Coming to Jesus!

In  an earlier post I wrote a bit about the beginning points of my journey of faith. During my childhood I did have some level of faith and sense of the presence of God with me. Sometimes I would pretend that Jesus was holding my hand and we would run around together as I played outside. I would pray to Jesus and ask Him for help at school. But in my early teen years I began to feel the urge inside my to get the matter of faith settled. I knew that there is heaven and there is hell and that when we die we will be in either one of those two places depnding on what we have done with Jesus here on earth.  I wanted to be sure that heaven would be my home. My best school friend Nettie was from the Pentecostal church and would often talk of how she couldn't wait to be raptured and to be with Jesus.  I knew that I wasn't in as close a relationship with Jesus as she was but I wanted to be. My parents did a great job in exposing our family to the Bible. On Sundays we would go to church and then in the afternoon they would tune in for the Hour of Decision program with Billy Graham on the radio and on Wednesday evenings we would always listen to Dr Manfred George Gutzke.  Every evening my Dad would read to us from the Bible. So it is plain to see that I have been very blessed to have had all these opportunities to hear the gospel. When my sister started reading her Bible, I also decided to read my Bible simply because she did. I remember one particular Sunday riding with my parents in their 1976 blue chevy pick-up truck and of course my Dad again turned on the radio to listen to a Christian program. The topic of discussion was about putting off the old self and putting on the new as found in Colossians 3:9 - Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;  and Colossians 3:10 -And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. I found that stuck in my mind though I did not understand it much. And so it went on for a while, the Holy Spirit was nudging me from various sources. Every Sunday Billy Graham would say " are you sure that if you died tonight you would go to Heaven, you can be sure".  Billy would say that even if I had been the only person in the world that needed saving, Jesus still would have went to the cross and died just for me. That is an amazing love. John 3:16 says : For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. I understood that Jesus took my sins, my judgement and the hell that I deserve and he bore it all for me on the cross and died for me. I wanted to be sure that Jesus is my Savior and that I would be in Heaven when I die so I prayed and asked Jesus to be my personal Savior and Lord.  He has come into my heart and I am happy to say that I belong to Jesus!
To be continued .... with my Baptism