Hey Lynn,
Thank you for your defense. There is just one point I'd like to clarify.
I am born again. I do know I'm a Christian. I have no doubts that I have the Holy Spirit within me.
Here's where the confusion may be. In my "testimony" I have no pointed experience where I go from "I am a terrible sinner" to "I want to know God." Because I lack a drama-filled conversion incident, some people presume that I am not a Christian. So, here's how my story goes: I've always believed. I cannot remember a time when I didn't believe in Jesus. When I say "believe," I don't just mean "intellectual assent." I mean I know who Jesus is and what he has done for me. I agree that I have need of Jesus as my Savior. I accept the work of Jesus. I have the Holy Spirit within me. I maintain a relationship with God and seek to do his will. I also make every effort to live the sort of life a Christian is meant to live. I understand that my ability to live this life is dependent upon the work of the Holy Spirit within me.
Also, I *am* a person who believes that baptism is a sacrament (which several denominations believe...not just Roman Catholics). So, when I look at the trajectory of my life, I trace the beginning of the work of the Holy Spirit within me to THAT moment. A non-Catholic might look at my life and say, "Well, she never had a conversion moment...she is not saved." Other protestants I've met would say something like this, "I don't believe your baptism meant anything, but based on what I know about you and your life, it seems like your conversion was a gradual process instead of a dramatic moment."
(As an aside, I've met cradle-Protestants of various denominations who have a similar story of being raised in the faith and always loving Jesus. They might ask their parents to be baptized at say...age 5....not because they had an a dramatic experience at age 5, but because they realize what they believe and want to be baptized to express this belief. They have told me that they, too, have the same struggle with people disregarding their testimonies because they lack that climactic drama-filled moment. Eventually, to spare themselves the constant heartache--and headache--of having their testimony vivisected, they'll just slightly change how they tell the story so that it pleases the hearers).
What's interesting to me is that when I hear those dramatic testimonies from people, more often than not I notice that God was at work in them for a long, long time before they ever said, "Yes" to God. If you dig deeper, they'll gladly tell you that people were praying for them and their conversion. The bible says, "It's your [God's] kindness that leads us to repentance". While on the surface it may seem that a person is just going along doing their thing and then BAM God go after them in a single moment, I think that's just surface perception. That's because God is subtle.
Additionally, when I was much younger I went through phases of questioning whether or not I was saved because my story didn't match what people expected. People (who didn't really know me or my walk) told me I wasn't saved because I didn't have some memorable, drama-filled, conversion experience. When I would point out that I was living my life for God, they would then claim that I was trying to earn my salvation." (See the Catch-22 here? People will talk about believers bearing "fruit" but if you point to the fact that you've produced fruit, they'll tell you you're relying on your own works). The answer (for these people) was for me to have a (fake) conversion experience--and by "fake" I mean that these people wanted me to walk through some kind of process that I wasn't actually spiritually experiencing. I was already at the END of that process with the Holy Spirit within me. Anyway, this created a lot of anxiety for me because the desire of my heart was to love and serve God. The idea that I might not be doing so pained me. After a lot of anxiety and prayer regarding what these people said, here's what God said to me, "You are mine." He also let me know that I needed to not worry about the perceptions of others...it was His that mattered.
So this is my conundrum. I know I'm a Christian, but when certain people ask "when did you become a Christian," and I say, "I've always believed," they get really mad. They presume I'm playing fast-and-loose with scripture, or that I'm somehow denying their own experience, or that I'm trying to earn my way to God. I have evidence of my faith within my life (both internal and external). I could LIE and invent some kind of story to tell people so they would believe I was a Christian, but that would be (in my mind) a significant ethical compromise. Not only would I be lying about myself, but I'd be falsely reporting about the work of God within me.
Of course, there are plenty of other Christians who take me for my word and simply observe my life. After some observation, they will conclude that I'm accurately self-reporting because my actions and words are consistent.
