Bible Anniversary and my coming to faith

If Bible anniversaries were a thing than today on Sep. 7th would be mine. Before I get into me getting my own personal Bible and coming to faith I need to start with my up brining. I was raised within a Christian home, I remember my parents having us pray during meals and before we went to bed. From my vaguest memories when I lived in Tennessee we went to church and most of my memories are Sunday School Bible stories, Veggie Tales, and mostly VBS programs. We left Tennessee to head back to my birth state of Oklahoma and from there we didnā€™t go back to church for no reason that I can remember. But from that point when I moved back to Oklahoma my Christian faith was a cultural Christian one. I was born a Christian and I went to church and Sunday School, but that would be about it. I remember one time asking my mother about if Jews went to Heaven (back then until middle school the only two religions I knew where Christianity and Judaism) and when she told me no and because they donā€™t believe in Jesus this shocked because since I assumed that since Jews are mentioned in the Bible and were Godā€™s people they went to Heaven to. And that is kinda when I got indirectly introduced to the concept of Hell. Later on around middle school I got introduced to Islam and then later to Atheism. I found it (atheism) amusing and shocking back then that someone would choose to no believe in a god at all and try and explain that everything came from nothing. Later on around 9th grade I had an existential crisis in which is came to the issue of whether God was real and such. I came to the conclusion that God is real since a Creator was needed for everything to come into existence. Later on through out high school, mostly 10th and 11th grade I developed a theistic universalist view of religion, that all religions are true except atheism and satanic worship, they went to Hell (lol :rofl:) and this was the view I had. Back then in my studies all religions seemed the same and right, how could all be wrong and one right? Around 2013 I had the desire to go out and buy a Bible, whether this was due to my theological curiosity or the Spirit of God giving me a hunger for His Word (and I feel it was a mix of both) I went out on Sept. 7 of 2013 and got my Bible, it was a Holman Christian Standard Bible (the one out today is the CSB and I donā€™t like the new changes they made with it but itā€™s probably my nostalgia glasses getting in the way :sunglasses:) I remember reading it non stop every night during my school year and I fell in love with God and the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. What made me love the HCSB is that for LORD it used Yahweh which for me gave God a more personal name rather then an abstract name. Also for the NT at certain places it replaces Christ with Messiah which made it easy for me to truly know who Jesus is. The verse that made me truly come to faith in Christ was Ephesians 2:1-9. I will use the HCSB so I can recreate what I first read rather then my usual NASB Bible which I use more of now for devotion and study. It reads, ā€œAnd you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler who exercises authority over the lower heavens, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! Together with Christ Jesus He also raised us up and seated us in the heavens, so that in the coming ages He might display the immeasurable riches of His grace through His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is Godā€™s gift-not from works, so that no one can boast.ā€ And from then my faith journey has been crazy, amazing and stressful but I enjoy it as I know I grow closer with God every day, even on the days I fall and mess up. So yea, happy Bible anniversary to me! Hope my testimony helps anyone out with their own faith walk as I have had my own crazy one.

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Happy anniversary, and thanks for the story. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for sharing. When I was a kid (I was raised Baptist) praying the prayer and ā€œgetting savedā€ was a big deal, and some people encouraged others to consider it their ā€œsecond birthday.ā€ I havenā€™t really gone along with that, but I think itā€™s wonderful to read about spiritual experiences that were transformative enough that they merit anniversary remembrances.

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I think that everybody rejoices when another shares a journey that has resulted in faith in Christ. So letā€™s celebrate!

You say:

I would not dismiss your early experience of the Christian church as merely cultural. As the favourite text you quoted says:

Even before you were conscious of it, the Holy Spirit was preparing you.

It is natural to associate the version of the Bible you were reading when your faith became a conscious experience, with the experience, but donā€™t let that turn into the worship of a Bible version rather than the worship of Jesus Christ. Jesus was probably multi-lingual, as would most people have been who lived then and there. He probably spoke Aramaic (a sister language of Hebrew) at home and to most fellow Jews. He seems to have been quite literate in Hebrew, if Luke 4:16-19 is any example. Finding your way through a scroll can be very difficult. He would have also spoken the common Greek (Koine) both in his earlier life as a carpenter, and later when speaking to people on the fringe.

While some argue that Matthewā€™s Gospel was originally written in Aramaic, we only have the earliest manuscripts of the Gospels in Greek. Some of those Greek manuscripts differ from each other, but that shouldnā€™t bother you. More importantly, if you find a translation into English that challenges you, rather than comforts you, is that translation a bad thing or a good one?

I can agree with you on that.

It is likely that He was multi-lingual and spoke Aramaic, Hebrew and maybe a little bit of Greek.

Not really, I just have nostalgia over HCSB as it was my first Bible I ever gotten. As of now I use the NASB and I am really not a translation nerd and donā€™t really care about the issue.