Hey guys, hope you all like this, and GOD BLESS YOU ALL! Check out True North church and Warren Baptist church! They're epic churches, and I've never felt more in sinc with God. And remember, JESUS LOVES YOU!
How I Got Saved
By MAB:
Hello, my name is Madison April Boswell, I love to ride horses, write (apparently), read, and I'm a science geek, and a geek in general, who also can't stand anything girly, like make-up or curling or straightening irons. I have a quirky personality, I'm almost like a multi-sided coin, I'm not popular, and don't really have a lot of friends.
And this is the story of how I got saved.
But not just physically or mentally saved, but spiritually saved.
Early Childhood:
I was born in Atlanta, and moved here when I started school. We didn't really go to church a lot, and I didn't know much about Christ, and I knew some of the most basic-general stuff that everyone knew. I'm also going to go ahead and admit it now; I like to do the right thing. It bothers me whenever I get in trouble. So when my neighbor, Sarah Margret, she is now in 6th grade and goes to another school on the other end of town (she moved, but still lives twenty minutes away!), her parents and little sister, Catherine, moved in next door, it was only the beginning to this wild ride.
Her family was more of the strict kind of Christian. So naturally, whenever I did something un-Godly, or used His name in vain, Sarah Margret would tell me off. Over time, she talked more and more about God, and what He was all about, and I became really curious about Him. So I started listening to what she was saying, and asked my parents if we could go to church.
We went.
Came back.
I barely remembered the service, but we kept going anyway. It was one of those churches were the men had to wear black-tie formal suits, and the girls, dresses and skirts, and my parents are those kind of people. In the first paragraph; I said I couldn't stand anything girly in the slightest.
Despite that I hated the dress code, I always had a very guilty feeling in my gut whenever I went to church because I wasn't religious, and it made me feel bad that I didn't know anything. Just going made me feel really bad about myself. So as the years passed (about two), we occasionally went to church, and my feeling of guilt persisted and grew.
Then middle school happened.
True North Church:
In 6th grade, I had a sort of fantasy for running, and I would be on the Cross Country team for the next two years of middle school at RMS. One day I was about to start running alone when another 6th grader walked up and asked if she could run with me. Her name was Reagan Miller, and as we talked and ran, we both became immediate best friends. In some ways, we were exact opposites, but exactly alike. One day as I was telling her about my proper church, she told me about the church she went to in North Augusta; True North Church. The part that first got me was "you don't have to wear fancy clothes," and "there's this awesome rock band!" So when she invited me to tag along with her family, I was all for it. But when I went to my parents and told them about it they were like, "No, you have to dress properly, you're in God's house and you need to respect Him!" LSo even though I didn't have to wear nice clothes, my parents made me.L
So the clothes were a downer, but when I got there, I was surprised at what it was like. It wasn't even in a real church building. They set up at North Augusta high school. (They recently bought land and groundbreaking is going to be soon, YAY!) There are tables outside laden with warm, fresh out of the oven chocolate chip cookies, goldfish, coffee, and the occasional box of Krispy Cream Doughnuts. J They did their lessons in little series, and according to each series they would hand out little brochures that you could take home and had neat little fill-in the blank notes. I think the rock band was one of my favorite parts. We sat in the front row, feet away from blaring speakers that blasted out awesome music, that no matter how loud you sang or how loud you screamed, you couldn't be overheard by three electric guitarist, and barefoot keyboardist. I came back from the service feeling enlightened and happy, and pumped up about the church service. And I kept going with the Miller family.
I love the Miller family. I grew up as an only child, and to be locked in van with four fighting and screaming kids, one in middle school, and the others in Elementary school, with a baring stereo (to which everyone sang screamed along to, and two parents yelling at all of us to stop screaming; was a cool and exciting change for my quiet and normal family.
I started going to church every Sunday. (My parents still made me wear kakis.) L
Warren Baptist Church, Youth Group at Merge.
After a while, Reagan asked me if I wanted to go to another church's (Warren Baptist) youth group with her on Wednesday night. I didn't want to at first, but eventually, I said yes.
Overtime, I started learning more and more about God. I started understanding what His word meant, and how much He loves me.
Then one day at Merge, instead of breaking up into our small groups and studying, a gentleman named Coach Mallan Turner came to give us presentation. But before that, the Youth Leaders put on a play. And the play was this: some people were dressed up as demons, one as the devil, one as God and one as Jesus, and it was court battle over people who had died, and were encountering their Judgment Hour. (When God decides whether or not to send you to Heaven or Hell.) God was the Judge, Jesus was the defender, and Satan was the prosecutor. And several times Satan won, when the persons' sins were not covered in Jesus's blood, but when the dead person's sins were covered in Jesus's blood, they were saved and sent to Heaven!
This scared the crap out of me, because at that very moment, I realized that I did not love God with my entire heart. If I were to die at that very moment; I would be in Hell. Then Coach Mallan Turner did a little sermon about confessing our faith, and he said for all of us to hold hands and pray. Then he started praying and told us to squeeze the people's hands next to us if we needed to confess our faith. And I haven't mentioned this yet, but I'm an emotional train wreck, I'll burst into tears if I get a bad grade on a math test, so of course I start crying my eyes out. Not because I was sad, but because I was ecstatic with God's love inside me! And a little scared of the people beside me knowing I wasn't faithful yet. I happened to be holding Reagan's hand, and one of the people was one of the Youth Pastors, Mrs. Casey Mary. As soon as I squeezed her hand, she covered my hand with hers, and came with me to the front when I confessed my faith to God. And on March 25, 2012, became my new spiritual birthday
Afterwards (while I'm still crying my eyes out and my friends are trying to make me stop by rubbing their hands over my eyeballs) she walks up to me and she's so excited and she starts talking about how we might be neighbors in Heaven one day. Has anyone ever talked to you like that? Just gone up to you and started talking about the wonders of Heaven and what God promised to do for us, and how much He really loves us? Now, that new spiritual birthday means more to me than my actual one on which I was born, December 28, 1998.
I could stretch out this three page document into hundreds of pages describing everything I felt and feel right now, and how great my love for God is, this barely has any detail at all what-so-ever, but instead I'm going to cram a few short sentences in this, and hope you just get a sprinkling of what God's love has done for me. And I'm not saying that the church I had gone to before was bad, it just didn't 'click' for me, and True North and Warren Baptist did! Every person has their own 'click', just like one girl or guy can think someone else if absolutely gorgeous, or puke ugly. And if you don't have yours, I hope that you find it soon! I also hope that you love Him as much as I do! I cannot possibly describe in words how much God loves you and me; I can only say that you cannot experience His love if you don't let Him enter your heart.
And I'll pray for each and every one of you that you do soon.
JESUS LOVES YOU! :)
~MAB:)