
I was saved when I was 6 years old, in the summer of 2002 when Murray McCandless and Robert McIlwaine were having tent meetings in Unionvale. I don’t remember much about the meetings at all, or much surrounding that time, but I remember for a span of several days (maybe a couple weeks?), in the night just before bed, I would get really scared and troubled.
The thought of going into my room alone for the night terrified me, and I was so scared that the Lord would come and I would be left behind. Each night it would be the same thing- I would be just about to go to bed and I would tell my parents that I was scared that the Lord would come and I couldn’t get to sleep.
I’m not sure how many nights this went on for, but finally, when both myself and my parents were at our whit’s end with all this, Mom told me that there was nothing that any of us could do, it is only the Lord who can save. She told me I would have to ask the Lord to save me, and then she shut the door. I remember being so terrified in that moment after she shut the door, feeling so hopeless and scared.
I thought on the words and finally cried out and asked the Lord to save me, thinking of the verse:
Romans 10:13 KJV
[13] For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
(I had no clue where that verse was found until a good many years later haha) In that moment I realized in my simple mind that I was without strength and it was only the Lord that could save me. I fell right to sleep after that, and when I woke up the next morning I can still remember the brightness of the room and remembering first thing that I was now saved!
In the months and years following that, I struggled with so many doubts, that left me unsettled and scared of the Lord’s coming at times, being unsure if I believed right, or if I was too young and simple in my thinking. I’ll tell you, if I wasn’t saved that first night, I got “saved” (assurance of salvation 😉) about a dozen or more times since! Every time, after exhausting myself with doubts, tears and questions, I would finally end up at the same conclusion: all that I have to count on to get to heaven is the God’s word and the Finished work that the Lord Jesus did to pay for my salvation.
1 John 5:12-13 NKJV
[12] He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
[13] These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.