I’m one of those people that has a “strong testimony” of conversion. I was saved at 20 while in my second year of university and it includes a time of strong rebellion and hurt and then Jesus breaking in strongly to make me his own. I can point to the exact evening of my conversion and can tell you all about it. Christian friends in university would express excitement but sometimes also jealousy over my story. They would lament that they grew up in a Christian home and can’t point to a definitive point when they knew they had become a Christian. But Christian they were.

For my story of salvation I am eternally grateful.

But sometimes I wish I had what some of you reading this will have. Since I didn’t grow up in a Christian home I don’t have a heritage of family devotions or family discussions of theology. Now that I have my own family I am looking to others to learn how to do family devotions since I have no first hand experience with it. I also have no heritage of studying the Bible through my youth. When I became a Christian at 20 I started to read the Bible really for the first time. With a nominal Catholic background I understood a few things, but I can remember picking up a Bible that a relative had given me when I was younger, starting to read John 1 like I was told, and putting it back on the shelf to collect more dust. It was lifeless to me. So, at 20 I was really starting from the beginning.

I am thankful for my testimony and thankful beyond measure for the story of God’s grace in my life. But I write this to encourage those who don’t have the crazy conversion story but have been reared on the Bible and family devotions. Rejoice in that heritage. I wish I had that and I hope to give that to my son.