Of course.
I was raised in a "religious" family. My father had attended a Baptist congregation in the country of Virginia when he was a boy, and my mother was raised Roman Catholic. When they got married the compromised and we attended congregations in the Episcopal Church. My father served on the vestry a year or three and I sang in the youth choir and attended Sunday School and youth group. My parents were somewhat liberal and permitted me to stop going to church when I turned 16 and I don't remember attending nearly as frequently. I also do not remember ever hearing the gospel preached my entire childhood. I knew about God, but I did not know God.
I dropped out of High School my senior year and moved out of the house. Shortly afterwards the parents of the guy with whom I shared an apartment asked he and me if we'd like to attend a new missionary congregation, they were participants in starting. We went there to pick up chick and purposefully did not get high that morning (By that time drinking and drugging was a daily routine from the time I awoke to the time I passed out. That congregation was worshiping in a school building and the congregation was only about 75 people in size. What I am about to say won't make any sense to any reader but it's my story and I am sticking to it. From the moment I entered the school's foyer to the time I left I felt orange. Yep. You read that correctly. I don't remember a word of the sermon or who I met because I spent the entire service trying to figure out why I was feeling orange. I thought perhaps the sunlight was somehow shining through those triangular exit signs that hang from the ceiling but concluded that was a preposterous explanation even were it possible. When I got home, I called my mother to tell her I'd been to this really weird church but when she asked how it was weird, I couldn't explain it. Feeling orange is weird.
During my later teen years and early twenties, I began attending church more frequently but also more diversely. I went to Saturday or Sunday worship services in a variety of religions and Christian denominations, spending a lot of time with a local Hindu community and eventually practicing Buddhism for about three years. I got into some trouble with the law and ended up on jail for several months. While there I sobered up and realized I was not the person I imagined myself to be. I thought I was a good person, but they do not put good people in jail unless there's been a mistake and no mistake had been made in my case. So, when I got out, I decided to institute a self-improvement plan; I started to exercise daily, enrolled in college (I'd gotten my GED earlier), and started to go back to church. "Body, mind, and soul," or so I thought. The congregation I chose to attend was that one where I'd felt orange years earlier. It was no meeting in a high school and the congregation had ground to about 5,000 people. It turned out this congregation was a conservative, fundamentalist, evangelical, charismatic Episcopal congregation (yes, such things do exist).
I went there on Sundays fairly regularly, but I was still drugging and misbehaving the rest of the weekend. One morning a woman's husband died, and she got up on the stage with her children to share how her long-hostile-to-God husband gave his life to Christ. During her testimony she mentioned the Jews enslavement in Egypt and Babylon. The minister used that motif of enslavement when he asked folks if anyone had a hard week, if they felt like they'd been in foreign lands, in bondage, and needed prayer (in liturgical churches there is always a time set aside for individual and corporate prayer). I stood up. The minister than asked folks around those standing to also stand and lay hands on us and pray for us. It dawned on me this was turning into an altar call. The Episcopal Church never has altar calls but, ep, this was one of those. I thought about sitting down but then thought, "No, you've been coming here for a couple of years now and you know it's time to make a choice." Then a wrestling match ensued in my mind with one voice yelling, "Sit down! Sit down! Sit down!" and the other calmly saying, "No, you do not have to do so; you are free to stand and pray if you like." I stood and prayed. I started doing what I thought I was supposed to do and started confessing my sins. For real. Audibly. I told those around me about my drinking and drugging, and selling drugs and thieving and womanizing and violence, but eventually realized doing so was going to take all day since the list was long. So, I told Jesus I wanted him to be the Lord and Savior of my life. Then I stopped talking and silently said to God, "Look, I want to know I am saved today. I don't want to pass out or be slain in the Spirit, falling down and doing the alligator in the aisle, smacking my head and shins on the seats. I don't want all the histrionics. I just want to know I am saved." One of the men whose hands were on my shoulder began to pray aloud and he said, "Heavenly Father, let this young man know he doesn't have to pass out to be saved. He doesn't have to be slain in the Spirit, falling down, doing the alligator in the aisles, smacking his head and shins on the chairs. Let him know he does not have to go through histrionics to be saved. Let him know that when he is saved right here and right now and when he leaves this morning his life will be different, forever changed when he walks though those doors."
I don't know how that last part happens if it is not God. I do not know how that man knew exactly what I was thinking if not God telling him. I did leave the building that day forever changed. It's been forty years.
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