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In response to a reader’s questions, the following post shares my personal story of spiritual transformation:<\/span><\/p>\n For me, there was an <\/span><\/p>\n Over the course of that <\/span><\/p>\n So one night at this camp, <\/span><\/p>\n It was after that answer <\/span><\/p>\n I now look back and think What about you? Has God transformed your life?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In response to a reader’s questions, the following post shares my personal story of spiritual transformation: For me, there was an actual moment of transformation, and there was a long process as well. When I was in high school, I had a sickness\/eating disorder that left me wondering whether God was real. I’d grown up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith"],"yoast_head":"\n
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\nactual moment of transformation, and there was a long process as well. When I
\nwas in high school, I had a sickness\/eating disorder that left me wondering
\nwhether God was real. I’d grown up going to church, but I hadn’t ever needed<\/i> God before. So I believed, but I
\nhadn’t been transformed. I still depended upon myself to direct my life, and I
\ndidn’t understand my need for God, my need for salvation. But my sickness was
\nout of control. I wound up in the hospital and, as a typical over-achiever, I
\nwas devastated when I had to drop out of school. I left behind the lead in the
\nschool play, a high GPA, and all my friends (we were at boarding school, so
\ngoing home meant leaving them behind). <\/span><\/p>\n
\nspring, I started to think more and more about God. I knew that I was desperate
\nand that I couldn’t make myself better by myself. But I didn’t know if God was
\nthe one who could make a difference. Long story short, I went to a Christian
\ncamp and I heard messages that explained Christianity simply and in very
\npersonal terms. Again, I already believed what I was hearing, since I had grown
\nup with it. But it had never made a difference in my life. Theoretically, I
\nbelieved I was a sinner, and I believed I needed saving, but that wasn’t how I
\nlived. In the midst of those messages, I was also thinking about whether or not
\nI would go back to boarding school in the fall. I was inclined to stay home
\nbecause I had found support through a group of Christians at my local high
\nschool, and I was worried about going back to a place where, as far as I could
\ntell, God was absent.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nI sat by the side of the lake and I prayed. I asked God if I should go back to
\nmy boarding school. And, in one of the very few times in my life that this has
\nhappened, I “heard” an answer from God. It wasn’t quite an audible
\nvoice. It was more like a thought that was so powerful, and so
\n“other”, so external to my own thoughts, that it came through like a
\nvoice. And what I heard was, “Go back to school, and take me with
\nyou.”<\/span><\/p>\n
\nto prayer that my life was transformed. It was as if I had an adrenaline rush
\nthat lasted for months. I read the whole New Testament that summer, willingly.
\nI read tons of other Christian books because I still had a lot of questions
\nabout the intellectual integrity of the faith. And I talked about God all the
\ntime (probably really unnerving to my friends and family, but thankfully they
\nhung in there with me). There was a moment of transformation followed by a
\nburst of transformative work followed by years of ups and downs but nonetheless
\nfaith–however wavering at times–in Jesus. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nthat that moment of prayer was a moment of conversion, the moment when the work
\nof the Holy Spirit became real in my life. It was the moment when I truly
\nsurrendered myself and trusted God to know better than me what I needed. <\/span><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n