Delving into faith. Part 1:'When I was saved'

JimiTime wrote: »

Its a phrase you hear a lot, I'm just wondering what it is. People often describe the moment they were 'saved'. I've a few questions for those who attest to such a thing. I'd also like to see if its the same for everyone etc. Be warned, I may play a bit of Devils Advocate Yes, I am looking to test you Basically, religion as I see it is full of nonsense, groupthink, brainwashyness and delusion. Christianity unfortunately doesn't escape that. So I'm being upfront with yee. Laying my motives on the ground.

1) Saved from what?

2) Was it a moment of power, like being baptised and talking in tongues or something? Or was it an event you look to in hindsight.

All in all, can you describe what you mean by the moment you were saved?

This is the start of a series of questions I'd love to ask, and love to be able to talk candidly and without fear of offending. My motive is pure. I want the truth, simple as that. For those who don't know me, know this: I believe in God, The Living God as described to us in The Bible. In Jesus Christ his Son who was put to death by impalement and rose again after 3 days. So I seek this dialogue as a brother, not as an aggressor.

Heres to hoping for some responses...

I've posted this here before but it's applicable here too perhaps

It explains life events leading up to the moment of my salvation. I see here something which seems to be a common feature: whether amongst my saved peers or amongst those in the OT or those in the NT whose eyes were opened. Salvation seems to involve a desparate, driving need that only God can (or could, in the case you don't believe in his existence at the time of calling out to him) fulfill.

Our friends over in A&A are not all that wrong when they say we're folk who were in need of a crutch

Hi there...
Was looking around for a toe into the site and tripped across here. Seems like as good a place to begin as any.

There's probably a label that can be attached to the views I held before conversion to Christianity... but I'm not sure what it would be. I didn't think about God, didn't think about where the world or all the things in it came from, didn't think about my nominal Roman Catholic 'faith'. Neither did I care. Iano was Iano and lived his life as he saw fit. The prime thing that concerned me, was me. And that was, by and large, the view that seemed to be shared by people I came in contact with - so there was no reason to think there was anything inappropriate/invalid about it.

A constant throughout my life had been a tendency to live it intensely. As a kid it was the string of hobbies; entered into with relish, then developed to deep levels. Not for me, the casual picking up and discarding of interests once the initial novelty had worn off. Additional to a strong drive to seek fulfillment and enjoyment however, was a parallel companion called boredom. Whatever it was that gave initial satisfaction would eventually (even if it took years) loose it's lustre and I'd start to see the activity as being...well, a bit pointless really. There was always a void behind the surface satisfaction and pleasure. Something that remained untouched - no matter what I tried to fill it with: childhood hobbies, juvenile delinquency, drugs, sex and then when I came to my senses a little, university, work, success-seeking, homebuilding.

Satisfaction-seeking had, for me, the characteristic that I needed more as I went along. Yet for all the new thrills I could access, they never even approached the peaks of childhood ones. The shiny new motorcycle I could now easily afford, not a patch on the beat up old Suzuki I scraped my pennies together for. Neither did anything ever seem to pan out as expected. The promise always had a downside. The bosses, to think of one example, I had so respected for their confidence/abilities/power, were the same folk who had non-marriages/70 hour weeks /no relationship with their kids - once I had climbed high enough to get a view of things myself.
I couldn't have vocalised it so at the time but to me, life had to be about something and everything I looked at for meaning was transparent. They weren't substance - just beautifully packaged illusions.

Mild disillusionment with it all set in at 30. By the time I passed my 38th birthday that disillusionment had cranked up to despair. I was trapped. I had tried innumerable things to fill the void and although there were things as yet untried, logic told me that the results could only be the same. The itch was getting worse, the attempts to scratch it more desperate and damaging. I was an object moving in a straight line and no exterior force was having any effect. And the only direction I could go in was down.
It was at that point I turned to an unseen, unbelieved and unknown God and cried for help.

He did...and I haven't looked back since.


What I knew of it at the time wasn't any gospel truth - that came later. Rather, it was a quiet, yet profound change as the Spirit move in. I knew (with an unshakeable confidence) that everything .. and I mean everything, my death included .. "was going to be alright". It's a certain promise I'm as confident of today as I was then - irrespective of the trouble and strife I experienced in the interim.

JimiTime wrote: »

AntiSkeptic, if I may probe further.

By all means..

Rather, it was a quiet, yet profound change as the Spirit move in. I knew (with an unshakeable confidence) that everything .. and I mean everything, my death included .. "was going to be alright"

Firstly, was this realised in hindsight, or was the moment clear as it happened?

I knew everything was going to be all right - even things I didn't and couldn't yet know about. The everything incorporated everything that possibly could be, in other words

I didn't know then that it was a consequence of my being saved (I didn't know I was saved at that point) nor that it was the Spirit taking up residence (for I didn't know God existed at that point either)

Although I'd prayed a prayer asking forgiveness the night before, I didn't connect that fact with what was now happening. It was much later, when I was reading the Bible, etc. that lights started going on as to the source of this new sense.

Secondly, When you say you cried out for help, do you mind me asking the manner of this? Was it, 'If there's something out there.....' Or did you have anything, or anyone in mind?

My mother, a life long searcher, had been saved a number of years before. And she was always banging on about God and seemed to see everything through that lens. We (the family) did our best to humour her (for she'd arrived at the Truth a number of times before you see) and tried to avoid letting her ambush us with what could only be described and brainwashing lectures.

I was living abroad at the time and going through tough times. Mam was sending me books and phoning me and stuff and generally trying her best to support her son. One of the things she gave me was the pamphlet "Why Jesus" by Nicky Gumbel. If you don't know it, it's like a Ladybird book version of the gospel. Theological babyfood. I paid it no heed and stuck between two books on the bookcase

On the night in question, when the turmoil was again cranking up, I stood up from my bed, reached up and plucked out the slim red spined pamphlet as if on automatic pilot .. and read it. And prayed the prayer at the end. It was a prayer aimed not at a God I believed existed (for I had no reason to suppose he existed) but at the only person who could possibly extract me from the mess I was in. If he didn't exist or did but didn't respond then there was no place else to turn. For I'd tried lots of other things to halt the agony.

I don't suppose it was magic word in that pamphlet that resulted in God acting. Rather, there was a desperate heart who accepted it had run out of independent road and needed help.

Thirdly, did this 'movement of the spirit' happen instantly on your crying out? Finally, do you mind me asking, what was your first step from there?

Nothing happened when I prayed the prayer. I just got back into bed and went asleep. It was the next morning, putting on my bike gear at the bottom of the stairs, when the knowledge (and more importantly, the sense of peace which that knowledge brought with it) dawned on me. That particular sense of peace hasn't ever left me - although plenty of other aspects of my Christian walk have.

I don't recall exactly what happened after that. I think I might have tried to read the Bible (starting naturally from page 1) but found it as dull as ditchwater so gave up. Not too long after that - perhaps months, my mother told be about a course starting up - The Alpha Course.

I wasn't by any means open to God or the like - at least, I was still resistant to my mothers attempts to corner me and talk of God. But on the evening the course was starting, I was sitting at my desk getting set to work into the late evening as was my habit when it dawned on me that the course was starting that evening and there was no pressing reason to stay at work.

So I went. And was blown away by what I was hearing. It just all began to slot into place: what Nicky was saying, what the Bible was saying, how different these people were: where a builder and a housewife and a barrister and a businessman and a dole recipient treated each other with an equality I'd not seen in the world

Bit by bit it grew from there...