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| My Testimony | | Date Created: Nov 18, 2004, 04:03 PM |
I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ or come to him, so my parents carried me to the font as an infant and I was baptized into the Christian faith and united to the body of Christ at Resurrection Lutheran Church (LCMS) in St. Louis. This is how the Holy Spirit called me by the Gospel and enlightened me with his gifts. Throughout my life as a child he sanctified and kept me in the truth faith.
My mother, who was divorced when I was about 2, faithfully took me to worship and Sunday school all the way through high school. As a single mother she worked very hard so I could attend a Lutheran grade school and high school. This is how the Lord began his work in me. It was in this Christian church that the Lord daily and richly forgave all my sins. In other words, I believe that baptism was given to me as a sign and seal of God's love for me in Christ.
I have come to realize and appreciate my child-like faith as a boy. I used to say that I wasn't a "Christian" until I came to a mature understanding of my sin and the Gospel. We are so used to making these maturer experiences of grace function as signs and seals of true grace that we have forgotten that God is pleased with the child-like trust of little children. Granted, child-like trust must grow into mature faith. But that doesn't mean that a little boy's untried and simple faith is unreal or counterfeit. Shame on us.
During my last years of high school and the first few years of college I began to rebel. I stopped attending worship. I got involved with the wrong group of people. Thankfully, this did not last too long. The Lord showed me the danger I was in. He used a dispensational campus organization (Ichthus) on the campus of University of Missouri to gather me back into his fold. I got down on my knees and asked forgiveness. I praise God for all the wonderful people and the great things I learned during those days. In the mid 1970's the dispensationalists seemed to be the only people taking the Bible seriously. I owe my love for the Bible to those men.
Unfortunately, I was also taught to despise my Lutheran upbringing. Actually, it didn't matter if you were a Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, or Catholic--everyone was taught to despise their ecclesiastical background unless it had been Baptist or Charismatic. I repeated wicked things that my spiritual leaders taught me to say (Lord, forgive their ignorance). Things like: 1) I never heard the Gospel growing up (a monstrous lie), 2) the whole organized church with her liturgies, sacraments, and government distracts people from the Gospel, and 3) I was never a Christian or a believer until I responded to the Gospel message in college.
I was taught a canned "testimony." There was only one mold and I was asked to force my own experience into it. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit was still working in my life. Gradually I began to wonder about this formulaic typology of conversion.
I remember, for example, being perplexed at my own familiarity with the hymns, creeds, and worship of the churches that I visited (the one's that weren't totally "free" and charismatic; even Baptist churches had a fairly traditional worship service in the 70's). I finally realized that God had indeed worked in my life before I was introduced to this particular campus ministry. That I had heard the Gospel as a child. That the Spirit had trained me as a young disciple in the community of God's people. I had learned the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the hymns, and the wonderful fixed liturgy of the Lutheran church. All of the words and music used in church were burned into my heart and mind. And maybe more importantly, I came to the realization that I was indeed a believer when I was a little boy. A child-like believer with a naïve faith, to be sure--but I was nevertheless a believer! If I would have died when I was five years old, I would have gone to heaven. I am now convinced that what I was told was my singular "conversion experience" (or regeneration) was in fact a very important crisis that the Holy Spirit worked in my life to bring me back to the faith of my youth.
I graduated, got married, was commissioned as an officer in the Army, and was stationed at Ft. Gordon, Georgia, where I attended a Bible church for a little less than a year. The church was pastored by an older man (who graduated from DTS in the days of Chafer), and the worship was in the traditional fundamentalistic style. But I was beginning to read more and more Reformed authors and visiting a PCA church down the road occasionally.
Eventually my wife and I joined First Pres. in Augusta, GA, a church which had a very traditional semi-liturgical worship service. We loved it. I invited lots of Army buddies to church and saw a number of them convert and some come back to the faith of their youth. Many of these guys had no church background at all. They often did not find the service "intelligible." I remember one friend yelling at me as I drove him back to base after the worship service. He was fighting mad.
John: "Why does this church use so many big words---words that I have never heard before? I can't even understand what's going on."
Me: "What words are you talking about, John?"
John: "Words like 'justification, sanctification, holiness, sacrament.' What in the world was going on this morning?"
Me: "John, those are BIBLE words. The church cannot help but use these words in worship."
Well, I spent a lot of time with John explaining these words, which just means I was able to tell him the Gospel! About 6 months later John was baptized in the church.
Anyway, I started out with a simple testimony, but now I've gotten sidetracked. You should try to sit through one of my sermons! Oh well. . . never mind.
Well, I've strayed a bit from my purpose here, but that's what blogs are for! There's my "testimony," at least the middle part of my life. Thankfully, the Lord is still working with me.
Just in case some of you did not recognize the reference to Luther's Small Catechism in the opening paragraph of my testimony, here it is. This is Luther's explanation of the so-called "third article" of the Apostle's Creed ("I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting"). I consider it to be one of the most eloquent and accurate confessions of God's work in my life that I know.
What does this mean? I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ. This is most certainly true. |
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