I am becoming more and more amazed at how common the basics of my testimony are similar, if not identical to so many other people. And here I thought I was all alone in this. ;-) Basically, I initially (ahem, I used the words loosely) got saved in an Arminian church - the Assemblies of God, to be exact. Full fledged gifter: talking in tongues, laying on of hands, slaying (and being slain) in the spirit, prophecy, interpretation... the whole lot. But by the end of the first year, because I had spent SOOOO much time reading the Bible, it wasnt long before I started having serious differences with what I was seeing in the church, and what I was seeing in the Bible. In the end, it ended up with me being pushed out of the church (at which time I had risen to Youth Minister, Street Ministry leader, and home group teacher - not on the basis of my knowledge but because I was young, and charismatic [in the personal sense]). After that, my then fiance (now wife) drifted from church to church, always running into the same problem. We thought it was something wrong wit US, not what we were calling church. So, we kept trying to make it work in non-denominational, charismatic, full gospel churches, always with the same result. We eventually gave up, and it wasnt until 20 years later that I happened upon a radio show with some guy talking smack about Charles Finney (the DARLING of all such Arminian churches I had been part of). This guy felt the same way about Finney as I did, and I was kinda floored that there was someone else out there with my same defective thinking, built on 20+ years of Bible study. This guy turned out to be RC Sproul, and I found out that not only were there other people like me, but we had a NAME! YAY! ;-) Reformed or Calvinist. So, in the end, I didnt convert to Calvinism. I found out I was one all along. And, now, I am surprised to hear from so many other people that they had the same experience! Im just amazed!
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 03:01:45 +0000
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