Harry Potter and God - a personal experience

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "sistermagpie" <sistermagpie at ...> wrote:

Nightbreed:
> > How do you become a Christian? I just presumed the majority where born into
> > it (I defected, so I'm a "recovering Christian") but I didn't think most
> > people thought of a time when they became one. This is not a sarcastic post.
 
Magpie:
> Many people convert to Christianity, and many people who are born into it have a moment where they truly feel they convert to it. Born again Christians date the day they became a Christian to the day they consciously accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, for instance. The day they "got saved"--so they would say "I've been a Christian since I was X age" referring to that day, even if they were born into a Christian family.

Geoff:
Magpie has put it very succinctly. Perhaps I might add on to that 
something of my own personal experience. Many of you will know 
that I am an evangelical Christian and am a member of a Baptist 
church in the West of England.

I grew up first in Lancashire and, from the age of nine, South London. 
My parents were very nominally Christian and packed me off to Sunday 
School on Sunday afternoons (for a bit of peace I suspect!) and I grew up 
believing that because Christ had gone to the cross and risen again, we 
were all automatically Christians. Hence,  didn't need to be active in 
churchgoing or anything like that.

However, in my late teens, I came to the realisation that this just wasn't 
true and started looking for a meaning in life. I went to college to train as 
a teacher and, in my second year, got into contact with members of the 
Christian Union whom I found to be very attractive people for some reason 
which I could not work out at that point. 

Eventually, a conversation with one of them led me to see that you became 
a Christian when you accepted and truly believed the fact that Jesus had 
died for us individually and risen from the dead to give us eternal life.

I underwent what Christinas call a "Damascus Road" conversion; that is,
a sudden out of the blue acceptance of Christ as Saviour - a phrase which 
takes its name from the conversion of St,Paul in the New Testament.

I have on several occasions summarised Christian belief using two 
statements of Christ:

"God so loved the world that He gave his only Son so that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
(Gospel of John, chapter 3 verse 16)

"I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father
 except through me."
(Gospel of John, chapter 14 verse 6)

That decision, made in May 1961, has guided and influenced my life 
ever since.