"I Don't Remember My Conversion"

You've heard about the broken man who walked into a church on a dare, or the woman who pulled over on the highway because she couldn't stop weeping. Maybe you've heard a hundred testimonies by now, but you struggle to identify your own.

Should I be worried that I don't have a moment like that? And a part of you wonders if the work Jesus did in you might be somehow less real because you can't point to the Tuesday afternoon it happened.

Maybe you grew up in a home where the table had a Bible on it. You went to Sunday school with a teacher who remembered your name every week, who drew pictures of the burning bush on a whiteboard, or a felt board. You learned to pray in the back seat of a minivan. And at some point – you don't know exactly when – the faith stopped being your parents' and started being yours. It was subtle.

Saul's Damascus road experience is famous. But not everyone comes to Jesus that way. There's the "speedboat" kind of conversion experience that's like Saul's. The transformation happens quickly. A life is instantly changed.

And then there's the "tugboat" kind of experience. It's a longer process, a gradual change of Jesus drawing you to Himself.

Both are real. One is not less valid or less significant than the other. Whether your story involves something dramatic or something more subtle, the question isn't whether your conversion counts. The question is whether you can see the work.

You love differently than you did. You carry guilt differently. You know what it feels like to ask for something and then release it. These are not things that happen to people who have not been changed by the Spirit.

The common thread through all of this isn't the drama. It's that Jesus called your name. He called it quietly, on a bus, at a table, in the back of a small church on a normal Sunday. He called it over years, persistently, until you became someone you could not have become alone.