These Are My JOTtings, Part #2

My Conversion

Though "conversion" is not a word we use in common language, these days, with the exception of "conversion van," which is used for trips, and vacations, my conversion is quite frankly the best way I can describe what happened to overhaul my entire life when I was six years old.

The seniors would tell me to say something like this. "When you tell others, that you are saved (aka 'right with God,') give them your conversion experience."

Am I a Christian? Yes. However, the longer I am one the less I feel, that I am a great example of what it means to be a Christian. I'm quite flawed. I don't know how to smoothly start up a conversion about Jesus, so that I may share The Gospel with others. This blog has been a great help to me in that regard because I have to take time to think about the words I am about to say. That is especially so with the poetry I write.

Bottom Line: I've come to realize, that I'm not a Christian because I'm a great person. I've too often been an awful person, who needs the Great Savior, and being perfectly honest, everything good I've ever done is still awful. "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." (Isaiah 64:6, KJV) Literally, everything good I do looks in God's eyes, like when I soiled myself as a baby.

Jesus is my Only Savior. Ever.

Now, that I've told you how bad I am, let me tell you how Good Jesus is.

It was the Thursday night of a revival meeting in the spring of 1967. Sometime during the message, that was being preached, my heart was quickened (or "made alive") to understand for the first time in my life, that I was lost without Jesus, and I needed to be saved, which is to simply believe His Claims about being The Only One, Who could save anyone. (John 6:37,44; John 14:6) I held onto the pew in front of me and didn't "go forward" to say anything publically during the invitational hymn, but I was so happy when the final prayer spoke the word, "Amen" so I could leave and get outside the building.

I already believed in the existence of that place of everlasting torment, called, "Hell." Therefore, I was terrified, during the entire car ride from the church to the pastorium, where we lived. It was a drive of less than two miles, but I was afraid, that I would die in a car crash on the way home, and instantly go to Hell.

Finally, we arrived safely at home, but I could contain myself no longer. On the front stoop, I started crying significantly. My dad asked, "Son, what is wrong?" I told him, "Daddy, I thought I ought to have gone down (front in the church.)" "He said, "That's okay, Son. We can take care of that right now."

He led me inside the house, and seated me on a big chair, near the door to the kitchen, and read me some Scripture verses, like John 3:16 and the Romans Road, but all with the emphasis on Jesus, being The Savior. I could do nothing to save myself. He, then, led me to pray for Jesus to save me, come into my heart, or some other wording, that simply meant, "Not me. Jesus is The One, Who paid for my sins, was buried, and Who rose from the dead, never to die, again." I have since come to understand, that Jesus' perfect life was necessary to substitute for my imperfect life.

Why am I telling you this?

Oftentimes, people pray a Sinner's Prayer as I did, and rely solely on that apparent transaction with God as the only or main reason, that he or she believes, that person is saved (a new creation in Christ Jesus.) Seriously, that would be like planting an acorn in the ground, coming back twenty years later, looking for a big oak tree, yet finding the acorn still in the ground.

Acorns are meant to grow into trees, and "baby" Christians are meant to grow into mature believers in Jesus, the Christ. (I John 5:1, KJV)

I'm grateful for that first prayer in which I embraced Jesus as my Savior to the fullest extent of my six-year-old heart, but I would be in a sad shape, today if I was still that little six-year-old Christian. He still lives in my heart, and he still cries out in fear from time to time when I review something, that has happened of a serious or potentially harmful nature, or when I anticipate something bad, that could happen.

This has happened over the past couple of days as I have heard the predictions of the next tropical storm/hurricane, they plan to call, "Helene." "What happens, if this is the Big One?" he cries. Adult me has to try to comfort 6yo me, "We've been through hurricanes before, and God always takes care of us. Why should He stop taking care of us now? Even if we die, Jesus paid our sin debt through His death, burial, and resurrection, and He lived His perfect life to cover our imperfect life. We couldn't make ourselves born, physically (the first birth,) and we couldn't do anything to make us be born, again, spiritually (the second birth.) (John 3:3, KJV) God is The Sovereign Shepherd, and we are His little sheep. Let's rest in His Arms. (Psalm 91:1-4; Colossians 1:16-17, KJV)"

I still fail a lot. That's what humans do. We fail, but the amazing focus of the Christian life is that we can "fail forward" in Christ, Who is still The Savior and Lord.

I'd like to end with two sets of verses, that are near and dear to my heart.

Ezekiel 36:26-27, KJV says, "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them."

I Corinthians 15:3-4, KJV is the Gospel Message, "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:"

I prayed a prayer when I was six, but Jesus regenerated me so, that I would want to pray that prayer.

I've lived an imperfect, "up & down" life since that day. You would not have been able to tell I was a Christian, during some days of my life, but on other days I was completely given over to serving The Lord to the best of my abilities, but even on those best days, my own goodness was still "filthy rags" (aka "a soiled diaper." Isaiah 64:6, KJV)

My conversion is truly His transformation of my sinful life into one, that is useful in His Hands.

Salvation is not what I do for Him. Salvation is His life living through me. I am grateful, that He lives through me as imperfect as I still am. (Philippians 2:13, KJV) “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

Not me. Jesus.

May He regenerate you that same way this very day.

by Jay O’Toole
on September 24th, 2024