My First Conversion

My first significant religious experience occurred when I was about eight years old. They were holding revival services at the little Baptist church I attended as a child. It was customary at the time to have revival services in the morning and at night. My maternal grandmother took me to some of the morning services, and during the course of the revival, some of my friends had gone forward to be baptized into the church. I had no idea what baptism signified, or what it really meant to be a Christian. I just thought if I was going to be a good little boy, I needed to be baptized. Besides, I wanted to be like my friends, and if I made my parents and preacher happy in the process, well, that was good too. So after one of those morning revival services, I told the preacher I wanted to be a Christian. He and the visiting revival speaker took me into a small room where they told me that I was a sinner, that my sin had separated me from God, but by Jesus dying on the cross, I could now be forgiven of my sin. I remember they then prayed, and I watched them pray. Not long after, I was baptized and became a member of the church.

In the years that followed, I became both more religious and more profane. I went from attending church only on Sunday mornings to attending every conceivable service - Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, whenever those church doors opened, I was there. But when I wasn't at church, my youthful passions carried me in the opposite direction. Suffice it to say, I did many disgraceful things, and much of what I didn't do was only because I lacked the opportunity, not the will.

Mercifully, however, the Lord God did not leave me. I do not mean that He gave me peace and comfort in this state, far from it. Peace in such a condition would have been a curse, not a blessing. For the Prophet Jeremiah says that Moab was cursed with such a comfort: "Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity: therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed" (Jeremiah 48:11). Because he never was blasted by the Lord, Moab remained in ease of conscience from his youth, settled, not sensing any danger; consequently, his taste for sin remained and the stench of death clung to him. People wrongly assume that they have God's blessing when they are unalarmed, but such was certainly not the case with Moab. In fact, one of the most fearful Scriptures in the Bible is when the Lord Jesus, speaking to His disciples about the Pharisees, instructs them to "let them alone" (Matthew 15:14). My contention here is that the Lord blessed me when He would not let me alone.

So while I became both more religious and more profane, the contradiction between what I was at church and what I was everywhere else became an intolerable burden on my conscience. At that time, I had never read Pilgrim's Progress concerning the great burden Christian carried on his shoulders, but I do recall thinking of my guilt as a load I carried. To ease my burdened mind, I often resolved to do better. I made vows to God. I repeatedly prayed asking the Lord to save me, change me, help me. But despite all this, my resolve and goodness were "as the early dew, it goeth away" (Hosea 6:4). What I mean is that my resolve was usually short-lived, my vows quickly broken, and my prayers, because they were not founded in faith alone, mocked Christ and His mercy. The result was that the load of guilt became larger and larger.

Add to this a fear that began when I was about fourteen that I had committed the unpardonable sin and had sinned away my day of grace. I still remember sitting in worship services thinking that all my religious companions would go to Heaven, but I would be plunged into the darkest Hell. Furthermore, seeing there is no sorrow in Heaven, even the memory of me would be blotted from their minds. Sometimes the fear would be so debilitating, I could barely eat. I spent my waking hours looking for something, anything that might afford me the smallest amount of comfort or hope. I read the Bible, listened to sermons, looked through books and commentaries, and talked to different ministers. Although the ministers tried to help, they were effectively "physicians of no value" (Job 13:4). Most others who knew anything about my distress had no idea what to say. Still others thought I was hopelessly melancholy, if not on the verge of a nervous breakdown. During these times, I think I knew something of what King David meant when he said, "My lovers and friends stand aloof from my sore, and my kinsmen stand afar off" (Psalm 38:11). The only relief I had was in the form of deep, dreamless slumber, which always seemed to last but for a moment, then I would awake and those same terrors would again be set before my mind's eye.

Thankfully, no matter how distressed I became, suicide was never a real consideration. The Lord God hedged me in between fear and hope. Fear, in that if I was to be damned, my existence in this life, though brief, was still preferable to eternal burnings. Conversely, I also had hope. There was so much in Scripture I did not understand, so I thought maybe there was a way whereby the Lord God would yet show Himself to be merciful to me, the sinner.