I didn't say you would lose hope, and yes, I do know the Lord.
You do understand what lying is? Saying, "you don't know the Lord" when I do, in fact, know the Lord is considered libel/slander and it's a form of lying.
I did not even know I knew the Lord while I had gotten saved.
I was Jewish. I read a tract and accepted the prayer.
For ten years I could not figure out what had taken place and changed me in my soul.
While in the army, on a day off, I wandered into a recreation center.
Some were playing pool and drinking their beers.
I walked by them and into another room.
In that room were books on a shelf.
I pulled out a book of quotations by famous people.
I was very interested at that time of hearing what men of great thinking had to say about life.
I was reading quotes by one famous person after another.
To my surprise, there was a dedicated section of quotes by Jesus.
As thinking I was still a Jew, I read on.
Then it happened.
One quote of Jesus hit me like comforting lightning flowing from my head to toe.
Right after, as I stood there. I still remember what I said to myself.
"All those famous men I just read had wisdom.
But, this one! He knows me!"
I had gotten saved unawares from reading a tract probably about a year before entering the army.
I still considered myself a Jew!
No person preached to me to get me saved.
At that time, I disliked the preachers I was exposed to.
They were manufactured actors to me. Dead and preaching to the choir.
I got saved as I was walking between classes in college, after reading a tract that was handed to me by a young man
who was in the process of setting up his display in the main corridor.
I took a tract and walked away. He never said a word to me.
No kook who looked like a character who had just come out of a time machine preached to me.
If he had? I would have thought that Christianity could not be taken seriously.
Then.... It was years later that I finally learned that there is neither Jew nor gentile in Christ Jesus.
That understanding came when I finally found a place where the Bible was being taught objectively.
Learning teaching that was not designed to appeal to some denominational bias, that so many suffered from at that time.
Getting saved is easy.
You do not even have to know you got saved to be saved.
Just simply finding yourself loving and wanting to believe in Jesus died for our sins.
So be it!