If you are at all familiar with my blog, then the title should not throw you for a loop.  Because of the vastness of my music collection, I will occasionally be inspired to use a song title as a fast and easy way to headline my posts.  Unfortunately, I cannot take credit for this blog title (even though I am familiar with song) because I was encouraged, inspired and otherwise fired up (pun intended) when I found out some of the details of a sermon from Perry Noble (Pastor, NewSpring Church in Anderson, SC) last year.

He goes a bit old school and talks about hell and nothing but hell in this particular sermon in his series, “Illuminate”.  Beyond the calling by God on Perry to see 1,000 people saved in his church, I stood and cheered when I heard he was doing a sermon on hell.  Somehow, in the last twenty years, I missed how preaching on hell became passé because such sermons don’t feel quite so good.

I don’t know how that trend got started (I will speak on filling pews later on) but this leads me to share my how I became saved on a cool December 1982 morning in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in a Baptist Church that would bus in kids from around the city.

The Children’s Pastor’s message that morning was simply: hell and how Jesus Christ came to the earth, died on the cross and rose again so that you wouldn’t go to hell:

John 3:16 (KJV)  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Up till that moment, I am pretty sure that I have never made any life changing decisions.   I’d had a lot of decisions made for me such as my mother saying goodbye to me for the last time when I was 5 years old or the fact I had to go live with my father who would abuse me and my brother for the next seven of the longest years of my life.

But the day I was saved, I will never forget.

So a choice had to be made: Did I want to go to hell (Romans 6:23)?  The answer is obviously no.  Was I a sinner?  I understood that I had done bad things in my life but absolutely no human was born perfect (except Jesus Christ) (Romans 3:23).  If I confess to be a sinner, the Lord will forgive me of my wrongdoings and remove all that is wicked and evil from within me (1 John 1:9).  If I believe that Jesus is my Savior and Lord and he was raised from the dead after being crucified (Romans 10:9), then I will be saved.

The rest, as they say, is history.

So what say you, faithful readers?  Share your testimony of salvation.