Personal Story - Kevin J Foulger (Transcript)

Hello. My name's Kevin J Foulger and I'm going to tell you how I became a Christian and why I still am a Christian.

Soon after I was born, my Christian parents took me to church and I started going to Sunday School when I was old enough. And at Sunday School, when I was about five years old I found out that being a Christian - you weren't a Christian by:

• going to church
• having Christian parents
• and by being good.

The only way you could become a Christian was:

• to invite Jesus into your heart
• ask Him to forgive you your sins
• and to ask Him to be Lord and Saviour of your life.

And that's what I did I went home, told my parents and my father, my dad pulled out a book from the bureau. And it said - it was called How to Become a Christian and it had a picture of a child praying on it. And I read this through and at the end of this book there was a prayer which asked, which basically said to ask Jesus into my heart, to ask Him to forgive me my sins and to become Lord and Saviour of my life. So I prayed that prayer and became a Christian. That's how I became a Christian.

And then I carried on going to church through my childhood and teenage years. And I got baptised when I was a teenager - baptised in water, by full immersion.

And then I went to university and joined a church there. Then one evening - one night when I was in bed at university I suddenly, completely (clicks his finger) lost my faith in God, just like that. It just suddenly went. And I thought: Oh dear! What's happened? And I automatically prayed to God and it really scared me. And I went to sleep. I felt God say, "Go to sleep."

The next morning I woke up and believed in God again, but I thought: Why do I believe in God? What happened last night? How can I prevent that from happening again?

And so I looked into other religions just in case Christianity wasn't the right religion. I really wanted to find God for myself. And I also looked deeper into The Bible (picks up his copy of The Bible) deeper in the Christian faith. And I found in here that there were many different prophecies all about the Messiah, written over several hundred years, by several different people - several different prophets. And Jesus, when He came along, He fulfilled every single one of those prophecies. And I thought: Wow! That's got to be more than a coincidence. That's got to be God. That's got to be God pointing to Jesus saying: This is the One!
So that made me - that increased my faith.

Also, there's a man in The Bible called Saul, who was a Pharisee. And this meant that he was a very zealous Jew who was seeking God himself, but he didn't think the church was the right thing to be doing. He didn't like that. And he started to persecute the church really heavily and he even got authorisation to go to other cities to persecute the churches there. And so he was going on the road to Damascus to persecute the church there, have them thrown in prison. And all of a sudden, this light came out of the sky. And this voice came from the light saying "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"
And Saul replied, "Who are you Lord?"
And He said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."
And he was blinded by this vision. And once he'd been blinded he went into - he was lead into Damascus. And he didn't eat or drink for three days. And then a Christian came along. God sent a Christian to him to pray over him and he could see again. After that moment he started planting churches (Saul's Conversion is recorded in Acts chapter 9) and preaching the Gospel. And he went from one extreme to the other - from the extreme of persecuting the church to the extreme of actually planting churches. And he himself was actually martyred for his faith in God. And I thought: Well that's just amazing! That's just - that's got to be God as well.

And that's basically why I believe in Jesus still. So thank you for listening.

Copyright © 2009 Kevin J Foulger
Graceonusphere Music and Media