Testimonies of the Underestimated Gospel

9Marks asked all the T4G plenary and break-out speakers and panelists to provide us with a one sentence answer to this question:

What were the human means and instruments of your conversion?

Thabiti Anyabwile: I was converted during the preaching of Exodus 32 in a Sunday morning worship service.

Matt Chandler: I was converted by the witness of a good friend.

Mark Dever: I was converted by reading the New Testament and by the witness of Christian friends.

Kevin DeYoung: I was converted through the instruction of my parents and by the sitting under the preaching of the word Sunday after Sunday from the time I was born.

Ligon Duncan: My mother and two faithful, Bible-believing, gospel-preaching pastors were the Spirit’s primary instruments in quickening me to repentance unto life and saving faith in Christ.

Simon Gathercole: I went along regularly to a friendly Christian group at my boarding school, where eventually I heard a talk on Revelation 3:20 and knew Jesus was speaking to me.

Greg Gilbert: I was converted by hearing a sermon from a visiting preacher at my church when I was nine years old.

J.D. Greear: I was converted through the faithful teaching of a biblical church, the consistent witness of my parents, and a crisis moment regarding the assurance of my salvation brought on by my Sunday School teacher.

Dave Harvey: While the day and hour of my conversion is unknown to me, the gospel proclamation of an open-air preacher, the witness of Christian friends, and the life of a Christian community all played prominent roles in my story.

Michael Lawrence: I was converted by hearing the gospel from my mother and faithful Sunday School teachers.

C.J. Mahaney: As an eighteen-year-old immersed in the drug culture, God sent a newly-converted friend to share the gospel with me; by the grace of God I put my trust in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for my sins and was gloriously saved from the wrath of God I richly deserved.

Mike McKinley: I was converted as an eleven-year-old when I heard the gospel for the first time from a Sunday School teacher.

Albert Mohler: I was converted by the faithful preaching of the gospel by a pastor, and by the constant gospel encouragement of my parents.

Russell Moore: I came to know Christ as an adolescent, walking and looking up at the stars on the road outside my house in Biloxi, Mississippi, while reflecting on the gospel I heard preached and taught in my home congregation, Woolmarket Baptist Church.

Darrin Patrick: I was converted by reading the Bible and hanging out with some guys who were like me, but not like me.

John Piper: Since I have no memory of the first time I trusted Christ, I take my mother’s word for it that my sister had spoken to me at the age of six concerning my soul, and I came to my mother who knelt with me at a motel in Florida where I received the Lord Jesus and put my faith in him.

David Platt: The Lord converted me through the influence of Bible-believing parents and a Bible-teaching church.

Jeff Purswell: The compelling witness of a community of believers at Berry College prepared me to respond to the gospel that I had long heard but by turns ignored and doubted.

Matt Schmucker: I was converted during my senior year at the University of Maryland through hearing an open-air preacher after listening to him for three years.

Mack Stiles: While pursuing what passions and pleasures I could scrape out in the world, I landed in a cheap hotel at a skiing and mountain climbing school in Zermatt, Switzerland where God used a fellow seventeen-year-old named Robert Smith to share not only the gospel but his life with me; after reading a tract which Robert had given me (from “The Cross and the Switchblade”) I bowed my knee to Christ in Robert’s room above a bar, and from then to this day have called Jesus my Savior, Lord, and Hope of the world.

Carl Trueman: I was converted through the witness of a charismatic friend, hearing Billy Graham preach, and reading Jim Packer.

Peter Williams: My parents explained and modeled the gospel, and public preaching particularly drove it home for me even before I was a teenager.

Learn more about the April 2012 Together for the Gospel conference here.