AN AUTHENTIC SIPIRITUAL CONVERSION
Updated: Oct 17, 2022
People are forever talking about their moment of conversion. They like to give what they call their personal testimony. There is much confusion about what this is exactly. It's not just a matter of checking the Christian box on the survey form. It's not a matter of simply declaring oneself a Christian, or like declaring oneself a democrat or Republican. It's an actual personal transformation. It is real.
Reciting the sinner's prayer doesn't convert us. Reciting Romans 10:9 doesn't convert us. God converts us. Here's how it works: The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins. Conviction is when the evidence makes it obvious that we are guilty and we sincerely acknowledge that we are guilty. Everyone of us here has sufficient evidence that he is guilty, but not all of us care. Contrition is when we feel bad about our sins. When we feel bad enough about our sins to want to turn from them God gives us the strength to do so. This is call repentance. We repent because we hate sin and love God. Repentance and trust are two sides of the same coin.
In a court of law we are asked to testify about something we have witnessed. A testimony is about facts. A Christian's personal testimony is about facts--What facts? It is about our moment of conversion. A genuine conversion is not a figment of the imagination. It is not about feelings, although one, no doubt, experiences intense emotions during that moment.
The moment of conversion is when we are freed from the power, penalty and guilt of sin. At that moment, God's spirit comes inside of us and transforms us. Whereas prior to this moment we were slaves to sin, meaning we had to sin, but after this moment we have a choice to sin or not as opposed to only having a choice of which sin we will commit.
Now, here is where most of the confusion lies: Christians are not perfect. Christians are being perfected by God, specifically by his Holy Spirit. But further clarification is needed about this point. If someone claims to be converted and that person sins just as much as he did before his alleged conversion then there was no change. Such a person was never converted. That person is not a Christian.
“Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” More specifically, nobody wants to die to sin. Well, nobody but those of us who got sick and tired of being sick and tired of living a life full of sin. We will not be totally free from sin until Jesus comes back and takes us home, but once we are born again, we just don't sin like we used to sin. We are not perfect, but we are getting better.
You see, non-Christians are like prisoners of war. But Jesus died to set the captives free. But the struggle continues. The war rages on, but only for the truly converted. The unconverted continue to wallow in sin. They remain in the POW camp.
The Christian, on the other hand, although while not perfect, is not a prisoner; because who the son sets free is free indeed (John 8:36).
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In this blog I take a close look at a wide variety of topics using the Bible as my lens. When we look at the world through the lens of scripture we discover life-changing truth that transforms us. We discover our
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