I thought this might make a good topic for a feel good thread :)

Lets hear about your favourite conversion stories, be they of your own conversion (don’t be shy :), your friends, friend of friends, whatever. It may have been completely out of the blue, after a long hard slog of prayer, or just happened over time. If you’ve got a good story, lets hear it!

conversion

Hey Luke,
Thanks for starting this thread. I hope to be encouraged by the contributions to come. 

Here’s one of my favourite conversion stories. It’s not mine but I had the privilege to listen to it on the afternoon train betwen Central & Ashfield. I was reading my bible when the seat next to me became occupied by a woman of Asian descent. Not that I noticed at first.  Seeing me read my bible she asked if I was a Chrsitian. Her face lit up when I said “yes” and a real closeness developed right then and there. I asked her how she became a Christian and was told this story..........

She was born in Vietnam & never new a time when there wasn’t war. Her father died when she was a young girl. Not only did her family struggle to survive but she struggled every day with the glaring hole in her life left by her father.  Years passed and this yearning for a father grew rather than sudsided. I think it was when she was an older teenager that some Christian friends invited her to come and hear a talk about the God of the bible. She did. The talk was about God as our Heavenly Father. Her heart burned within her. That evening she rejoiced as she submitted her life to HER Heavenly Father.  He had reached out to her and given her more than she could have imagined when she walked into the hall earlier that evening. In her twenties she moved to Australia and became involved in a church somewhere out west with her husband and children. I can’t remember the suburb as this conversion story was told to me in 1991.

Ashfield came to soon and I had to get off. We farwelled one another with the sure promise of eternal fellowship in heaven.

Angela

Well.... the text below is my testimony speech, its been given a number of times in different forms. Including to a Student Life (christian group) meeting with 150-odd in the crowd, as well as being heard in the Macquarie University cafeteria at lunchtime - we were in the open roofed area underneath.

Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, that was how I used to live my life. Just doing anything that seemed like fun, like at my Year 12 Formal after party where drinking vodka seemed like fun. Of course drinking by cup-full after cup-full doesn�t seem as fun when you�re lying in a field, throwing up on someone�s shoes.
And that was the problem, the merry part was missing, no matter how my I drank, or inhaled or whatever, I was almost constantly depressed and lonely, just moping through life waiting for the next �high�. This didn�t just include chemical things though, but doing things that made other people feel unhappy at least brought them down to experience my pain, and that at made me feel a little okay.
Then one day Tina, a friend from school, invited me along to a meeting of the Christian group she attended. I had nothing better to do, and thought it would at least be good for a laugh, so I went along a couple of times. This got me thinking, maybe there was a god, and if there was I was defiantly not good enough to get into heaven.
Over the next few months I checked out Christianity and a few other religions. Then one night Tina organised a dinner meeting where a minister from her church presented the basics of the Christian faith. I found out that in fact no one lived up to God�s standards, and we were all �destined to die once and then to face judgement� (Hebrews 9:27). But I also found out that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had died and been raised from the dead so that I could be forgiven and bought back to God.
After a few months of mental struggles and checking and re-checking what it said in the Bible, on the 18th of October it all fell in to place. I realised that God loved me and had a purpose for my life. I decided to put my trust in Jesus, so I pulled out a pamphlet that I�d picked up at the dinner, fell down on my knees and with tears in my eyes told God in prayer that I believed he�d forgiven me through Jesus death.
From that point on I knew that I was in a personal relationship with God, the creator of the universe and I�ve realised what that meant. It�s been so different since then, actually being happy, really truly happy, and knowing that there is a purpose to my life. Doing things like playing in the band at Church is really great. Being able to talk to people without worrying what they think of me, and just generally being able to love and be loved is just so monumentally different to how things used to be. Now it hasn�t been perfect, and I haven�t been perfect, not by a long shot. I still struggle with all kinds of things, but knowing that God loved me enough to send his Son to die for me is so awesome, and knowing that I�m assured of going to heaven because of what God is done, not what I�ve done is such a comfort. Yay God!

My favorite salvation story is of a single mum I met at church, she had been going for around 6 months or so and I was talking to her one day when walking past her house - we got talking about the Lord and she ended up recieving Christ - all at church had thought she was a Christian because she started going to church, when in fact for her it was a good social outlet. That lady is now my wife.

There are two books out of many that stand out with stories of conversions that I enjoy - the first is the “Cross and the switchblade” which I believe is a must read for us all and “Chasing the Dragon” by Jackie Pullinger is another.

craig