Testimony

Lately I have been doing some more thinking. I know I know, I think too much. It may be entirely true, but on the other hand I believe that my thinking is God communicating with me. To some this may not make sense, but for those who do get it, it makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? God is a lot of things to me. First he is what moves me, what allows me to breath; literally, spiritually, and physically my savior! He is my conscience. He is my insight. Anything good that comes from me, He is responsible. Though my mind takes control of me and my sinful desires overcome what I want to do, the Lord is what I truly want to follow and live like. And by the way, this is another long one, sorry!

            Here at school I have been doing quite a bit of thinking about what my actual testimony is. At first thought my mind was blank. I had no idea what my testimony was. I have heard so many stories about amazing transformations from lives of sin. One of my best friends gave his testimony Wednesday night at a church and his message was powerful. He had grown up in a Christian home and at a Christian school but never really understood Christianity, or the love and grace of Jesus. He saw Christians as the hypocrites that they were being and eventually became bitter towards Christians and even closed his heart towards hearing the Gospel. A long story made short- He hit rock bottom and God revealed himself to my friend. (I do not want to ruin his story for you because it will move you) He turned his life around and, from the song written by a friend of his, is “changing the world.”

            With his testimony I became very confused about my salvation, my “come to Jesus moment”, and my testimony. Until now my testimony has simply been about the day I got saved. I have told everyone who has asked that I became saved when I was 10 years old, which is when I first realized I was indeed a sinner in need of God’s saving grace through his son Jesus. The pastor read from the book of Matthew and explained the story of 2 gates: one leading to death and the other leading to Life. To spare you the details, and boredom, I will make my old testimony short. I accepted Jesus’ call into my heart that day and I was baptized. That is pretty much it. Not much of a transformation story is it? Exactly! I don’t think I was truly saved that day. I think my time came a few years later at a Christian camp when I accepted Christ and actually tried to follow Jesus and do His will. Though I did not remain completely faithful then, that was my first attempt at actually trying to change my life through Jesus.

            This is my real testimony. This is what really happened. Nothing is made up. Take this or leave it. I have been ashamed for a long time of what I had done, but not anymore! I came to my senses and God asked me why I was ashamed of my past when he has forgiven me. He revealed again that I should not be ashamed before men because the One I will answer to has already forgiven me. He has forgiven and forgotten, so why should I worry?  Anyway, here goes nothing…

            My entire life I have grown up in a Christian home, in church, and with a Christian family. I attended Sunday school as a child and I was involved in anything and everything a church could possibly have for me.  I was told about Jesus time and time again. My mother talked with me constantly about Jesus. My grandmother is probably the most spiritual person I know. She literally cannot have a conversation without ending it with something that the bible can relate to that subject. By the age of 8 I knew all about Jesus, how he died on the cross, how he rose on the third day, and how he died for our sins. I even knew that everyone sinned and that God was the only perfect being, along with His son Jesus. What I didn’t really understand was that salvation is a little more than just saying the prayer. Yes, Jesus forgives your sins, Yes all you have to do is ask and they will be forgiven. Does that mean you are going to Heaven? Honestly, at this time I am not 100% about the whole “faith without works” argument. One day I hope to gain an understating about that. As of right now this is what I do know. God sent his son Jesus to live a perfect life to then die for our sins on the cross. He died in advance for our sins, so technically our sins were paid for even before me were alive. We just have to ask for forgiveness. I also know that if we are truly sorry for what we have done we will do our best to keep from doing those actions again. Just as we would do for earthly people, we are to do for God. The thing is, we should be even more sorry for sinning against God. We are to be so sorry for the things we have done and so happy for the grace He has shown us that we ask for forgiveness and never turn back to those sins again. We are to remain in Him. If we remain in him we are in His love. If we are doing His will for us then we are truly saved and I have no doubt in my mind that we will go to heaven if we remain in His love and do His will. The whole last part of the paragraph I did not understand until fairly recently. You will be amazed how much you will learn by simply reading His word. I have truly found out so much that I did not know, that many preachers just “forget” to tell you. For my whole life I had known about God and I may or may not have been truly saved (I believe I was not), but the fact is I knew about God. I actually knew, not the “knew” when you just think something may be true, I actually knew that Jesus was the Lord over this world and that out of love he dies on the cross for me. But what makes that a bad thing is that I still just did whatever I wanted. I was ashamed of telling people about Him and how He made me feel and how much He is worthy of every bit of anything I could find here on this earth to give. I only once told someone I knew about Him, only once! And the only reason is because I was coming back from a “D-Now High” and the theme thing that weekend was “friends don’t let friends die and go to Hell.”  I told that to my best friend and he accepted Jesus in his heart that day but since then he has slipped away. I am completely convinced that it was my selfish actions that kept him from staying in God’s grace. (Hopefully he will read this, and for that I am sorry man-I Truly am!)

            Not sure if I properly ended the paragraph but I noticed how long the thing was getting so I cut that one off just to start another one. Anyway, so basically I knew about God but denied him any chance I got, whether it was by my lifestyle or by my words I denied to the world that I even knew His name. For some reason, which is beyond my comprehension, I did not want people to know about God. Maybe its because I was not really saved but I am not completely sure about that. If asked I would say” yes I am a Christian” but in no way, shape, or form could anyone tell. There are so many verses that describe exactly how I was acting so just look up Romans 2; verse 24 explains how I was acting, except I was 100 times worse. I never was a really bad kid. I had always been taught right from wrong and I knew the consequences of wrongdoing, here on earth. Just a side note: I want to be a pastor-possibly youth pastor- and I don’t have one of those stories about how I was high and drunk and wrecked my car into a family and spent several years in prison where a fellow inmate taught me about the Lord (I am not saying at all that there is anything wrong with that because every story has the power of God’s grace to your life, just mine isn’t that story is all I am saying). I was never a really bad kid, by the world’s standards. I did not party much. When I did party I would do things I wasn’t proud of the next day. Though I was never an alcoholic or drug addict, every sin is the same before God. The one and only, perfect God is so holy that all sin, even the sin we see as small here on earth, completely disgusts Him. I broke every one of the Ten Commandments. I didn’t realize I had at the time, but Jesus explains all the commandments and elaborates on each one. I had broken every single one of them in some form or fashion. With every Law I broke God was right there telling me it was wrong, convicting me, making my stomach ache with that feeling you get right before you are going to do something you know you aren’t suppose to do. For a while I had convinced myself that I was saved and I was going to heaven but I was not remaining in Him, I was not seeking after Him. No change had been made in my life to show that He is Lord! I convinced myself that I was a Christian but really I was just making Christians look bad. And the worst thing of all was that I actually knew He was there. I knew that He was sitting there watching me make His name less holy among men. I was the very reason that atheists will never believe in God. Why would they believe in something whose followers were not living the way they spoke and preached about? I can tell you I wouldn’t! I hate to know how many people I have caused to stumble from Christianity,

            Luckily, one day I began to seek after God. I began reading my Bible. I began finding answers and I began realizing that I was not any better than anyone who had been an addict, because I was an addict myself. I was addicted to me! I was addicted to making me look good, to trying to be popular-which I never fully succeeded at, by the way! God pulled me to my senses; He revealed to me that he was all that mattered. Not one thing here in this world matters. He tells us to not store our treasures here on earth because moths and rust will destroy everything, but not in Heaven! I was disgusted with my self because I knew all along what to do I just didn’t do it. In my eyes that is worse than living a horrible life and then having a salvation/transformation experience. At least the horrible life was before they knew God-before they fully understood everything that I knew this whole time I had been doing my own thing. Ignorance is understandable but what I did I cannot even think of any word to describe besides stupid (to the extreme). Every year I would go to a Disciple-Now weekend and hear the same stories from the same kind of preachers and they were all the same to me. I was confused because I always had this correlation in my mind between sinner and what these people were doing. I always just figured I was in the light because I wasn’t as bad as them. The thing I didn’t realize was that I knew but didn’t do anything about it. Faith without action is dead faith. You can have faith without action but what good is it doing? The action that comes with true faith is a bit hard to explain. One thing I can say about action is that faith is the action of belief. You can believe that the parachute in your backpack is going to open, but faith is actually jumping out of the plane. I thought iwas better than the ones who had done all the drugs but in reality my sin was exactly the same. If I would’ve had true faith I would have had the action that the true faith brings. I would have been living right instead of wrong (yes I realize that was quite the elementary sentence, but it sums up what I had to say nicely). We were put here on this earth to first accept God’s call into our lives and then to spread the Gospel to everyone. Our lives are to be a ministry; ministry and missions should not be our job but our lives.

            For so long I thought I knew God. Yet I was ashamed to let people know about Him. I wanted to be “cool”. Little did I know that you can’t ride the fence for long and one day you’ll have to pick sides. I picked the wrong side. I picked me instead of Him. Thankfully God set me down and showed me the error of my ways. I finally chose to listen to him. I don’t actually know the day I was truly saved because my Christian walk has been more like a rollercoaster. I have had the highs and lows, flips and turns, and even started back at the beginning a time or 2. To tell you the truth I don’t really care what day it was, the date isn’t going to matter one bit in heaven. As far as I am concerned I could say the day was today. God knows the day and I know the day came and I also know that now I am on the right path. Without a doubt in my mind I know that I am in God’s will. Through prayer and time spent in His word I have finally come to peace with God and I am more than happy that I finally quit doing what I wanted. My journey has been a long one and if God is willing it will probably be a lot longer (though I defiantly would not complain if He were to take me Home). I hope that my story has inspired you to receive God’s call into your life and stop running from His will. I wish I had not run from Him like it did. I can tell you I definitely would not have wasted a year and a half at a community college for the degree I wanted when I was running.  My blasphemous past makes me sick when I think about how I destroyed the Lord’s name the way I did. What really makes my stomach hurt is when I think of the fact that I KNEW! I KNEW about God! Please don’t be like me. If you are reading my posts its because God led you to my page. Please listen to the words he has spoken through me and accept his call. Until next time, Thanks for reading, God Bless you!