Tom McConnell

 

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• I grew up in an Catholic family in north-central New Jersey.

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• I first heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the evangelistic outreach of First Baptist Church in Rockaway, NJ in the mid-1970s.  

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• While I made many professions of faith in Jesus Christ from 1976-1983, the one constant & troubling fact remained: my life never really changed. During those early years, I pretended to be good when at church but at home and at school my life was marked by unrepentant sin.  Though I didn't realize it at that time, I still loved myself above everyone else, and didn’t love the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. 

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• All that changed in 1985 after a night of sinful pursuits & a near-death experience.  The Lord used that near-death experience to awaken me to the fact that I am a sinner who will stand before a Holy God in the judgment.  Remembering the sunday school lessons I learned previouslyI suddenly realized how close I came to dying and going to hell that night. 

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• After repenting of my sins and confessing Jesus Christ as my only Lord & Saviour, the Lord began to radically change my life. 

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• For many years I had heard and been taught the facts of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but it wasn’t until God woke me up to the danger I was in spiritually that I believed on / rested in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone for my salvation. 

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• I learned later from studying the Bible that this awareness of my sin, this need to be forgiven for my sins and this whole-soul trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of my sins was and is all part of God’s saving grace to undeserving sinners. 

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• The truth is, more than 30 years later, God’s grace still amazes me.