What Sin? What God?

Pastor: Do you accept The Lord Jesus as Lord and savior of your life and repent of your sin?

Me: UUHHH!   I'm put on the spot and turning red.........Sin?  (I'm thirteen and I don't know what you mean?")

Pastor: Do you want to stand and say something for us regarding your acceptance of Jesus?

Me: UUHHH?  "(tongue tied...dont't know what to say so I clam up.)

Pastor: Tell us how you came to know the Lord!

Me:  UUHHH>>>>(Still red and now sweating alot...!) I have to go to the bathroom! excuse me...I leave...

Pastor:  Ned, tell us how you came to know the Lord....(.he goes on to the next kid..)


And that was my first intro to an Organized religious Christian Church and I never entered in to another Church again until I was 24 years old.  Can anyone relate?
     It's called proseletyzing and to those who have felt the embarassment of having to make some sort of statement under pressure....it's not fun.   Now I understand that faith comes by hearing the word preached but we were subjected to a dragging out of a confession without God in the MIx!

     Advance forward to the time I'm now 24, had some experiences, am lonely, far from home, and dirt poor and ask me now about God!  Now there is an entrance, there is a heart that is softened, opened for questioning and waiting to be filled with an answer.  Now I begin a journey of faith.............

     That journey is now 36 years in the making and still going.   I have had my answer, have experienced faith in God, had prayers answered and felt the weight of Sin.  This sin for me was never felt however, at the time of repentance like some others I have known. So the repentance was a hard thing to understantd at the time but over so many years, I now know the depths of separation and the gulf that was existing between me and Jesus Christ. You see God is a HOLY God and nothing can come close to him without sacrifice and his own atonement for our sin. It is our turning away from our own ways that he accepts. Sometimes it defys the mind and understanding.  But if you have ever been in the presence of God then like some in the Old Testament, they fell down like dead men....!   It is an experience that one will never forget.
     And so what I early equated sin with as being bad, or doing baaaaad! things was such a misunderstanding of what God calls sin.  And he obviously covered murdererous ragers  (like Paul) with his grace so I know that the magnitude of sin was of a greater consequence than I had ever imagined.

 S0 the little sinners prayer that was asked of me when I was an innocent 13 year old did nothing for me!......... But looking back on that and other experiences over the years up and until the revelation of Jesus Christ  "forming in me a new creation" I appreciate knowing the vast difference.