My Salvation Story

I thought it a good idea to explain to you all how I got saved and also glean from my story two important lessons regarding salvation.

The (Supposed) Story

When I was about 13 years old, I was watching a sermon by Joel Osteen on television. As he always does, Joel Osteen gives a short invitation at the end of his sermons. It goes like this:

Lord Jesus, I repent of my sins. I ask You to come into my heart. I make You my Lord and Savior.

Joel would always say, "Friends if you prayed that simple prayer, we believe you've been born again." When I was 13, I prayed that and felt what I described as a "whoosh feeling" in my chest. I had always thought that was when the Holy Spirit entered my body.

Years later, I found out this to be false. What I thought was salvation, was merely some sort of physical feeling. When I was 13, I never understood that prayer. I don't remember thinking to myself "I'm a sinner and I need Jesus." (Repentance) I don't remember believing on the Lord Jesus Christ (faith). I just remember saying a prayer and feeling something in my body. I now understand I was saved much later.

Here is my story.

The REAL Story

I had been struggling on and off from doubt. I could not tell if I was saved or not. I would read the Bible, pray my heart out, act like a Christian, and try to act as though I were an authority on the Bible. But deep down I knew something wasn't right. I felt this hole in my soul. This place that longed for the only Person that could fill it--Yeshua (Jesus Christ).

I struggled so much that I listened to sermons by Dr. Charles Stanley almost hourly. But God changed me when I listened to several sermons by Pastor Farrell from the WILDS Christian Camp. The first sermon was called "If You Go to Hell." It absolutely terrified me and got me to really thinking if when I was younger I had actually gotten saved? Through this sermon, I came to the conclusion that when I was 13 I had not been born again.

Some time later, I listened to another sermon by Pastor Farrell entitled "Why God says NOW" (if you wish to listen to it, you can find it here, but you have to download the file to get the entire sermon: http://www.wilds.org/resources/sermons). That sermon was about the pressing need to be saved at the moment you are offered salvation by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ for salvation and not to wait--because at a certain point God will not ask you to come to Him anymore. This sermon terrified me even more. I knew I was saved, but I felt like I couldn't figure out how to make sure. I prayed over and over to be saved, but each time I felt that nothing had happened. I still felt the emptiness. I literally thought I was an unbeliever that was not part of the elect--therefore I thought I was the one person alive that wanted to be saved, but couldn't be by definition. I thought I was someone God had chosen to be unsaved when I genuinely wanted to be saved.

Finally, God brought me to the Bible. I read verses about salvation over and over. John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 10:13, John 10:9, Acts 16:31--all of them. But each time I prayed about it (verses included in the prayer or not) I still felt lost.

Finally, Jesus spoke to me in an unlikely verse. There is an account of Jesus healing a blind man in the Gospel of Matthew. Read it and I will explain how God used it to change my heart.

Matthew 9:27-31,

"²⁷And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him, crying, and saying, Thou son of David, have mercy on us. ²⁸And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to him: and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord. ²⁹Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. ³⁰And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it. ³¹But they, when they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all that country."

In my King James Version Bible that I read from, the words of Jesus are in red. As I was reading this story and thinking about my salvation, Jesus popped a verse off the page to ask me a question. Jesus said to me, "Believe ye that I am able to do this?" My problem was I was trusting how I was saying my salvation prayer instead of trusting Who I was saying it to. I just had to believe Jesus could save me. Jesus showed me that my real problem was that I was worried HE would reject me because I wasn't "doing it right." I wasn't worried about me not getting saved "the right way"--deep down I was worried about HIM rejecting me because of me.

Accordingly, Jesus spoke to me that night and said, "Believe ye that I am able to do this?"

"Do you believe that I can save you, Robert?" is what Jesus asked me.

As the blind man did, I resounded "Yea, Lord." Jesus lead me to the answer I had sought--I had to trust JESUS--not the phraseology of my prayer. Right then and there I prayed and told Jesus I was a sinner and needed Him to save me. I told Him I believed He could save me and that I needed Him to. And so He did.

What can we glean from this? I believe from my experience with Jesus Christ, we can take away some lessons.

Don't Trust In What People Have Told You

Don't trust what people have told you about your salvation. I heard a story in the "Why God Says NOW" sermon about a man who was dragged to the alter at age 5 and told to pray after the Preacher. He did and said for a long time he thought he was going to Heaven because he had prayed that prayer. Later, when listening to a different sermon by Pastor Farrell, he was brought into horrific conviction and got saved. The lesson? Don't rely on anyone else but God for your salvation OR your assurance of salvation. Salvation is between you and God and no one else. No one can get saved for you.

Don't Trust Yourself Either, Trust Yeshua

Remember that Jesus Christ does the saving and nothing you do has anything to add to salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9, Titus, 3:5). Pastor Farrell described Faith as an elevator. You get on and let the elevator take you up. You don't break open the side panel and try to hoist the elevator up yourself. You don't stand with one foot on the elevator and one foot off. You don't try to rewire the elevator so that it will take you up. You press the button and let the elevator (Jesus Christ) do the work (saving).

This is a direct parallel to salvation. You don't trust in how you tell Jesus Christ you're a sinner and need Him to save you--you let Him do the saving and all you do is trust Him. Just trust Him!! Let Jesus Christ save you and do the work of salvation--all you must do is ask Him for it in whatever words communicate the following:

1. You're a sinner and don't want to be a slave to sin anymore (Repentance)

2. You believe that Yeshua (Jesus Christ) is fully God and is the ONLY one that can save you from your sin and that He can because He died for you on the Cross and was raised back to life on the third day by the power of God (Believe). You have to accept Him as your Savior.

If you tell those two things to Jesus Christ sincerely, you will be saved by the Grace of God and be born again and--most importantly--saved forevermore.

That my friends is my story.

God bless,

Robert Austin Rowlett