This past year I celebrated my ten-year anniversary in Christ. Way back in the summer of 1995, God saved me. I was a prideful, self-deceived camp counselor that looked A-O-K on the outside but was in desperate need of Christ.

Recently, I was mysteriously inspired to contact Northland Camp to see if they still had the messages from that week of camp available. To my amazement and delight, they did. The message that God most used in my life the week I was saved was entitled “Testing Your Testimony” and was preached by Keven Brownfield (see pic at right). Keven preached it on Thursday evening, June 29, 1995. After a thoroughly sleepless night, God saved me at about noon on the following day.

I am using this post as an excuse to upload the message that was preached the night before my conversion to Christ. This is a good message. I commend it to you. The text is Matthew 7. Keven preaches the Gospel. Keven preaches the necessity of being converted to Christ. By God’s grace, I am a convert.

When I talk about “conversion,” I mean one’s willing (because one has been made willing by the grace of God) response to the Gospel call. Conversion is turning. The call of the Gospel is to turn from sin and to turn to Christ.

Faith + Repentance = Conversion

Furthermore,

Faith + Repentance + Conversion = all a work of God’s grace

This past summer I sent out an email to several friends inviting them to rejoice with me that God had mercy on my soul. I invite you now to do the same.

Friends,

Ten years ago today (June 30, 1995), God saved me. I was a counselor at Northland Camp that summer. The night prior to my salvation I watched the Lord do a saving work in one of my campers and I thought to myself: “I know nothing of this.” I had been struggling intensely with my salvation since 1993, and I tried desperately to muster up enough faith, good works, and repentance, or whatever to “get in” to the Kingdom. All those attempts were self-based efforts that ended in frustration and uproar in my heart.

But, by God’s grace, I came to the utter end of myself and acknowledged my sinful, helpless condition and begged Him, aware for the first time the miserable beggar I was, to save me. He did. I came to Him with nothing besides an impossible need. I am a debtor to His grace. I now live as a debtor, and I will forever remain a debtor. Praise God! May He be glorified!

The humbling truth that the Holy Spirit used to break me and draw me to Christ is found in Ephesians 2:8-9 -- For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

For the first time my eyes were opened to understand that the faith that saves must come by God’s grace. In other words, even that which we need to appropriate(v) the gift of salvation is also a gift. Jonah 2:9 -- . . . Salvation is of the LORD. (see also: Hebrews 12:2; Philippians 1:29; Romans 12:3; Acts 14:27; Acts 18:27)

Today has been a blissful day for me – filled with tears of joy, humility, and sweet memories of those happy moments after I found That for which my soul so long had thirsted (because God found me! – Galatians 4:9). Rejoice with me that I have been redeemed by the Redeemer! Praise the Lord with me for His magnificent, ever-flowing, never-ending grace.

Download the message “Testing Your Testimony,” about 5MB and only 40 minutes long. (NOTE: The length of this message is further proof of its miraculous nature as Keven rarely preached less than an hour back in those days! I love you, Keven!)