Hi, my name is Jason and it sure is great to be here at the church in
Caloundra. Such a blessing to have such like a soul winning, straight on the
gospel church in Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast. So exciting. So thanks for
Kevin for listening to God and moving up here. Just want to share just
briefly five or ten minutes on my salvation story. I just want to start by
reading from 2 Timothy chapter 3 and from verse 14. It says,
Now the reason I read that passage there is because I believe verse 15
speaks to my experience. From a child that has known the holy scriptures
which have been able to make the wise under salvation. So from being about ten
years old I was exposed to the holy scriptures and that put me in good
stead for later to be able to receive salvation. So as I just shared my
testimony I just want to go through the different steps in my childhood as I was
exposed to the gospel and how that ultimately led me to being saved a
little bit later. So my first memory of hearing the gospel was when I was
about ten when I used to watch Jimmy Swaggart on TV at ten o'clock on a
Sunday morning. I know there's issues with Jimmy Swaggart but he did preach
from the King James Bible. So I got to hear the King James Bible and I got
to hear the message or the idea that there's a God, Jesus died for our sins,
rose from the dead and I heard that message and I remember quite a few
Sundays just watching that just considering it and I'm faithful to God
that I had a heart that that didn't just reject that message straight away. I was
sensitive to it and considered it and used to listen to it. But look I do know
there's issues there with Jimmy Swaggart but I don't remember ever hearing a
clear message on how to be saved. Like once you hear this message well how do I
you know receive it. Like I never remember hearing that message where like
what Callum said it's just by faith believing on Jesus Christ what he did. So
maybe if I did hear the true gospel from Jimmy Swaggart I might have got saved as
a ten-year-old but but still it was a it was a step and I heard the message of
God and the gospel. And when I was 12 this is probably the biggest thing that
happened was that my mum got saved. A friend of hers led her to the Lord she
got saved and she started going to an Anglican Church. So my brother and I we
started also going to the Anglican Church and again heard more about the
Bible. Unfortunately it was the NIV Bible but we heard the gospel message again and
I just again I was a part of that and I thought that was good but again didn't
hear how to be saved. And also my next-door neighbor a new neighbor moved
in and he was a pastor of a Pentecostal Church. So there's again another
Christian influence into my life and I remember another time when I was 17 I
grew up in a town called Tamora near Wagga Wagga in New South Wales and there
was a Christian concert put on which I went to and I do remember hearing a
pretty powerful gospel presentation which really troubled me because I knew
the gospel message I knew and I needed to be a Christian to go to heaven and I
was rejecting that or resisting that and I heard this powerful gospel
presentation and I was really troubled and stirred up and angry afterwards
because it just really confronted my rebellion against God. I don't remember
exactly what he said but again I don't recall ever hearing that that clear
gospel presentation on what to do you know with the gospel. How do I apply that
to my life? And also like I said my mum had been saved so she was buying
Christian books and things like that and sad to say at that time in my life I was
starting to to read about witchcraft and the occult and that sort of stuff but I
didn't jump right into it because I still had that fear maybe God is real
and maybe I'll go to hell so I sort of just dipped my toe and read about it but
didn't like embrace the stuff. So my mum would have these books about these ex
witches and whatnot that had got saved so well I'll just read the books about
their old life and just find out what that was like and so I'll read it and
then I'll get to the point where they got saved so I'll be reading about these
witches believing in Jesus and seeing that the name of Jesus is more
powerful than all that nonsense they're in so I'm still getting that message so
I'm knowing well Jesus the name of Jesus is more powerful than any other name so
I'm still getting all this all this information but the the thing that
really started the change for me was when I finished year 12 I moved up to
Bundaberg from Tamora and living with some friends up there. It was kind of a
weird situation but from when I was 15 I started getting right into marijuana
and smoking pot and listening to it like just heavy heavy metal music and all
that sort of stuff and the whole family would every day they would just smoke
pot and mum and dad would just pass the bong around and it was just a really
weird situation and so I was smoking a lot of pot for nearly a year and
it started to affect my mind I wasn't able to think properly and just function
normally in life and about probably just before I started to have the mental
psychotic problems I remember thinking I'm just so dissatisfied with my life
I'm just not happy living in Bundaberg no job just smoking pot doing nothing
no prospects and I was thinking maybe I need to become a Christian like still
not knowing what that meant but I thought being a Christian is better than
what I'm what I'm experiencing now and I kind of just in for the first time in my
heart I decided yes I need to surrender to whatever that means so I thought it
was like going to church reading your Bible stopping listening to heavy metal
music stopping the drugs and that sounds pretty good so I thought well maybe
that's what I need and I think God saw that even though my idea was misplaced
I think God saw my heart that I wanted whatever a Christian was I wanted it and
that's when I started to have a mental health issue there the mental issues and
and I think what happened was that because I couldn't dysfunction like I
normally could I couldn't just live life how I wanted to I started to stop and
then consider the gospel I considered the world and good and evil and then it
was just God's mercy just showed me that and I can't really explain it but I
just got it like a light bulb moment where I realized yes of course God's
real because my question in life though I had at that time was is is this all
true is God real that was the question I wanted to have answered because if I
knew if he was and when I say is God sure I mean the God of the Bible so God
and the Bible went together in my mind if God was true then all this is true
as well that was how I looked at it and that was my question and then this is I
stopped and I know the first time ever considered I realized God is real and
then I guess it was the Holy Spirit just working in my life he just didn't just
showed me that God was real but he showed me that God was like a loving
father and I just wow as this and then and and I just realized yeah living for
God is just a normal thing to do honest decided they don't want this forever you
know but I still wasn't saved and then as I realized that God was real then I
started to realize well this is absolutely real as well so then I started
to consider Jesus and I and I realized you know Jesus is real he did die for my
sins he did rise from the dead and then I didn't know what to do I hadn't been
told what to do but this is all this natural because it was so real and so
alive and I just put my hand up and said Jesus like this in faith and then
straightaway I just felt like a warmth coming into my into my heart not that
it's about it feelings but it was about it's about believing but as I did call
upon the name of the Lord I felt changed I felt like a new person and I really
not just said I thought to myself well this is what it means to be born again
I think it just happened and then there was like a spiritual discernment that
came or the music I was listening to I could read the lyrics and go that is
really evil and I could understand it for the first time so I did they'll
clean up things sucking stuff in the garbage cans and you know all that sort
of stuff and and and that was my salvation experience that's how I got
saved was just what believing calling upon the name of the Lord and I got
saved anyway from that point when I was 19 at that point so I'm 42 now so
between being 19 and now that's another story for another time but that's how I
came to believe and to be saved and yes been an exciting journey up until now so
I do I do want to just encourage mums and dads here just to keep sowing the
seed of the truth of the gospel to your children because it is able to make your
children wise under salvation later that's what happened to me because I
had my mum saved I was here in the gospel a lot of times then when I came
to consider it all finally I was able to put my faith in Jesus and and got
saved so so that's my um salvation experience