Q. A lot of believers have “that moment” when they officially asked Christ into their heart. I never had a moment like that. I was blessed to grow up in a Christ-filled home, go to a Christian elementary school, be involved in the Church, etc. I did profession of faith as a teenager, went on a missions trip to Peru, and I was even baptized 4 years ago. Is it “wrong” that I never had a “moment” like so many believers have?
There are two main paradigms or models that Christians have used over the centuries to envision a person’s entrance into the life of faith.
The first is the conversion paradigm. It’s a binary model, expressed in terms of before vs. after, out vs. in. You’re lost in darkness, but then you have “that moment” when you ask Christ into your heart and afterwards you’re walking in the light. Saved. Everything is immediately different. “What a wonderful change in my life has been wrought since Jesus came into my heart,” as the old hymn puts it.
This may be the paradigm we’re most familiar with in our contemporary experience. However, it’s actually the one that has been used less commonly over the whole course of church history. The pilgrimage model could be called the “majority view” of Christians over the centuries. It’s progressive rather than binary. It envisions a person coming closer and closer to Christ through a series of steps over time. Within this model, it’s often hard to pinpoint an exact “moment” that determines precisely when a person comes “in.”
Probably the best-known expression of this model is the book Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. But many classic hymns express it as well, for example, “Draw Me Nearer” by Fanny Crosby:
I am Thine, O Lord, I have heard Thy voice,
And it told Thy love to me;
But I long to rise in the arms of faith
And be closer drawn to Thee.
In my experience as a pastor, I’ve observed that people who become Christians under a conversion model often realize afterwards that God has been at work in their lives in many ways beforehand to lead them to the moment of conversion. There are specific experiences they point to as illustrations of this. They also take many steps of commitment later on that they sometimes feel are as significant as asking Christ into their hearts was in the first place. I’d say that these people are applying a pilgrimage model to their experience and finding it more meaningful and explanatory than the conversion model alone.
I’d encourage you to apply this same pilgrimage model to your own experience. It seems to me that God has been making what are sometimes called the “means of grace” available to you from an early age (Christian family, church, school, etc.) and that you have been using them fully to draw closer to God. If you really needed to nail down “that moment” in your life, you could point to either your profession of faith or your baptism as a time of definite commitment or conversion. But I think you’re actually already describing your entrance into the life of faith in terms of pilgrimage. I don’t think you really need to “translate” it into a conversion paradigm. You just need to recognize that the pilgrimage paradigm is a valid and time-honored understanding among Christians.
There’s a great danger in stressing conversion over against pilgrimage. I’ve heard preachers say, when “preaching for a verdict” (as it’s sometimes called—urging commitment to Christ), that if you can’t name the exact day and hour when you accepted Christ, then you’re not really a Christian and you need to get saved now. I think this can actually undermine the assurance of salvation that people would otherwise have if we encouraged them instead to think back over their lives and recognize the ways in which God had been “drawing them nearer.”
I think that profession of faith and baptism are excellent and appropriate ways for us to express a commitment that we’re growing into. But our assurance shouldn’t rest on having done those things, nor should it rest on having asked Jesus into our heart at a definite time. Instead, our assurance of salvation should rest on our recognition of God’s activity in drawing us to Himself, and our acknowledgment that we have been responding positively at each step along the way. We can be confident that “he who began a good work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ,” as Paul writes to the Philippians. And in that sense we’re definitely “in,” with or without “that moment.”
Good Question 