R.C. Sproul is the founder and president of Ligonier Ministries, which provides theological training for laypeople. He has also taught theology, philosophy, and apologetics at Knox Theological Seminary, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Westminster Theological Seminary. He has written more than 38 books including his most recent, Five Things Every Christian Needs to Grow.

How did you first become a Christian?

I had actually gone to a church-related college, but I went on a football scholarship, not because of any interest in the church. And at the end my first week, which had been spent in freshman orientation, my roommate and I decided to head out to town to hit some of the bars across the border. We come to the parking lot and I realized that I was out of cigarettes. So I went back in the dorm and went to the cigarette machine. I can still remember it was 25 cents for a pack of Luckys. And I got my Luckys and turned around and saw the captain of the football team sitting at a table. And he spoke to me and to my roommate and invited us to come over and chat. And we did. And this was the first person I ever met in my life that talked about Christ as a reality.

I'd never heard anything like it. And I was just absorbed, sat there for two or three hours, and he was talking. He didn't give a traditional evangelism talk to me, he just kept talking to me about the-the wisdom of the word of God. And he quoted Ecclesiastes 11:3: "Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there will it lie." I just feel certain I'm the only person in church history that was converted by that verse. God just took that verse and struck my soul with it. I saw myself as a-a log ...