The church we are praying about joining requires a written testimony. I thought I would post it here as well.

I was raised in a Christian home as a Fundamental Baptist. I prayed the so-called “Sinner’s Prayer” when I was of age six at an evangelistic meeting. However, not until I was sixteen years of age was I truly brought under a conviction of my sin and my standing before God. In a Thanksgiving Eve service, I came under a desperate fear for my life. Hearing the testimonies of those surrounding me, I found that there was something lacking in my own witness. That evening, I called out to God, asking Him to have mercy upon me and save me.

The next two years or so was marked by a period of rapid growth within my life. I developed a great hunger for the Word of God, and felt a call to preach. I made the decision to attend a church-based Bible college in Louisiana.

In college, my spiritual growth became stunted in a hyper-fundamentalist church. The Lord was gracious even through this time in two main areas. He brought me out of a situation that had become unstable and increasingly authoritarian, and He joined me with my lovely bride.

After college, there was a period of about three years that I would term “recovery.” This period was marked by a time of shying away from the fundamentalist movement and a progressive removal of various doctrines. During this time I began to do things that I once would have termed sinful. Some examples; I began to allow my wife to wear pants. I began to question the validity of the King James only position. Although these type of things were necessary to work through, I unfortunately became increasingly antinomian, even dropping out of church entirely for about a year.

About three years ago, I reached a low point spiritually. My wife and I committed  ourselves to find and regularly attend a church. We became members of a Southern Baptist Church in Portage, IN. It was here that the Lord began to graciously remove many of my antinomian tendencies, and show forth once more spiritual fruits in my life.

Two years ago, while reading Ephesians, the Lord brought me to a “four point” Calvinistic position. Although I  initially rejected the limited atonement, I gradually came to understand that this was a necessary component to the Doctrines of Grace. Since coming to that fifth point, about eighteen months ago, I have been insatiable for more. I have never seen God working in my life so much. I have never wanted to know Him more than I do now. I have never wanted to share with others so much.

Picking up has never been a favorite thing. Many activities have I enjoyed in my life, but when a mess has been made I do not rush to put things back in their place. For this reason I often procrastinate, and many times I do not complete a project I have started; for fear of picking up.

Several months ago I had a blog. In it I developed my fledgling interest in Reformed Theology. I allowed it to be overrun by foolish questions calculated to engender strife. The type of debate I was allowing became one-sided and meaningless, hurtful to the participants and contributors to the site. I came to suspect that my detractors were family members, who came to the table with a set of presuppositions and no desire to hear of my position. For fear of causing a rift in the family (rather deepening the rift that had been created by my coming to the Doctrines of Grace) I resolved to shut down my blog.

Now I propose to begin again, to pick up where I left off. This will give me an opportunity to develop my thoughts further, and hopefully generate some beneficial discussion/ debate in the blogging community. My desire is that all that is said and done within this forum will be to the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

By His Grace,

Tim