Carolyn Hunt (Hierlihy)

I was gone to bed that Wednesday night and couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking, if I died or if the Lord came in the night I’d be in Hell. I wanted to go talk to mom and dad who were still up but I kept getting up to go and then I’d tell myself, no, it’s fine, I’ll go back to bed and worry about it in the morning. And then I remembered that Randy Bell spoke in children’s meeting once about the devil using our pride to keep us in our sins and I thought, this is just my pride and I need to get this settled.

So I went downstairs and told my parents I wanted to be saved. They read through some verses with me about how I was a sinner and Jesus died for sinners. I was already at the point where I knew I was a sinner but I couldn’t grasp how I could know for sure that I was saved because I couldn’t understand how everyone always talked about how simple it was but I couldn’t get it. So dad read me the verse in John 14:27 about the Lord Jesus leaving his disciples with peace.

John 14:27 KJV
[27] Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

He then launched into some explanation of the verse but I still have no idea what he said because when I heard that verse, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you . . . Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

I went off in my own thoughts and I was thinking yep, here I am terrified of going to hell, God I need that peace and then the thought popped into my head; Christ died to give you peace. And I just accepted it. It really was that simple!

So I turned to dad who was still in the middle of his sentence and I said “I just got saved!” Haha he was like “what?!” What happened?” so I explained and then we all got down on our knees and thanked God for giving us His Son. It was a pretty joyful night for us that night. 😄