January 30 is my birthday! Ok, it's not my physical birthday. I was actually born on April 13, 1973. January 30, 1983, is my spiritual birthday. It is the day I gave my life to Christ.
I grew up in a tiny town (population 144) in southwest Arkansas, in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains, called Center Point. Every Sunday morning, our family got up and went to the Center Point Missionary Baptist Church at a little white frame church building that was about a hundred years old. My dad was a deacon and Sunday School teacher, and my mom was the “song leader.” We didn't miss a Sunday!
In the early weeks of 1983, I began to feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit. That's church talk for, I began to understand that I was a sinner and that my sin had caused some problems between me and God. Okay, at nine years old, I had never killed anyone, done or dealt drugs, stolen much more than a pencil or some candy from my brother, or seriously betrayed any of my friends.
In general, I was a good little kid. But I came to realize that I was still a sinner. I had disobeyed my parents, lied to my parents, gotten in lots of fights with my little brother, tried out a few bad words, cheated on a test at school, and was sometimes mean to my friends. Now, those may not seem like really big things to you, but what I really started to understand was that those things were serious to God and that things weren't right between me and him.
The other thing the Holy Spirit made really clear to me was that my only hope was in Jesus, specifically that Jesus had died on the cross for me, to pay for my sins so I could be forgiven, and that Jesus rose from the dead. I didn't exactly get all that meant, but I knew that if Jesus came back from the dead, then my best shot at getting right with God and going to heaven was in him.
So, all of that came to a head on January 30, 1983. The pastor offered a traditional altar call, an invitation to come to the front of the church at the end of the service, if you wanted to put your trust in Jesus. I was way to scared and shy at the time to do that (which may explain why I rarely do them today). After the service I bolted for the door and hid out in the car until my mom came. Then, I couldn't hold it in any longer. In a rush of tears, I told Mom that I didn't want to die and go to hell, but that I wanted to live forever with Jesus. She took me back into the church building, and in a little Sunday School classroom at the back of the church, our pastor, Brother Jerry, shared with me how to give my life to Jesus. I bowed my head and prayed a nine-year-old prayer to put my trust in Jesus. It was the greatest day of my life, and one I will never forget.
Yesterday, I got to celebrate twenty-eight years as a follower of Jesus. I got to preach that same message about Jesus to our congregation. Then yesterday afternoon, we baptized five people going public with their commitment to follow Jesus. Happy birthday to me!
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