“Debate about how one gets converted has gone on for a long time. It is linked to competing perspectives on baptism, evangelism, and the nature of the church. That debate is very important, but we only scratch the surface of the doctrine of conversion if we limit it to a discussion of when the life of a a Christian believer begins. Conversion describes a lot more of the Christian journey than its initiation. It also describes what happens to those who stay on the road behind Jesus, as he takes them to a place they would rather not go and gives them a vocation that changes everything.
Central to the Bible’s teaching on conversion is the call to make a choice. Confronted with abandonment, Christians can either turn their hearts back to the things they lost or turn toward the hope that Jesus Christ is in fact their Savior.
The theological term for this choice is repentance. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia. It simply means “to turn.” Before it became a biblical term, metanoia was commonly used to describe the process of turning around. If a man left the house and then remembered he had forgotten something, he would ‘repent,’ turn around and go back home. Over the centuries, the church endowed the word with connotations of judgement and remorse. But the biblical call to repent and be converted still essentially means to turn toward the work God is doing in our lives.
Life continues to confront Christians with invitations to repent and be converted, even after we have begun to turn our faces toward God. Our eternal salvation may be secured by the initial decision to accept Christ’s forgiveness, but conversion is the lifelong process of turning away from our plans and turning toward God’s maddening, disruptive creativity.
In spite of all our carefulness and hard work, we probably will not achieve the life of our dreams. In fact, our dreams are precisely the things that have abandoned us. But it is then that we hear the invitation of Jesus Christ, ‘Now is the opportunity to step out, walk forward and give your life to God.’ ”
— M. Craig Barnes, When God Interrupts: Finding New Life Through Unwanted Change, pp.27-28
