The Pastor's Testimony of Conversion to Christ

Amen. I think about that line that we were just singing. "Then your Spirit gave me life." That's what happens when we come to faith in Christ. It doesn't matter if we are 5, 15, 25, 95. Yes, a 95-year-old can come to faith in Christ. I have to believe that if there's life in the body, if there's breath in the lungs, that someone can come to faith in Christ. I like that. "Then your Spirit gave me life." I hope and pray that that has happened to you. Now, I did mention earlier that we're going to be in several places in Scripture. I don't mean to confuse you. If it's easier for you to get those verses and study those later, that's okay.

We all listen differently and we all study differently. I want you just to be a good student of all that we're going to study. Now, it probably seems strange to some that I would take a morning service like this and I would share my own personal testimony about how I came to faith in Christ. Now, I would respond to that by saying that this should not be strange. Actually, this should be the norm. This should be a normal thing from pulpits. Personally, I believe that every pastor should be able to and should share their conversion testimony from the pulpit at different times and at different ways.

Sometimes I do that just in little short snippets. Sometimes I do that not necessarily planning it, but you hear me do that at different times throughout my teaching in the life of the church. But let me ask you a question. This is one of those rhetorical questions and I'm bad about asking two or three. Now, I want you to think with me here. Would you want a pastor that could not share when he was converted to faith in Christ? Would you sit under a pastor? Would you sit under an elder? In the life of our church, there are a few laymen who preach and teach God's word.

Would you sit under a pastor or an elder or a layman who would fill the pulpit and they could not share how they came to faith in Christ, how they were saved from their sins? Would you sit under a small group leader who could not share with you how they came to faith in Christ? Now, the answer to all of those questions should be no. And you might be thinking, "You know, pastor, I've never thought about that." Well, we should. Now, before we really get started, let me share with you two reasons that I'm going to share my testimony this morning. And again, these have really been on my mind. The first one has been on my mind for quite a while.

First of all, we have a lot of new people in the life of our church. It's wonderful. We've got a lot of new babies, a lot of new children, a lot of new families. And there are some of you you've never heard me share my conversion story. And if you're going to sit under me as your pastor, you need to know me. And to know me is to know how I came to faith in Christ. To know me is to know how I came to Christ, what that looked like, and when I came to faith in Christ, you see? And then second, a service like this helps us keep conversion or the new birth. I can say it like this, coming to saving faith in Christ.

It helps us keep all of those things in the forefront of our church. You know, as Baptists, we believe in baptism by immersion after one comes to faith in Christ. That is what distinguishes us as Baptists. And we understand that this is biblical. I've taught on this thoroughly. In the Scriptures, we see that before we can be Baptists, we must be able to make a credible profession of being converted to Christ. And we understand that no one is qualified for church membership unless they are able to make a credible profession of faith in Christ as well.

So conversion and coming to faith in Christ and having saving faith always needs to be kept, if I can put it like this, on the top shelf. It needs to be on the forefront of what we do in the life of the church. That is why we have those who are coming to be baptized and those who are coming to join the church share their conversion testimony. You see? We are not just odd. We are doing that for a purpose. And as a matter of fact, there is a man here this morning.

He shared with me that when those who were baptized this past summer, when they gave their testimony, he said conversion and saving faith was right there in his face, right there for all of us to see. Now again, a couple of questions I want you to think about. And I am aiming this at members of Grace Life Church. Would you want someone to be baptized if they could not give a credible testimony of how they were converted? The answer to that should be no. And do you want someone to come to be a member of this church if they could not share that they had gone from death to life like we have learned in Ephesians chapter 2?

See the answers to those questions should be no. Now when it comes to an example of a personal testimony of conversion to Christ, in my opinion there is none greater than Paul. Now I say that not because Paul was an apostle, but because of how he gives his testimony, the depth in which he goes, how he describes how he came to faith in Christ. That is right here in Acts chapter 26. In Acts 26 Paul is giving his defense before King Agrippa. Now this was life and death for him. And when he makes his defense we see that Paul does basically three things. First he starts off by describing his life before he came to faith in Christ.

He says that although he was a very, very religious man, notice he was one of the Pharisees and he goes on to say he was one of the best and he was. But notice he says that he was full of hate. He was full of hate and murder and persecution because he admits that he persecuted Christians and he persecuted the church. And then second he explains how Christ came to him and how he was born again. Christ came to Paul and he granted him saving faith and repentance as he was on the Damascus road and he was traveling to Damascus to persecute and kill more Christians. And then third he finishes by describing his life after being converted to Christ.

After he was converted to Christ there on the road to Damascus he immediately began to share Christ and preach Christ in Damascus, in Jerusalem, in all of the region, even in the Gentiles. So simply Paul shared three things with King Agrippa. He shared what his life was like before he came to Christ. He shared how and when he came to faith in Christ and he shared what his life was like after God saved him. And notice something, notice what we have here with Paul. We have a pattern. This is a good pattern. This is a good pattern. Now here's what I want to share with you.

If you, and you should, if you share your testimony, if you share your testimony with your neighbor or your coworker, if you share your testimony with your children, when you share your testimony here's a good pattern for you. Share what your life was like before you came to Christ. Share what happened when God saved you, what that looked like. And then share what your life has been like after. You see the pattern? Well if that was a good pattern for Paul and that's a good pattern for you, that's kind of the pattern I'm going to follow this morning.

Now first of all I want you to see and understand that I was raised in a wonderful home with wonderful parents. Now I know many of you did not come from a home like that and I don't understand how God works all of these things out but I came from a wonderful home with great parents. Our home was a Christian home in many different ways and there are a lot of very good things that I could say about my upbringing, about my parents, and even about my extended family. My parents and my family were and are wonderful. I'm thankful that both of my parents are still alive. Now they were not perfect.

Oh they were not perfect and the older I got the more I realized that they were not perfect. Now let me pause here. Your parents are not perfect either. Teenagers listen to you pastor. Your parents are not perfect. If they're going to discipline you and raise you by grace you're going to have to give them grace as well. So my parents were not perfect but they were wonderful. And my parents and my family were great growing up. They made a very positive impression on me in so many different ways. I'll give you an example. Some of you know this. Both my parents were school teachers.

My mom taught for over 40 years and my dad was a school teacher and went into administration. Ultimately he was a school superintendent for 19 years. And so they were public service and they loved that career. They loved public service. They were very hardworking. I watched them be very honest and very fair in the public sphere. And they did a lot of good for people. They did a lot of good in the community. And they're very well respected by many in the community. And I learned a lot by just watching them serve in the community and be good public servants.

Now that's just one thing that I have gleaned from my parents and that's made a big impression on me. But spiritually the difficult thing for my parents and my family was our church which was a United Methodist church. My parents were the victims of a denomination that was drifting from the authority of the scriptures and as a result they were in a dying church. It's very sad because at one time Methodists and Methodism they were very strong in our country. Although we would disagree on certain points of doctrine and practice Methodism at one time was a very thriving and growing denomination.

Back in those days someone could come to faith in Christ and Methodism. They could serve God in what I call Methodism of old. But when Methodism began to leave the authority of the scripture their faith was sealed. Here's a lesson for us. Look at any mainline denomination. Look at any church and denomination or association of churches throughout church history and when they moved away from the authority of the scriptures their faith is sealed. And if we do that it's over. It might not be over tomorrow but it is over. Now for me when I came into my teenage years I was in a struggling church which was really putting it nicely.

And my parents were the kind of people who just hated to leave. What they had poured all of their lives into. And those were very hard times for them and those were hard decisions for my parents. And as I've grown older I have become more gracious to them for how they handled those things. Well that led to a giant spiritual void in my life. And now when I say it was a giant spiritual void that doesn't mean I wasn't spiritual. Now I wasn't religious but oh I was spiritually because I was spiritually blind. I was spiritually dead. I was spiritually dead and in darkness and I was seeking after sin and I was seeking after the world.

Now if I were to describe my life during those years I would just say that I was very lost. And I did what a lot of people do in their teenage years. Now I don't like to glorify sin. Sin always kills. Sin always destroys. And there are ramifications for sin. And I got into a lot of different sin in my teenage years and I regret those things. And you know one of the things that perplex me after I came to faith in Christ is I went to high school with people that profess Christ. They profess Christ. And when I went to my tenure high school reunion I went for a few reasons but the biggest reason was this.

Number one I wanted to share my testimony and tell those that I went to high school with that I'd gotten saved. But I also wanted to seek out those who said they were Christian and I wanted to ask them why didn't you tell me about Jesus. Listen teenagers your friends are lost. They're lost. And if you're 14, 15, 17 or 18 who's going to tell them about Jesus. When I was 15 there was no one in my high school to tell me about Jesus. Those who knew Christ or said they knew Christ did not tell me. One of the people that I talked to at my tenure high school reunion she told me that she was afraid of me. Yeah she was afraid of me.

I was a sinner and I was lost. And I'm not proud of how I lived during those years. But things begin to change a lot for me after my high school graduation. First of all most of my friends they just went their own ways. That meant that most of my friends that I did a lot of sinful things were really not in my life. So that meant there was this void in my life and that void was good. And also I just didn't know what I wanted to do in my life. I went to college for a couple of years but I didn't like it. I had no idea what I wanted to do in a career. Now I loved to work. I loved to work and I did work.

But I did not know what I wanted to do in life. So that meant there was another void in my life. And those two voids were good. And here's where things really began to change for me. Right after I had graduated from high school I had some in my family that came to faith in Christ. My sister was one of them. And that is when God began to work in my life in a completely different way. Spiritually God was at work and I had no idea. Now later I understood those things. My brother and my sister they plugged their lives into a very very evangelistic and loving local church.

Highland Baptist Church there in Laurel Mississippi is where my wife grew up. That's her home church. It became my home church as well. And this is where all of these things were happening. This was the epicenter of all of these things. But first of all my brother and my sister were very burdened from me. They knew I was lost. And they were praying for me. They were praying that I would come to faith in Christ. And they had half of the church praying for me as well. Now this was a large church. But oh they were praying for me by name. Most of those people there at Highland Baptist Church did not know me but they were praying for me.

And this was a church that believed in prayer and they believed that God would answer prayer especially prayer that came to praying for the lost. And then second my brother began to witness to me. I remember vividly the very first time he shared the gospel with me. I was coming out of the side door of my parents home coming through the garage there and on the side of the driveway there was this little small deck. And he kind of courted me on the deck. And he began to tell me about how I was living. He began to call out my sin. He began to tell me that I wasn't just sinning but I was a sinner and that I was lost.

And he looked me right in the face and he said you're going to go to hell. You need Christ. You need Jesus. You need the gospel. Now I'd seen the change in his life but he began to look at me and he used this personal pronoun you. He said this is what's wrong with you. This is why you live the way you do. And he quoted John 3 about the new birth and he said this is what you need and I can't repeat to you what I said. I was mad. I remember when he got married I was a groomsman in his wedding and he gave me a New Testament as a groomsman's gift. And he highlighted certain portions and he noted where and he said you read this and read that.

And I remember he highlighted the portions of scripture in John 3 about the new birth and about sin. And as I looked at that I got mad. I got mad all over again. But God made an impression on me through those things. Now I can't say that I was under tremendous conviction but I saw and I heard his witness. I saw a tremendous change in my brother and in my sister and his verbal witness made his huge impression on my mind and God was using all of those things. Now here's where I want us to turn to a scripture. John chapter 6. I want us to read just one verse here. John chapter 6 verse 44. Many of you know this verse.

Jesus says, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." Now out of this verse I want us to see two key truths that apply to my life at this time. First what the text says, "No one can come to Christ by themselves." Now get that church. "By himself in his own way through man's own efforts no one can come to Christ." Period paragraph. Without some kind of a spiritual intervention from God man cannot come to Christ. Another verse that helps you here is Romans 3.10. It says that no one understands and no one even seeks God.

And then second out of this verse, "It is the Father that draws lost sinners to Christ." And it is critical to understand this word draw. It means to haul. It means to drag. It means to draw. One scholar said this means to draw toward something without necessarily the notion of force. Now let me show you how these spiritual facts right here were worked out in my life in that time. See I was dead in my trespasses and sins according to Ephesians 2.1,2,3. I could not come to Christ because no man seeks God like we see here in John and like we see in Romans 3. I did not want Christ. I did not want to come to Christ.

I didn't want anything to do with Christ. But God was drawing me. God was drawing me. He was using my circumstances and all of those things he orchestrated in my life. And he was using a church and he was using his people to pray for me. And he was using the verbal witness that was before me and the changed lives that I saw right out before me. Now what can we learn right there? We've got to be a praying church people. I'm afraid we don't pray for the lost like we should. We've got to be a praying people. We've got to be a praying church. You all have lost family. Who is going to take the gospel to them?

You've got lost sons and you've got lost daughters and you've got lost parents and you've got lost neighbors. Who is going to take them to gospel? We must be a church that comes together that prays for people. Look tonight when you meet in small group maybe you need to pause and share about all of the lost people in your life by name. Maybe you all need to come together and start praying. Maybe on Wednesday nights we need to be better at praying for the lost. Maybe we need to be honest enough to raise our hand and say would you please pray for this person and call out their name.

I'm so thankful that there was a church who knew me because they prayed for me. And then also what do we learn here? We must be a verbal witness. Yes we share our testimony but we share the gospel. And we must be willing to look at people and say you this is your problem. Well things all came to a crossroads for me. I didn't know this crossroads was coming in February of 1989. My sister in my soon to be brother-in-law asked me if I wanted to go to a Christian concert. Now if I remember right it was a group from the church that was going. Now I want you to understand something about who I was then.

I hadn't stepped foot in the door of a church in years. Except for my brother's wedding I had not gone to a church in years. Now my brother got saved at Hollen Baptist Church. It was a rather large church and he got married there. And I remember when I was there at that wedding I looked around and I thought I'll never go to church here. I'm not going to a big church. I'm not coming here. Something strange happened when they asked me to go to that event. That night I took them up on that invitation. I remember vividly and I don't know why. Now at this event they didn't just play music.

This was an evangelistic outreach event with the purpose to preach the gospel and to evangelize the loss. They had a motive with all that they were doing. And I remember the leader well after the music was over he preached from Matthew's gospel and right then and there on that very night God opened up my heart. Now you have to understand something here. I did not know the church words. I didn't understand about coming to faith in Christ. I couldn't have told you about the plan of salvation and all of the jargon and those things that we know. But that night I knew I was a sinner. That night I knew I needed God. But let me ask you a question.

How did I know that? I didn't know the Sunday School answers. I couldn't tell you Job from Job. I barely knew the Old and the New Testament. Well how did someone who is ignorant of spiritual things, how did I know those things? Well this is where I want us to turn over to John 16. John chapter 16. I want us to read together verses 7 to 11. Many of you know these portions of scripture. This is where Jesus is teaching on the Holy Spirit. He is teaching His disciples that the Spirit would come. And notice what He says. Verse 7, "Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away.

For if I do not go away the Helper will not come to you." Now your copy of God's Word has Helper there. It is probably capitalized. Helper meaning the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God. What does He say? "Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away the Helper will not come to you. But if I go I will send Him to you. And when He comes He will convict or reprove the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment." Concerning sin because they do not believe in me.

Concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is to be judged. Now here we see the work of the Holy Spirit in the lost world and in the lives of lost people. People who are dead in their trespasses and sins. And John says the Holy Spirit will convict the lost. The King James used the word reprove. And we really need to understand what this word convict means. This means to show to be wrong. This means to rebuke. This means to reprove. This means to find fault with and to correct.

The Bible commentator William McDonald says this is commonly take to mean that the Holy Spirit creates this inward awareness of these things in the life of the individual sinner. Well what things? What things are being made aware? Well listen to text. Sin, righteousness, and judgment. This means that the Holy Spirit rebukes the sinner. This means the Holy Spirit corrects the sinner. This means that the Holy Spirit of God supernaturally brings about this awareness of sin and righteousness and judgment. So He convicts the lost of their sin and their unbelief. He convicts the sinner of God's righteousness and the judgment to come.

And look sometimes I can be very very heavy for some and sometimes for others it can be this awareness, this light bulb coming on. So how did I know I was a sinner? I didn't know the Bible. I didn't know the answers that you know. I didn't know the Sunday school answers. I didn't know the plan of salvation. I didn't know the Roman road. I couldn't have quoted you these verses. How did I know I needed Christ? How did I know that I was going to go to hell if I did not do something? It was because God did that work in me. Well at that invitation time during that event, see this was an event where they gave an invitation.

They called for sinners to come to Christ. And look I got out of my seat and I went down front not for any religious reason, not out of pretense. No I wanted Christ. I wanted to give my life to Christ. I never wanted Him before. When my brother shared the gospel I cursed in his face. I never wanted Christ or anything to do with Christ. But right then and there I wanted Christ. And at that particular time I did not have the ability to explain to you that I had been born again. But what I could tell you was this. I did not want my old life of sin anymore. I wanted to leave that behind and I did.

I wanted Jesus and He had come into my life and He had empowered me to believe and He had empowered me to be able to leave my old life behind. I was truly a new person. Not because anything that I had done but because of what God had done in me. Paul describes what had happened to me beautifully. In 2 Corinthians 5.17 we will turn there in a minute. Paul says therefore if anyone is in Christ what does that mean? If anyone is a Bible Christian, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The oldest passed away. Behold the new has come. And so I am going to ask you. Has that happened to you?

It was not an accident that I went to that Christian concert. It was not an accident that there was a void in my life. It was not an accident that I said yes to the invitation. It's not an accident that you are here. You are not here by chance. You are not here by circumstance. You are not here by coincidence. God uses all of those things because He has a greater plan. God has brought you here and He could be making you aware of who you are. He could be convicting you and correcting you and reproving you and oh you have a burden for your sin. You see the righteousness of God before you and you know deep down you are headed for judgment.

God has done this for you and you need Christ. You need Christ. You need to rush to Christ so as to be converted to Christ. Well what happened next in my life was shocking for everyone in my family. Now I didn't go down the road like Paul and start preaching. Paul gets saved on the Damascus road. He goes to Damascus and starts preaching Christ and what do those Christians say? This guy who has been killing all of our friends now he is preaching the Gospel. Now I wasn't quite like that. But let me tell you what I did do. I did what every Christian should do. That night I went home and I dug up a Bible that a girl gave me in high school.

When I was a senior in high school maybe I don't know maybe she felt sorry for me maybe she just didn't think she could tell me about Jesus but she gave me a Bible. And I vividly remember in my closet on the very top shelf on the right hand side I don't know why I kept it. I grabbed that Bible out of there. I took that Bible off that shelf and the very next day I went to church. I went to Sunday school. I went to church. I walked right into the door of that Sunday school class and there sat Troy Pounds. Troy Pounds lived for Jesus in high school and I ridiculed him. He stood up and said hey brother how's it going?

I walked right in the door of that Sunday school class. I sat right in that pew and I opened up my Bible and I plugged my life into that church and I never looked back not just plugging my life into the church but I never looked back at my old life. I looked forward to what Christ had done in me. I never went back to the old. I never went back to my old friends. I never left the church. I never left my new life. I kept my eyes on the new life in front of me. Now I did have struggles. New Christians can have struggles. Old Christians can have struggles. I'm just trying to figure out if I'm a new Christian or an old Christian.

This was a description of my life. I've thought about this a lot. I love that church. I love God's people. I love God's Word. I love the preaching of God's Word. Brother Dennis was going to open up the Bible and preach. It didn't matter if it was a Wednesday night, a Sunday morning or Sunday night. This was his attitude. He would say you know if there's a group in the church that wants to give a testimony about missions I'm going to preach and after I get through they can have the floor. Because he knew it was the Word of God that was going to impact souls. And I love Brother Dennis' preaching. I love Sunday school.

Now I'm going to be honest with you. There were some times I had terrible Sunday school. But I went. I remember there was a season that my class was so bad I really did struggle to go. But I stayed. I didn't give up on the church. When there was problems in the church I didn't give up. I trusted my pastor. I want to say something that's going to sound a little arrogant. If you've been saved just a short period of time. If you've been saved less than five years it's hard sometimes to measure the difference in an immature believer and a mature believer. Trust your pastor.

If your pastor is living through the Lord preaching God's Word and leading the church correctly. Not perfectly. Not perfectly. Trust your pastor. I cannot tell you how many times I thought my pastor is off the rails. And a week later I would say no he's right. Did I see him make mistakes? Yes. But I love my church and I love what God was doing there. And I love sharing the gospel. We would go out in teams and share the gospel. But I love Christ and I love my new life in Christ. And I love what God was doing there in the heart of that church and in the heart of those people.

And I would say that my life verse for those five years, those first five years was 2 Corinthians 517. Let's turn over there. I want us to read these verses because there's a few comments I want to make as we conclude here in a minute. But 2 Corinthians 517 Paul says therefore if anyone, if you write in your Bible you can write off to the side there any man, any woman, any young person, anyone is anyone. Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation, the oldest passed away and behold the new life has come. Now notice what Paul is saying. Paul says in verse 17 this is what happened to me. On February the 9th of 1999 I was born again.

I was brought from death to life like we see in Ephesians 2. I was made alive together with Christ and I never looked back because I had a new life. Have you come to the place where you've been born again and you've got a new life and you've not looked back? 1 John says that many go out from us because they never were of us. I'm afraid that that characterizes so many in our culture. Now earlier I gave two reasons why I wanted to share my conversion testimony. I'm going to add one more. First I share my conversion testimony because you need to know me. Again many of you don't know me. You haven't known me that long.

Many of you have heard bits and pieces of my testimony and some of this is new for you. But if I'm going to be your pastor you need to know how I came to Christ and the fact that I do have a conversion testimony. Look I do not believe you should sit under a pastor as he preaches the Word. I do not believe you should allow a pastor to pastor you without believing that they're truly converted to Christ. You should hear their testimony. You should see their testimony in their life and it should be real. But then second we've got to keep conversion to Christ at the forefront of our church and the forefront of our church life.

No man, no woman, no young person can ever be right with God and go to heaven unless they've been born again. Jesus says to Nicodemus in John 3, "You must be born again." Why did Jesus repeat it? Why did Jesus repeat that to Nicodemus? It's because you must be born again. So how important is saving faith in Christ? How important is the new birth? It's eternal. It's heaven or hell. And the new birth is the gateway into the church. We just don't join people up. We just don't baptize anyone. No, it's the gateway. It's the doorway. But then third, this is our job. This is your job. Go back to 2 Corinthians. I want to read down to verse 20.

Some of you know this verse. This was a part of our small group study last week. Matter of fact, I commented in an extra way with our young people when I taught this lesson last week. But I want us to read verse 17 down to verse 20. And notice how Paul transitions. He says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The oldest passed away, behold the new has come." All of this, all of this, what? The new birth. All of this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespass against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. God making His appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Now here we see that the new creation in Christ, the new birth, this is from God. Isn't that right? Verse 18. It is God who through Christ reconciled us to Himself. Not of our works, no. This means that through Christ and by His death, we as believers have been reconciled. We have been presented as holy and blameless before God. We are new.

Whereas before we were dead in our sins, we were dead in our trespasses as sins. Now we have been made new. We are blameless in Christ. We are reconciled to God. We are in His favor, brought into harmony with God. You see? Then Paul says that He, that is God, He has given us the ministry of reconciliation. Verse 20 says that we are ambassadors. That means we are His representatives. That means we are His agents. So we are sent by God to be ministers of reconciliation and it is actually and truly God making His appeal to lost sinners through us.

Back when my brother began to witness to me, who was witnessing to me, was it my brother or was it God? Yes. This text says that he was Christ's ambassador and he was imploring me, begging me to come to faith in Christ, but it was God who was imploring me through that human agent. So it is our job to influence the lost. It is our job to impact the lost. It is our job to be God's instruments. We are to be His ambassadors. You know when you represent someone, when you're an ambassador for someone, that's a heavy burden and a big responsibility. But we are to be His ambassadors. He has called us to be His agents. We can say it like this.

We are to be God's evangelists. Yes, evangelists. Who evangelizes? We do. It is our job. We have the ministry of reconciliation. But who evangelizes? No, it's God through us. If you say you can't do it, you're right. But God can through you. So this morning, you've heard my testimony of conversion to Christ and you should have a testimony of being converted to Christ. If you don't have a testimony, folks, come to Christ. I'm not asking you to make a decision. I'm not asking you to come down front. I'm not going to hold your hand and pray some magic prayer. We don't do that. But I'm begging you to come to Christ.

What did Paul say to King Agrippa and all of those who were listening? He said, "I wish you could have all that I have except for the chains." What was he doing? "Come to Christ. Come to Christ." So I'm asking you, come to Christ. Don't hold on to your pride. If you've played a religious game, just let it go. No one's going to criticize you. Don't worry about what other people think. If you worry about what other people think, you're just going to continue down that road towards judgment and hell. Come to faith in Christ. Come to faith in Christ. Get the new life that you can only have in Christ.

And listen, we as a church should be sharing our testimonies. We should be evangelizing, telling folks what we were like before, telling folks how we came to Christ, explaining to folks what our life is like since. And we should be evangelizing and giving the gospel. It is our job. We are His ambassadors. Christ is making that appeal through us. And actually, our community and town should say this, "Man, Christ Life Church is full of a bunch of evangelists because that's what we're supposed to be." So what have we looked at this morning? You know me, I like titling messages. This one's a hard one to title.

It's my conversion testimony, but it's more. Really, it's all about Christ, the new birth, conversion to Christ, being born again, and then taking that testimony and using it to impact others. So let's pray. Let's commit this to the Lord, and then we'll sing and close out our worship service.