(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

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