different than I had ever felt in my life.
I thought maybe I was pregnant.
I took a home pregnancy test.
I was not pregnant.
But, there was a new life within me.
It was the life of the Lord.
That weekend my friend invited me to her church with her.
It was very different and strange to me.
I did not understand any of it.
But, that did not bother me, I felt peaceful about it.
Then over the next few weeks and months my friend took me to church home group meetings and church meetings and she began reading the Bible with me and teaching me about the Lord.
And I began reading the Bible on my own and praying on my own and I knew - I really knew, felt and understood that the Lord is real and He lives in me!
It is a knowing, a feeling, a reality that I don't think can be described to someone who has not experienced it.
But over the years I have had the wonderful opportunity to grow in Christ with others and even to share Him with others and to share in the experience of other people who are coming to know Him for the first time just like I did.
And it is so incredible and amazing!
