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 going to church, but I hadn’t ever needed God before. So I believed, but I
hadn’t been transformed. I still depended upon myself to direct my life, and I
didn’t understand my need for God, my need for salvation. But my sickness was
out of control. I wound up in the hospital and, as a typical over-achiever, I
was devastated when I had to drop out of school. I left behind the lead in the
school play, a high GPA, and all my friends (we were at boarding school, so
going home meant leaving them behind). 

Over the course of that
spring, I started to think more and more about God. I knew that I was desperate
and that I couldn’t make myself better by myself. But I didn’t know if God was
the one who could make a difference. Long story short, I went to a Christian
camp and I heard messages that explained Christianity simply and in very
personal terms. Again, I already believed what I was hearing, since I had grown
up with it. But it had never made a difference in my life. Theoretically, I
believed I was a sinner, and I believed I needed saving, but that wasn’t how I
lived. In the midst of those messages, I was also thinking about whether or not
I would go back to boarding school in the fall. I was inclined to stay home
because I had found support through a group of Christians at my local high
school, and I was worried about going back to a place where, as far as I could
tell, God was absent.

So one night at this camp,
I sat by the side of the lake and I prayed. I asked God if I should go back to
my boarding school. And, in one of the very few times in my life that this has
happened, I “heard” an answer from God. It wasn’t quite an audible
voice. It was more like a thought that was so powerful, and so
“other”, so external to my own thoughts, that it came through like a
voice. And what I heard was, “Go back to school, and take me with
you.”

It was after that answer
to prayer that my life was transformed. It was as if I had an adrenaline rush
that lasted for months. I read the whole New Testament that summer, willingly.
I read tons of other Christian books because I still had a lot of questions
about the intellectual integrity of the faith. And I talked about God all the
time (probably really unnerving to my friends and family, but thankfully they
hung in there with me). There was a moment of transformation followed by a
burst of transformative work followed by years of ups and downs but nonetheless
faith–however wavering at times–in Jesus. 

I now look back and think
that that moment of prayer was a moment of conversion, the moment when the work
of the Holy Spirit became real in my life. It was the moment when I truly
surrendered myself and trusted God to know better than me what I needed. 

What about you? Has God transformed your life?