A few hours after the shortest day and the longest night of the darkest moon, the sun rose, and I was born. A premie, born a month too soon because I wanted to see my first Christmas.

When I was very young, I became aware of the existence of God and that He was watching over me. Sometimes I wonder if I knew of Him “all the way back” even before they put me in a Christmas stocking. Around age three, I would play in our driveway, afraid to look up because God is so great. I knew way back then, that He was caring for me, protecting me, and therefore, He loved me.

At some point, I decided that this was because he chose to love me, therefore He must be okay to communicate with. So by age four, I began talking to Him.

In a way, I was a frightened little boy, cuddling up to God's warmth and hiding in His shadow. I would whisper my little secrets to Him because I knew He was listening. Not long after, I would give to Him my pathetic cares, and eventually tell Him about my concerns.

And what big concerns they were! Because of the way others acted and talked about God, I wondered if anyone else knew who God really was. I figured that surely, if they knew who God really was, then when they talked about Him, they would get it right.

When others talked about God, I would just listen to see if they understood who God was. Then I would pray to God with heavy burdens, prayers for them. Over a short time, these prayers became more intense.

Not long after my fifth birthday, our church had an end of the year, beginning of the New Year event where they stayed up past midnight.

It was almost midnight, the auditorium was mostly empty. Almost everyone was downstairs socializing, eating cake, or drinking punch. But I was in the auditorium, playing under the pews.

Some man wanting to be a preacher went to the podium to practice his sermons. He decided to preach on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I listened to him enough to follow along.

He preached about how everyone was lost in their sins and needed to be holy, perfect in order to come to God. The only Way to be Saved Eternally is to come to God and accept His Gift of love for us.

He spoke of Jesus, who is God manifested as a perfect man. Nobody is perfect or righteous in God's eyes. So Jesus had to do it for us, He became the perfect man and lived a sinless life, because He was the only one who could.

He said that Jesus willingly died on the cross for us, voluntarily taking upon Himself all the sins of the world. He did this because He loved us.

Somehow, I knew that everything he said was true, because that was my God he was preaching about, this was exactly what He would do! This gracious gift of love is what my God would give to anyone who would accept it.

If I remember correctly, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior before the preacher gave the invitation. I repented of my sins, as far as I knew what they were. I was aware that sin was, in general, living in disobedience to God and not listening to Him.

I got to thinking about what all this meant. The man was preaching, but I was listening to someone else, someone much higher up. I was listening to God's Spirit, who was reaching all the way down to comfort a lost little boy who had just been found.

Many would call me a Christian at this point, but I knew something was missing. The Spirit of God told me that in order to be a true, genuine Christian and receive salvation, I needed to give my life to Christ — all of it.

I thought about it for a couple of minutes. Did I really want to do that? I was thinking along the lines of forever: now, forever past, and forever future. I wondered if it was possible. I decided that whether it was possible or not, God could make it happen. So I put my trust in Him and believed that He would save me.

So I trusted Him and threw my life into His hands, because I was just a small child crying, "Here I am, Lord; save me."

My spirit was brought to life at that very moment. The Lord's Spirit came into me. He comforted me by answering all of my questions on these matters of Salvation. He explained everything I needed to know.

I had to tell someone, but the preacher was gone, so I ran out of the auditorium.

I rushed up to a man dressed in a suit and told him that I had accepted God's Christ as my Lord and Savior, and that I had just given my life to Him. The man did not know whether to believe me or not, so he began asking me questions, trying to explain salvation to me. But I was listening to him, to see if he got it right, for I knew what God had done.

The man then told me that I needed to be baptized, and roughly explained to me what Baptism was and what it represented. But I did not want to be baptized because I was already. I had been baptized into the Spirit of God, the only true baptism. But he said God had commanded it, so I obeyed. The next week they would baptise me.

Later, as I learned to read, I started reading through the Holy Bible of God. The dictionary at the back of the Bible was inadequate, so I kept a large Webster's dictionary beside me to look up the words that I did not understand.

When I came to the books of Isaiah, and especially Jeremiah, I didn’t understand. How and why did these books include my prayers to God? The passages were not word-for-word, but they had the same meaning as my prayers.

Then, when I read Lamentations, what I shock! For there, in places, were my prayers, word-for-word. Of course, sometimes it was not word-for-word because it was in the King James English. Also, I wasn't praying for Jerusalem or Israel, though one could say I was praying for true Israel.

From then on, when I read my Bible, I had a large 1942 Webster's Dictionary on one side and a massive Strong's Exhaustive Concordance on the other.

This is how I began my life for Christ. I wasn't perfect, and I didn't have any great examples to follow. It would be a rough road ahead.

~ Shawn Driscoll

Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.