Greetings everyone. I would like to introduce myself.  My name is Stephen Merritt and I live in Nashville, Tennessee.  I am married but have no children, my wife having 3 by her first marriage.  I can confidently say that if I'd not met and married Cynthia I might well not have been saved.  Her faith impressed me greatly. Although she was raised in Mennonite country and speaks fondly of a very conservative Church of Christ she once attended in Alabama, her beliefs are very fundamental and Bible Believing.

I give you this background just to try and express how much my salvation experience meant to me then and does still today. At the time we met she was divorcing her first husband - an atheist (who wouldn't let her attend church), physically and emotionally very abusive, a drug-user and an adulterer.  Through all of this painful experience, I saw a woman who clung quietly to her faith.  We became close friends and it was here that the seeds for my salvation were planted.

I'd had another friend try to "get me saved" for years, but I wouldn't listen. Nothing against him but perhaps I just wasn't ready.  Perhaps the difference is that with Cynthia I saw her faith in action.  As the months went by, and with the divorce behind her she was still so firmly assured of her faith of her salvation I began to realize I wanted that faith myself.

It took awhile.  I was still very much a slave to sin and my own selfish needs.  But gradually I came to see how empty my life truly was.  The "final straw" so to speak, was while watching a film.  Now while I now find this film distasteful and blasphemous at the time I saw it, it had a powerful impact on me and woke me up.  I am speaking of "the Last Temptation of Christ." After watching this, I told Cynthia I had to meet the REAL Jesus ... that I wanted to be saved.

We began attending a local Mennonite church and this started my long search for Truth. I've searched high and low through many denominations and even other religions for God and His Church.  After much searching, and many bad times in our marriage (through which Jesus always delivered us ... if we let Him) I came to what at the beginning of my walk with Christ I'd have laughed at: I realized one day that I was in my heart a conservative, fundamental Bible-Believing Christian.

On Easter Sunday, 2002, my wife and I found our church home yesterday at Nolensville Road Baptist Church (Pastor Denny Patterson). The pastor preached, among other things, on how salvation cannot be just mental ... that you cannot just agree with the Gospel but have to enter into a personal relationship with Christ.

That triggered something in me and later I realized what it was ... that my whole life I've been trying to have God and Salvation on MY terms.  That I'd been unwilling to surrender my life completely.

At the invitation I went forward and a gentleman took me aside and showed me what they call the Roman Road.  I accepted Christ as my Savior in a very personal way and have felt a blessed peace ever since. Gone are the doubts. Gone is the tendency to have a complete doctrinal reversal the next morning.

I love our new church family and they welcomed us with open arms.  While I was away studying, my wife visited (she IS definitely saved) and the women showered her with love and welcomes.  When I rejoined Cynthia, she was positively beaming.  It was so good to see her so happy and as we drove to Waffle House to celebrate where we both commented we felt as if we'd known these good folks for years.

It's hard to believe but I have drifted from this church and backslidden. I find myself a broken Christian but by the grace of God have been able to set my feet back on the right road. Rather than run and hide, I've decided to return to Nolensville Road Baptist Church. To return home.

And this time I intend to stay.

God bless you!