{"id":607,"date":"2010-07-01T17:42:21","date_gmt":"2010-07-01T23:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/?p=607"},"modified":"2011-08-10T23:52:43","modified_gmt":"2011-08-11T05:52:43","slug":"can-conversion-be-a-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/archives\/607","title":{"rendered":"Can Conversion Be A Process?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always said yes. Why? Because not everyone can recall a “crisis” moment of salvation where they can point back and say, “That’s<\/em> when I became born again.” That’s because humans don’t usually make instantaneous decisions–the vast majority of our decisions come about through various lengthy processes. Unfortunately, I realize more fully today that I have often equated conversion as merely “when a person makes their decision to surrender to Christ,” and that is why I’ve considered the conversion of a soul to sometimes transpire as a process.<\/p>\n

But that’s because I’ve been one of those Arminians Gone Wild<\/a> who often finds themselves reducing conversion to the un-supernatural realm of persons merely making a decision.<\/p>\n

And it’s true, many decisions we make in life are indeed not “crisis” decisions–many happen more as a process. So if we focus on conversion simply as a decision humans make to believe in Jesus, it’s obvious that we will conclude that conversion often happens over time as a process, with no definable crisis moment.<\/p>\n

Yet, today I’m reminded that conversion isn’t defined by a decision we humans make, so I must qualify my answer. According to the Bible, when we are born again, we become inhabited by the Holy Spirit. This is something God<\/strong> miraculously does–He<\/strong> converts us by giving us His Holy Spirit, we don’t slowly convert ourselves as we make this decision over time. There is no other way to understand God’s part in this process, except that it should occur in a precise moment in time–where at some specific moment, the Holy Spirit inhabits us and we become spiritually reborn. At any point in time, either we have the Holy Spirit or we haven’t received Him yet. There is no “halfway” having the Spirit or being “halfway” alive to God–or God is “in the process of” placing the Holy Spirit inside of me, and He’ll be finished getting Him in there in a couple of weeks. Ha!<\/p>\n

While we may not be able ourselves to pinpoint the exact moment when God made such a change take place (since there may have been quite a lengthy process in our hearts\/minds leading up to the point where we were open to God’s saving work in us), nevertheless it indeed happened at some real point in time. In an instant.<\/p>\n

Should we frustrate ourselves in trying to determine that exact moment in time when this happened? I don’t think so, but we must understand that at some point in time, we did become redeemed by God in an instant. It always happens in that instant, because we cannot save ourselves by slowly coming around to God–it is God<\/strong> in that moment who puts His Spirit in us and saves us, instantaneously making all things new. The instant before, we were still dead in our sins.<\/p>\n

So according to my current understanding, conversion always happens at an instant in time, even if we cannot point to that instant. Yet there is undoubtedly almost always quite a process<\/em> that leads us to that point.<\/p>\n

While many of us (including myself) cannot pinpoint that exact moment in time when Christ’s work instantaneously took us from dead in sin to 100% right before God, it should be very disconcerting to any “Christian” who cannot tell a difference between his\/her life as a believer today vs their life before they believed. I’m not necessarily talking about how pure or holy we live our lives now, although that is an important issue to consider as well. What I mean is that if indeed there was a point when my spirit was dead to God, and now the Holy Spirit is living in me and has awakened my spirit to God, I should be able to vividly sense this difference on the inside.<\/p>\n

After all, who out there is going to tell me that God invading your spirit and waking it up is a subtle, or hard-to-detect, thing? Give me a break! If we are indeed now alive to God in our spirits, where we once were DEAD<\/strong> to God, this should be readily perceived by us. And that is an understatement. I’ve used the following paraphrased quote by A.W. Tozer a couple of posts ago in the context of the Church, but I’d like to now consider it in the context of our daily walk with God:<\/p>\n

If the Holy Spirit were suddenly removed from our lives, making us as we once were before becoming Christians, would we sense the difference inside of us? <\/em><\/p>\n

Would we feel an emptiness where there once was fullness? Check yourself–are you alive to God? Has the Holy Spirit made you born again? Have you been converted by God’s power? Do you recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit inside you?<\/p>\n

For the purposes of this post, I am purposefully laying aside the discussion of “dark nights of the soul,” when there are certain times when we seem unable to feel God’s presence. I’m also not arguing for a feelings-based faith. What I am trying to convey here is that conversion is God’s doing, not ours. Therefore, conversion must always<\/strong><\/em> happen at a specific moment in time, not over some lengthy process (although there is usually a significant decision process leading up to the crisis event). And if this instantaneous conversion by God is a true reality, surely we can tell that such a dramatic event has taken place inside of us, although we may not recall when exactly this change first began. Let’s avoid mistaking God’s work of conversion inside us with the process leading up to it–it’s fine if we want to include both of these parts as our “conversion process.” But let’s never forget that at some point in this process, there is indeed always a crisis event when God does His saving work and we are infused with His Holy Spirit–instantaneously saved by God’s grace!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve always said yes. Why? Because not everyone can recall a “crisis” moment of salvation where they can point back and say, “That’s when I became born again.” That’s because humans don’t usually make instantaneous decisions–the vast majority of our decisions come about through various lengthy processes. Unfortunately, I realize more fully today that I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-the-gospel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timfalk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}