I think I was about seven years old, and I remember I was at Moffat Road Baptist Church, where I grew up with all my friends and family and probably didn't understand nearly enough, but I knew enough to understand I wanted to be saved and wanted Jesus to be Lord of my life. What an awesome experience.
In terms of me being a Christian, going to Israel was really cool. Going to the West Bank, Bethlehem, floating in the Dead Sea - that was great for me.
Genuine Christian experience must always include an encounter with God Himself.
I always knew Jesus, but I didn't have the relationship I do now.
A friend asked the author,"If this conversion you speak about is truly supernatural, and why is it not more evident in the lives of so many Christians that I know?
When we learn to read the story of Jesus and see it as the story of the love of God, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves--that insight produces, again and again, a sense of astonished gratitude which is very near the heart of authentic Christian experience.
Every day of our Christian experience should be a day of relating to God on the basis of His grace alone. We are not only saved by grace, but we also live by grace every day.
I grew up in a church-going family, a very sort of ordinary, middle-of-the-road Anglican family where nobody really talked about personal Christian experience. It was just sort of assumed like an awful lot of things in the 1950's were just sort of taken for granted.
Love is kindled in a flame, and ardency is its life. Flame is the air which true Christian experience breathes. It feeds on fire; it can withstand anything rather than a feeble flame; but when the surrounding atmosphere is frigid or lukewarm, it dies, chilled and starved to its vitals. True prayer must be aflame.
It is fatally easy to think of Christianity as something to be discussed and not as something to be experienced.
The truth is the real Christian experience is truly about repenting every day because there is no Christian that doesn't sin.
Being a Christian is more like having your soul possessed by a spirit than having your mind clothed with new beliefs... It is like being haunted by the Holy Ghost.
Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.
How wonderful to know that Christianity is more than a padded pew or a dim cathedral, but that it is a real, living, daily experience which goes on from grace to grace.
There is no other labor in all the world that brings to a human heart, judging from my own personal experience, more joy, peace and serenity than proclaiming the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ
To come to faith on the basis of experience alone is unwise, though not so foolish as to reject faith altogether because of lack of experience ... the quality of a Christian's experience depends on the quality of his faith, just as the quality of his faith depends in turn on the quality of his understanding of God's truth.
To some Christianity is an argument. To many it is a performance. To a few, it is experience.
Not every Christian finds it easy to believe.
As a born-again Christian, I believe God actively and directly influences me to action.
If you have no joy in your religion, there's a leak in your Christianity somewhere.
The Christian experiences and lives a paradox. He possesses joy in sorrow, fulfillment in exile, light in darkness, peace in turmoil, consolation in dryness, contentment in pain and hope in desolation.
What now does the divine immanence mean in direct Christian experience? It means simply that God is here. Wherever we are, God is here. Ther eis no place, there can be no place, where He is not.
I grew up Catholic, so the more non-denominational Christian experience was a new experience for me.
Many's very human habit of trusting in himself is generally the last great obstacle blocking his pathway to victory in Christian experience.
Why do some persons 'find' God in a way that others do not? Why does God manifest His Presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle along in the half-light of imperfect Christian experience? Of course the will of God is the same for all. He has no favorites within His household. All He has ever done for any of His children He will do for all of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us.
