The Necessity Of Personal Faith

The Necessity Of Personal Faith

Does being born into a Christian family make one a Christian?

JOHN RYLAND JR. was born in 1753 to an English family with a noteworthy Christian heritage. He was from a long line of Dissenters, evangelicals who refused to conform to the Church of England. His great-grandfather, also named John Ryland, had been a member of a Baptist church in Oxfordshire, and all of his children had been believers, including John’s grandfather, Joseph.

After Joseph’s first wife died childless, he married Freelove Collett, a member of a Baptist church in Gloucestershire. Their oldest child, John, was John Ryland Jr.’s father.

John Ryland, Sr. was converted to Christ in a revival that swept through the Baptist community of Bourton-on-the-Water, England, when he was eighteen. Along with John Sr., forty others personally trusted Christ for their salvation and joined the Baptist church there.

John Sr. studied for the ministry and became pastor of the Baptist Church of Northhampton, England, where he had twenty years of fruitful ministry. His friends included George Whitefield, the great evangelist; Augustus Toplady, the author of “Rock of Ages”; and John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace.”

John Ryland Jr., his son, grew up in a home of spiritual privilege since from his earliest years he was able to observe some of the world’s most well-known Christians in his home. One of John Jr.’s earliest memories was of visiting an Anglican rector friend of his father’s at the age of five and reading him the Twenty-third Psalm—in Hebrew!

At the age of thirteen John Jr. began to think seriously about spiritual things. In addition to pastoring the church, his father also ran a boys boarding school. One autumn evening young Ryland was talking to one of his friends from the school, a boy who had recently found salvation in Christ. The friend had begun meeting regularly with two other boys in the evenings for prayer and fellowship. During his conversation with John Jr. he suddenly realized that it was time to meet his two friends for prayer and quickly excused himself. Ryland was deeply hurt by this, thinking his friend was rejecting him.

The next day Ryland avoided him and later gave as his reason the friend’s sudden departure the night before. The boy then explained why he had felt compelled to leave so quickly. He said that he and his prayer partners were “talking of something better.” That phrase, “something better,” stuck in Ryland’s mind. From his evangelical upbringing he knew that phrase meant “Jesus Christ and the salvation of their souls.” The more that Ryland thought about it, the more he wondered, would his friends go to heaven and he be left behind?

This encounter triggered a period of spiritual turmoil for young Ryland. One day he would feel that he had the joy of salvation; the next day he would have terrible doubts. It was during this period of personal struggle that George Whitefield, the great Anglican evangelist, came on a Saturday to visit Ryland Sr. Whitefield preached the next day, September 8, 1767, at the Castle Hill Church in Northhampton, and young Ryland went to hear him. At that service he personally gave his allegience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Five days later Ryland was baptized by his father in the River Nene just down from where the Castle Hill Church stood.

In spite of his godly lineage, John Ryland Jr. needed to trust Christ personally himself. He became a Baptist pastor like his father, and in 1783 at the same place in the River Nene where he himself had been baptized he baptized William Carey, the father of modern missions.

Reflection

Do you know people who assume that they are Christians because they have grown up in a Christian family? How about you? Have you ever made that assumption about yourself? Being born in a Christian family no more makes a person a Christian than being born in a garage makes one an automobile. Becoming a Christian is a personal decision. We all must make our own commitment to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16