The most important day of my life happened when I was just six years old.
I grew up in a Christian household. I was blessed to be born into a family that loved the Lord and tried to live to honor Him. Had I not been raised to be a Christian, I certainly still could have become a Christian later in life, but, it would have been a much harder road, and there's the possibility I would never have even been introduced to Christ, much less fall in love with Him. Starting out my life in a family that already knew and loved the Lord certainly gave me an advantage. (Although I do want to add that people who weren't raised in a Christian household but heard and felt the Lord calling to them certainly have a beautiful and powerful testimony to share!)
Another thing that gave me an advantage is that I'm just not a skeptic. Some people are very skeptical. I don't mean just about God, I mean just in general. They have to see real, indisputable proof or they just can't bring their minds to accept a thing. I'm not like that. I never felt the need to have solid proof in order to believe in something. To me, my faith IS my proof. The faith that I have in God and the things He had done in my life, in my heart, and in the world are all the proof I'll ever need. I feel sad for people who cannot believe unless they see. I remember as a teenager, reading a book about the life of poet Emily Dickinson. A religious revival was sweeping Amherst, and right and left Emily's friends were going up before the church to declare their faith in Jesus. Emily wrote about how she, too, wanted to have a strong faith. She wanted to believe just as earnestly as her friends did. But even though she wanted to believe, she just...couldn't. I remember crying at that part, thinking how sad it was to desperately want to believe but to find yourself so skeptical, so in need of solid proof, that you end up being unable or unwilling to give your whole heart over.
And of course, the trouble with proof is, once you have it- that’s all you have. If there was some way for you to PROVE Jesus Christ is who He says He is, then you’d have your proof…but you wouldn’t have faith. Not really, anyway. Faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1 KJV). Faith is all about not needing proof! Faith is knowing something in your heart, instead of in your head.
So let me go back to that day- the day I was saved. I’d always heard about God and Jesus of course, and I’d grown up listening to Bible stories and going to Sunday School, but it never felt personal. It was just…stories. I believed them, the same way I’d believe a history book, but it just didn’t really connect to my heart yet. Until one day, in Sunday School, my teacher ended the lesson by talking about Jesus’ love for us. Not just a general kind of love, as in God loves the whole world, but an individual love- that Jesus loved each and every one of us. And He wanted us to be with Him forever. God cannot abide sin, but Jesus came to take all our sins away from us. He gave His life, spilled His blood, because only the blood of the savior could wash us clean as snow.
And you know what?
Even if you were the only person in the whole world who needed Him- you, just one little insignificant person- if you were the only person that would or could ever be saved by Him,
He still would have done it.
All of the pain, the humiliation, agony, death…all of it. He’d do it. To save you. Just you. He wouldn’t think, “I’ll go through this is it will save a thousand people,” or, “Well, I guess I can do it to save a hundred lives.”
He did what He did because He thought of the people He loved, and He counted you among them.
Because He loves you.
He knows you inside and out, He knows your heart, He knows every thought you’ve ever had- and despite every wicked thought and deed, your heart is still the most precious thing in the world to Him.
So…
It wasn’t just a story.
It wasn’t just a history lesson. It was Someone who loved me, Someone who had spent my whole life calling out to me, and waiting for me to answer Him.
So I did.
I raised my hand when it came time for prayer. And I told the teacher I wanted to pray to Jesus to invite Him into my heart. She sat down with me, by ourselves, in the corner of the room, and she asked me if I understood what I was saying- if I knew who Jesus was, what He did for me, why it mattered…I was six, and she wanted to make sure I wasn’t putting my hand up thinking it was all a game. I knew it wasn’t. I knew even at six years old that I was making an important decision, a decision that would change me.
I felt a mixture of emotions before we prayed. I felt incredibly excited, more excited than I ever had been before, but I also felt very burdened by the weight of my own sin. Up until that moment I had no real knowledge of sin or conscience. But admitting my need for Christ meant acknowledging that my heart was dark. I thought of all the times I had done things I knew were wrong, and what’s worse, the times I knew my thought life wasn’t pure- feeling angry, feeling jealous, feeling bitter, resentment, laughing at someone, etc- those feelings were not Christ-like, but up until that moment I had never been bothered by them. Now I saw my need.
My Sunday school teacher explained that if I asked Jesus to forgive my sins, He would, and I’d be washed clean as snow. It didn’t mean I’d never do anything bad again, but it meant that Jesus would be with me to help me and when I did sin again, He was faithful to forgive me. She said that Jesus loved me, and if I had decided that I loved Him and I believed in Him, that I could ask Him to come live in my heart, and if I did that, He would always be there. He would never leave me, not for the rest of my life, and someday, when I died, I would get to be with Christ forever in heaven.
We bowed our heads and I prayed. I said that I was sorry for my sins and I wanted to ask Jesus to forgive me. I asked Him to come into my heart and be my savior. It was such a simple thing, but it was the defining moment in my life.
I felt something then. More physical than spiritual. I felt a weight being lifted off me, and I felt a light being placed inside me. It’s hard to describe, but I felt as if someone lit a torch and placed it directly inside my chest, where the heart is. A warm glow, radiating out of me and shining everywhere. A light that wanted to be seen! I believe that light was the Holy Spirit coming into me. And then I knew what God’s love felt like. It filled me up and bubbled over and I wanted to share it with everyone! That light has never gone out. (It may have been dampened a bit when I was a teenager and trying to go my own way! But thankfully, that light was always there, underneath, the Holy Spirit convicting me until at last I was restored.) When people talk about the moment they were saved, the description of feelings seems to be different for everyone. And that makes sense, because everyone is a unique individual created by God and God reaches people in different and unique ways. I’ve heard people say it felt as if a weight was lifted off them, I’ve heard people who said they couldn’t stop crying and people who couldn’t stop laughing and shouting with joy! I’ve also heard less “exciting” feelings- some people say they simply felt a sense of calm wash over them, a feeling of deep peace when Jesus came into their heart. The moment you give yourself over to Christ is deeply personal and individual.
So what happened later? Well, as I said, I felt as if I had light radiating out of me. I couldn’t WAIT to share the good news! As Sunday School ended, and my parents came to pick me up, I remember just running to them, and saying excitedly, “I got saved!”
And of course they were happy and shared in my joy. As a Christian parent, you want your children to know the perfect peace and love that comes only from Jesus Christ. When I was saved, it was the most important day of my life, but I also think that it was also one of the most important days of my parents and grandparents lives- just as I am sure that someday, when I have children, the day each of them accepts Christ as their personal savior (God willing) will be of equal importance to me- The day they become a part of God’s family will be so much more important than the day they became a part of my family!
After being saved, I then was baptized. What people need to understand about baptism is that it doesn’t save you. Baptism is just a dip in a pool, or a sprinkling of water on your head (as a Baptist, I believe is baptism by immersion, rather than sprinkling, because baptism by immersion if the example Jesus gave us.) Baptism is important, but it’s just an act. Baptism is just the way to show the community/church that something has been transformed in you! The real change has to be in your heart- the decision you make to follow Christ. Baptism is “an outward sign of an inward change”.
Now that I have told you some of my story (there’s more, trust me- I’ve lived a full life since age six!) I’ll show you a couple of pictures, and then I’d love to hear YOUR stories. Feel free to comment below or email me at BrookeOnFilm@gmail.com with your testimony, advice, questions, etc. Thank you for reading my blog!
My baptism.
The church bulletin from our church in Cleveland that we went to when I was a little girl and I was saved and baptized at.
