Same setup: about the same age as you, I had a good job, nice fambly, and such, and no use for religion, God, and the whole mess. I wasn't really opposed to it in general, I just knew it wasn't for me.
What happened to me was simply this: God started prodding me. I'd be driving in to work, and I'd sense His presence. I knew it was Him, and kind of enjoyed it, but didn't pursue it. I had all the answers, you see.
We had a Dorling-Kindersley children's Bible at home, and my kids (who were small) liked it. They'd ask me to read to them from it, and I would ... and it was comforting to me. But I didn't pursue it, of course.
At some point along this road I realized that I did, in fact, believe in God, but it had no particular impact. One night I woke up with this thought in my head, "you know I exist. The question is, what are you going to do about it?" For a while I figured I would just argue my way into heaven -- which even I realized was stupid. But I had no sense of what to do about it.
Pride was a barrier. I had been rather strong in declaring my independence from God. My pride was such that I couldn't admit I had been wrong. I certainly didn't want people to see me admitting it.
It all came to a head this way: my wife was out of town, so I took my daughter to Sunday school. Having nothing better to do, I sat in on the church service and was going through the motions. Part of the liturgy goes like this. The priest starts out, "And now we proclaim the mystery of faith," and the congregation recites:
Christ has died
Christ is risen
Christ will come again
On that last line, God spoke to me saying, in essence, "this is true, and you'd better straighten up."
This scared me, of course, but it also made me a Christian. An ignorant one, and an utterly clueless one, but I can date my conversion from that point.
The very hardest part, though, was in deciding to go to church -- admitting I was wrong. Usually on Sunday mornings I had simply helped my wife to get the kids ready, then they left and I sat around reading the paper. But one Sunday soon after -- it was early in Lent -- I bit the bullet. I put on a tie, and my wife asked, "what are you doing?" I said, "I'm going with you." It was a simple thing, and it was hard, and it was worth it.
And for all my fears, going to church wasn't hard, or embarrassing, or anything like that. That's the thing, though: "becoming a Christian" isn't just admitting to yourself: the really important part is in admitting it to other people. That's where you humble yourself, and become part of the Body of Christ.
Anyway, like you, my wife and many others had been praying for me. It really wasn't fair ... I had no chance! ;-)
Thank you. The prayers of wives seem to ping quite a few of us to unexpected things . . . I thought the man led the family!
You say “God spoke to me saying, in essence, ‘this is true, and you’d better straighten up.’” I didn’t really have words either, just understanding. I’m always impressed when people have an experience with God where they are given actual words. This fellow that was dead from the jellyfish actually saw words of scripture that he had never read before. Mother Theresa was told, with words, by Christ, to minister to the poorest of the poor. This impresses me. I don’t know why it impresses me more than learning without words, which is even more extraordinary in some ways, but it does.