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When Much is Given! I have been afforded a tremendous blessing not extended to many of our young people today: I had the privilege of growing up in a Christian home. My parents, both devout Christians, brought me to church for the first time when I was a week old, and consistently after that every time the church doors were open. Sauk Village Baptist Church, a towering, formidable, red building with a white steeple, was our church home. During Sunday school, throughout innumerable church services, and in grade school (I attended Sauk Village Baptist Schools run by our church), I was presented with the gospel time and time again. It wasn't until I was five years old that I realized I needed salvation. Most of the events surrounding my earliest childhood years are nothing more than a multicolored blur, but the following happenings are crystal clear. It was a warm summery Sunday night, and the church glowed a fiery red set ablaze by bright white fluorescent lights that seemed to vibrate in the distance as my family and I negotiated our way across the cracked gravelly black top of the parking lot. We proceeded through the open doors and into the auditorium, quickly finding a seat in our usual wooden hard-backed pew on the left side of the aisle third row from the back, next to my grandparents. This church service was no different than any of the countless others I had witnessed. The song service was as beautiful as ever as familiar voices intertwined bouncing off the high ceilings and swirling melodiously into my ears, the offering plate still passed me by (I was not allowed to pass it, for fear of spilling the money on the floor), and as Pastor Hanks stood up to present that night's message, I was filled with a feeling of monotony. This night, thankfully, was very different; it was the night that I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. The topic of the night's sermon was salvation, and in my little five-year-old mind, I might as well have been standing in the audience as the famous Jonathon Edwards delivered his legendary "Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God." As Pastor Hanks thundered from the pulpit, I was absolutely petrified. I knew I never wanted to go to the Hell designated for sinners that he was describing. During the invitation I was torn; I knew I needed to ask Jesus into my heart, but I was too scared to walk all the way up the aisle to the altar, which, from my pew (third from the back) seemed like a decidedly long walk. The invitation stretched on for an eternity, as I stood stoically through three verses of "Just as I am". Finally, we were dismissed in a word of prayer, and my family began the fifteen-minute car ride home. It was late, so as soon as we arrived home, I was immediately wrapped up in pink pajamas and sent packing to bed. I couldn't sleep. Being a natural worrier endowed with an extremely overactive imagination to boot (reasons why I'm sure God has a sense of humor!), I alternately tossed and turned. The shadows of passing cars, and rustling leaves became Satan's demons, and the normal buzz of the television, the tortured voices of Hell's occupants. I couldn't take it anymore. I opened my bedroom door, and called for my mom. I told her I wanted to be saved. That night kneeling on the shag carpet beside my waterbed, I asked Jesus to forgive me of my sins and to come into my heart. He's been there ever since.
Now that I'm a little older and perhaps a little wiser, I am deeply and sincerely thankful for being saved at such a young age. My salvation experience is now (and always should have been) an asset, not a liability; "Tremendous Salvation Experience" testimonies no longer invalidate my own personal experience. God graciously allowed me the privilege of early salvation, I privilege I never deserved. I never had to wrestle with the demon of alcohol, experiment with drugs, or experience a life devoid of a Christian household, that many Christians have had to suffer through before coming to the saving knowledge of Christ. Sure, the testimony of a Billy Sunday or a Jonathon Edwards may rival mine in dramatic content, but all of us have been saved from the same thing in the same way: our own sinful nature was overcome by God's amazing grace. It is just as miraculous when God saves a drunk on the streets, as when God saves a young five-year-old child. Although the God's grace is the same for both the drunk and the five-year-old, the responsibilities are different. The drunk has to reassemble his sin-scared life and start from scratch, whereas the child raised in a Christian home has only to fulfill God's will. Because I have been so blessed, I have much to give back to Him. As the Bible says in Luke 12:48b: ". . . For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required:
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Things followed rather uneventfully after my salvation. I was baptized at a nearby church (we didn't have our own baptistery) and continued to attend church regularly. As I grew older, during chapel services in school, and during church services I began to pay more attention to the testimonies of my teachers and extended church family. Some of them mirrored my own young-age-salvation-experience, while most others seemed to have been saved much later in life, in much different circumstances. Especially when I was a teenager, these seemingly "Tremendous Salvation Experience" testimonies shook me a little bit. Most Christians, prior to salvation, led lives steeped in the mire of sin (read: alcohol-drug-rebellion-ridden lives desperately in need of divine intervention). When I was five the worst thing I had ever done was write on the bathroom wall in permanent black marker, spit out my vitamins when my mom wasn't watching, and stubbornly refuse to take afternoon naps. The difference in the two salvation experiences appeared colossal. So, I was saved from pushing kids down on the playground, while another Christian was saved from a life of rabble-rousing, deviant behavior and debauchery? It just didn't seem fair.  |
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