Being born again is a real miracle that happens in a moment, but it is part of a journey, and that journey can look very different from person to person. For me, it went like this.
I grew up in a Christian family and was raised to believe in God. If anyone had asked me whether I was a Christian or believed in God, I would have said yes, all my life. I was baptised as a child and confirmed at 13.
The altar call
When I was about nine, I was at a meeting. I had not heard a word of it; I had spent most of the time fighting a foot war with my younger brother. At the end, my father gave an altar call, and something just hit me in the heart. I knew I should go up there. But no one moved. There were around 300 people in the hall. So I asked my mother if it was okay for me to go up. She said yes, and I went. I was the first to go, but not the last.
I did not understand it all. I understood that I was choosing to become a Christian and giving my life to God, but not really what that meant.
Was I different?
What difference did it make? I was very happy the rest of the evening. A few days later I asked some of my friends if I seemed different, because in all the testimonies I had heard, people's lives had been dramatically transformed. The friends I asked looked at me funny and asked what I meant. I was disheartened and talked to my mother about it. She said that because I had been raised as a Christian, the change was small.
As I grew older, though, I noticed that my faith was not like my parents' faith. One day, when I was around 14, I walked out into the fields of our farm and said to God: "If you really exist, I will serve you." Because of all the stories I had heard, I expected a voice from heaven, or thunder, or something like that. Absolutely nothing happened. Not even goosebumps.
Singing in tongues
Over the next years, until I was 16 or 17, people prayed for me to receive the Holy Spirit and start speaking in tongues, but nothing happened. Then one day I was standing in a meeting, people started singing in tongues, and I joined in. Only later did I realise that it meant I had been baptised in the Holy Spirit. That was when I started to feel a difference myself. Suddenly the Bible came alive. It spoke to me beyond what the words actually said, and I knew it was God speaking to me through it about my life.
Later I went to Bible school for two years, and during that time I realised that I had to be obedient and be baptised in water.
"He really changed"
After Bible school I was back in my home town. One day I met two boys I used to go to school with. We just said hi, how are you, and so on, for two minutes or so. Then I walked on, and I heard one of them say to the other: "Wow, he really changed."
