Were you ever a "Born Again Christian" only to have left the faith?

Question

"Born Again" means that God has changed your heart and that you were guided by God to do his will and that you were baptisted. (Not that baptism alone is the only thing that saves. One of the thief's on the cross was saved immediately when Jesus ascended into heaven.)

If so why did you leave? Give your reasons why you left behind your Christian faith? Was it because of people, your questions weren't answered, the church you were attending as a whole, the church didn't answer your questions, you started to doubt and question things more, etc. What was your reason and if so describe that in full detail only if you were "Born Again".

Also if you did leave did you ever decide to come back and if so why did you come back? Only real honest answers please. Not ones who have said they went to church and that's all there was to it. Not looking for a answers by some who was only christian by name only or who are known by any other faith group. Only if you were truly "Born Again"

Answer 1

I was Christened at birth and was Baptised at the age of nine (Born Again).

As far as i was concerned I was too young to understand being "Born Again" and through peer presure, myself and my twin sister got baptised. I cant remember it ever changing My life because of the lack of understanding I had at that age.

As i understand it now, being "Born Again" means that you repent of your sins, accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour and are guided by the Holy Spirit. Your life changes completely in that your behaviour is no longer motivated by earthly pleasures but by the pleasure of being God's servant and communication with God increases because you have given yourself to God's service and God communicates with the individual's spirit through Jesus Christ. It also changes the way you are with everyone around you because of the very important commandments that one must follow which pleases the Lord:

Love the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind
Love one another as you love your self

Its not easy but when you think of the reward that no other religion or beleif can give you, it is really worth it.

Answer 2

I was born into Christianity. I first accepted Jesus as my savior when I was seven, but I don't think I really knew what it meant to be a Christian.
At thirteen, I fell away from the faith because there were too many questions that no one could answer.
Twelve years later, I came back.
I've now been back for about two months (proving that God doesn't give up on His own!). There are several reasons I came back:
1. Research led me here. I found that there was sufficient archaeological, scientific, and historical evidence to corroborate what's in the Bible.
2. I called out to God in faith, hoping He would answer. He did.
3. I've seen too much in my own life to ever disbelieve in God again.

Over the last two months, I feel as though I've become a new person. Not only that, but my non-Christian husband, and our non-Christian friends have seen the difference.
I'm not sure if I was a true Christian before. I think...I thought I was, but I really had no idea.

Answer 3

Jesus went into the temple not so much to agree with the pharasees but to correct them. Our "Born Again" churches are organizations that find ways to make us feel unwhole by giving us the impression that we are not worthy because we are not "saved", or not professing that a man born 2000 years ago was perfect in every way beyond what we are and that he was the messenger from God to save us from our sins. As I get older, I realize that we all die for each others sins, that life's events wear us down at predetermined points in our lives. I enjoy the passion of being alive on my roller coaster ride and the civility that can be in my life, but I am also aware of the predetermined cruelty that can be there in a heartbeat. Traditional Fundamentalist religions generally lean towards some form of eternal damnation worship as a form of crowd correction, while professing that there is One God. Logic tells me that we can't have it both ways. Either there is One God which is everywhere and which you and I are a part of, even the creation of this nature.....or there is more than one God and Creator that can somehow separate from us when we die! If there is One God, that God knows everything and made all my circumstance and I am here to live it to the best of my ability and survive if I can and find comfort where I can and give comfort where I can, because I am lucky enough to have been raised to think that way, although the illusion of my existence may not exude that presence to some....I do my best and I expect we all do. I Bless you with Forgive Affirmed Spirit

Answer 4

If a person is truly born-again - he is sealed with the Holy Spirit and cannot "leave" the Christian faith. A person who says he has left the faith is called "back-sliden" - that is the term for it. They are still Christians but choose to go their own way - not the will of God. They still have the Holy Spirit though - as that does not leave us.

Answer 5

No, when I became born again I stayed this way. It is in the Bible that once you recieve the Holy Spirit, you cannot go back to your old lifestyle and repeat your sins. If you do, you cannot be forgiven and saved again.

Answer 6

Born Again? Definition: Being born again involves being baptized in water (“born from water”) and begotten by God’s spirit (“born from . . . spirit”), thus becoming a son of God with the prospect of sharing in the Kingdom of God. (John 3:3-5) Jesus had this experience, as do the 144,000 who are heirs with him of the heavenly Kingdom.

Why is it necessary for any Christians to be “born again”?
God has purposed to associate a limited number of faithful humans with Jesus Christ in the heavenly Kingdom

Luke 12:32: “Have no fear, little flock, because your Father has approved of giving you the kingdom.”

Rev. 14:1-3: “I saw, and, look! the Lamb [Jesus Christ] standing upon the Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand . . . who have been bought from the earth.” (See pages 166, 167, under the heading “Heaven.”)

Humans cannot go to heaven with bodies of flesh and blood

1 Cor. 15:50: “This I say, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom, neither does corruption inherit incorruption.”

John 3:6: “What has been born from the flesh is flesh, and what has been born from the spirit is spirit.”

Only persons who have been “born again,” thus becoming God’s sons, can share in the heavenly Kingdom

John 1:12, 13: “As many as did receive him [Jesus Christ], to them he gave authority to become God’s children, because they were exercising faith in his name; and they were born, not from blood or from a fleshly will or from man’s will, but from God.” (“As many as did receive him” does not mean all humans who have put faith in Christ. Notice who is being referred to, as indicated by verse 11 [“his own people,” the Jews]. The same privilege has been extended to others of mankind, but only to a “little flock.”)

Rom. 8:16, 17: “The spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are God’s children. If, then, we are children, we are also heirs: heirs indeed of God, but joint heirs with Christ, provided we suffer together that we may also be glorified together.”

1 Pet. 1:3, 4: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for according to his great mercy he gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an incorruptible and undefiled and unfading inheritance. It is reserved in the heavens for you.”

What will they do in heaven?

Rev. 20:6: “They will be priests of God and of the Christ, and will rule as kings with him for the thousand years.”

1 Cor. 6:2: “Do you not know that the holy ones will judge the world?”

Can a person who is not “born again” be saved?

Rev. 7:9, 10, 17: “After these things [after the apostle John heard the number of those who would be “born again,” those who would make up spiritual Israel and would be with Christ in heaven; compare Romans 2:28, 29 and Galatians 3:26-29] I saw, and, look! a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes; and there were palm branches in their hands. And they keep on crying with a loud voice, saying: ‘Salvation we owe to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb.’ . . . ‘The Lamb [Jesus Christ], who is in the midst of the throne, will shepherd them, and will guide them to fountains of waters of life.’”

After listing many pre-Christian persons of faith, Hebrews 11:39, 40 says: “All these, although they had witness borne to them through their faith, did not get the fulfillment of the promise, as God foresaw something better for us, in order that they might not be made perfect apart from us.” (Who are here meant by “us”? Hebrews 3:1 shows that they are “partakers of the heavenly calling.” The pre-Christian persons who had faith, then, must have a hope for perfect life somewhere other than in heaven.)

Ps. 37:29: “The righteous themselves will possess the earth, and they will reside forever upon it.”

Rev. 21:3, 4: “Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his peoples. And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”

Answer 7

the story of a convert read it CAREFULLY

I was raised a Catholic. My dad has always been Catholic, and my mom converted to Catholicism when she was a teenager. After her mother (my grandmother) died in an automobile accident, she became a nun and lived in a convent. It was while my mom was a nun that she met my dad. Both of them sang in the church choir and, well, that was that.

My family was fairly devout: we always went to church every Sunday, and us kids attended the Catholic catechism classes on Monday afternoons. I even became an altar boy for a few years.

I was probably introduced to Islam in the ninth grade, in my social studies class. I remember remarking to a classmate that if I ever left the Catholic Church, I’d become a Muslim. What fateful words.

As I grew older, I became enamored with science, particularly astronomy. Even today, I still love reading about science, but back then, I began to think that there was no God. (Allah have mercy on me for thinking such terrible thoughts.) For quite some time, I considered myself an atheist, but I always had this fascination with religion. I continued to read about different religions, Zen Buddhism in particular.

In 1982, I met two guys who were Unitarians. For those who don’t know about the Unitarian Universalist Church, the church is an offshoot of Christianity. The primary difference between the Unitarian Church and other protestant sects is that Unitarians reject the trinity. (The joke is that Unitarians believe in, at most, one God.) Back then, I couldn’t accept Jesus (PBUH) as the Son of God, although I could accept him as a prophet. For some reason, atheists are accepted into the Unitarian Church, so I became a member. Even today, I think well of the Unitarian Church. While Islam is a much stricter and more conservative religion than the Unitarian Church, I think the two faiths share much in common.

In 1985, I began attending Arizona State University. Needing to take some humanities classes for my degree, I thought that a course entitled “Islamic Civilization” looked interesting. The course was taught by a pair of professors, one who was from the religious studies department, and another who was in the history department. I found the course to be quite interesting, with the highlight being a field trip to the Islamic Cultural Center of Tempe, just a few blocks away from the university. The ICC of Tempe is a beautiful facility, being a replica of “Dome of the Rock” in Jerusalem. (Ironically, this course was brought up in one of my job interviews. In 1991, I had an interview with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for some administrative position. I was expecting the interviewer to ask me business questions (I was finishing up work on my M.B.A. degree), but he was very curious about what “Islamic Civilization” covered and why I had taken the class. Don’t worry, though, I’ve never had any more contact with the CIA. ;) )

Soon after, I purchased a copy of the Qur’an (the N.J. Dawood translation, published by Penguin). I read some of the Qur’an, but not much. Still, between the “Islamic Civilization” course and my small knowledge of the Qur’an, I was ready for the next phase of my life.

In the mid 90s, I met a young woman named Delena. Delena was as blonde as she was beautiful, and we used to talk for hours over the phone. I eventually asked her out on a date, but due to unforeseen problems, the date didn’t go as planned. However, the night we were supposed to go out, Delena invited me over to her apartment where we had some pizza and watched a few videos. During a break between videos, I walked about her apartment and discovered a Muslim calendar on her wall. “What’s this?” I asked. It turned out that she had become a Muslim a few years earlier. The rest of that night was spent talking about Islam, as were quite a few of our telephone conversations afterwards. (Unfortunately, Delena and I didn’t work out as a couple which is really too bad because I’m still in love with her. Delena, if you ever read this, I would marry you in an instant if you’re still available.)

In my conversations with Delena, I would find that I had problems with the Dawood translation. Dissatisfied, I bought another translation of the Qur’an, that of Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall. It was this translation where the words of Allah really began to strike a chord in my heart. I became much more serious about reading the Qur’an, and I have read most of the way through the book now. However, I still didn’t decide to convert yet. One of my “problems” was that I was still the scientific skeptic. I wanted some sort of proof that the Qur’an was truly the word of Allah.

A few months ago, I found another version of the Qur’an for sale, this time the Ahmed Ali translation. I bought this one and began reading through it, in part because I was curious to see how this translation differed from the Pickthall translation. In Sura 16, “The Bees,” there is the following verse (15):

“He placed stabilizers in the earth
so that while it revolves you live undisturbed,
and rivers and tracks
so that you may find your way;”

In one of Ali’s few commentaries in this edition, he writes (in part) about this verse:

“Stabilisers, rawasi, are actually mountains in the interior of the earth made evident by modern geophysicists who mapped the earth’s interior. At some places they are 6 miles high and 6000 miles wide with a valley as deep and wide, situated between the liquid core and the crust of the earth. Their function is to stabilize the crust and rotation of the earth…This description would apply to underground ‘stabilisers’ when used with ‘so that while it revolves you live undisturbed,’ as here and in 21:31, 3:10, and also 77:27. In 13:3, 15:19, 27:61, 50:7 on the other hand, it has been used for mountains as stabilizers.”

Now this was the sort of rational proof that I could accept. How could Muhammad (PBUH) possibly know about “stabilisers” that Allah had placed in the earth? Geological structures of this magnitude could not possibly have been known about until the advent of seismological instrumentation. This was the sort of proof I had been looking for to confirm that the Qur’an was Muhammad’s continuing miracle, the true word of God.

The thought occurred to me recently that here I was, the owner of three translations of the Qur’an, and yet I had never said the Shahadah in public. Yet, if I were to die in an accident, people would believe that I was a Muslim (due to three Qur’ans and other books on Islam in my apartment). I decided then to say the Shahadah. I went down to the ICC of Tempe, and immediately got a case of “cold feet.” I wandered outside for at least ten minutes debating whether I should walk inside. Finally, I decided to walk away. The thought came to me that I was being a coward. That stung. I didn’t want to think of myself as being scared to say the Shahadah. I immediately turned around and went inside. Much to my surprise, there was no one there. Eventually, a black man named Hakim asked if I needed any help. Still fearful of really becoming a Muslim, I asked if there was an application form I could fill out for joining the Masjid. I will forever remember Hakim’s reply: “This ain’t no club, man.” “Yes, I know that,” I thought to myself. Eventually, he asked if I wanted to say the Shahadah, and I said yes. So in the presence of Hakim and an Arab gentleman, I stumbled my way through unfamiliar Arabic words. I feel badly that I said it so poorly, so now I will say again what has become increasingly familiar:

Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Allah wahda-hu la sharika la-h wa ashhadu anna Muhammadan ‘abdu-hu wa rasulu-h.

It has been a long and winding road to Islam for me. I would like to thank two people for guiding me on this path: Delena, who was my catalyst in starting to read the Qur’an seriously, and Fareena, who runs the website, Islam – The Modern Religion. In the past few years, I have visited many websites on Islam, but I like Fareena’s the best. It is highly informative and has helped me greatly in learning about my new religion. Thank you to both of these special women in my life.