Testimony

I was asked this past week to give my testimony with other members of the mission team and the CY so I wrote it up and read it. It still needs much refining and this seems to me to be a rough draft but hopefully it is worth sharing.


I was blessed to be raised in a Christian home by parents who loved me and really tried to teach me how I should live. I don't remember this but I am told that when I was three years old I said that I needed Jesus in my life. So my parents led me through a prayer. Later on, at six, I was baptized. A few years ago I was wondering if I had really known what salvation is all about so I found (in my mother's files) my testimony that I had written at the time. I had said that I was a sinner and knew that Jesus Christ was the only one who could wash away my sin and make me clean. I wanted to believe on him and be baptized and to live a life of service to him as a Christian should.

My own life has been one of steady growth. Between the ages of 3 and 7 (to the best of my knowlege) my family had attended a Nazarene church, which is generally very shallow and has some beliefs which I would certainly disagree with today, such as losing one's salvation. But I remember asking my father at about 5 years old and wondering if I was one of God's "chosen ones." I was afraid that I wasn't and wouldn't be able to go to heaven and wanted to search that out. He pretty much brushed off the question at the time. I'm not sure why I asked that because the church there certainly didn't teach that God chooses and saves people. I think it was evidence of an inward spiritual growth and a desire to find out more about God.

Soon after this, my family began to meet in houses with several other families and to listen to sermons on tape. I certainly learned a lot during that period and know that it was a time of great spiritual growth for my parents as well, as they began to instruct us kids at home. As I look back on my life though, I was a pretty good kid on the outside, but on the inside (and out of sight of my parents) I was mean, sarcastic, and prideful. I remember talking with a lot of children there and we would goof around and generally be foolish, and one of the verses I read in Matthew really struck home at that time. Matthew 12:35 "for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."

I told the other kids there about this passage and how we would be judged by what we said. I think that was an important point in my spiritual growth, as I tried more and more to actually live a godly life and not just say I believed in God.

It has been much a steady growth from there as I would ask questions and try to pay attention in church and listen. About 2004 I really started to look at the Bible in more depth (though I'd been reading parts of it ever since I could remember) and to study theology for my own. I remembered liking A.W. Pink's "Attributes of God" which my father had read to us many years before and I actually had some of Pink's books on my computer and started reading them. I don't think he is the best theologian but he certainly inspired me to study more for myself and he was God's instrument to "set me on fire."

When I was young I used to think that heaven would be very boring, people just sitting up there all day with nothing to do. Forever. To a six year old, that just doesn't sound fun but as I grew older I realized that what the Bible says of heaven is much more than just "not going to hell." It's fellowship with God, it's learning more about him than I could ever learn here on earth, and it's a closer relationship than I could ever have here. Everything that I think of as being good here, is but rags in comparison with that. I believe in Jesus Christ as my God and my Saviour and he has promised me that if I will believe in him and place my faith and trust in him and turn from my sin, that I will be saved, and will be with God forever. I know that there is nothing I can do to earn my way to heaven because God's requirement is perfection, and nothing impure shall ever enter heaven. It is only through Jesus Christ, who died on the cross and took my sins upon him, and transferred his righteous deeds to me, that God looks at me as though I had lived the life Jesus had! And punished Jesus for all my sins. Sin must have a punishment, and Jesus took that punishment that I justly deserve and changed my heart and he can do that for anyone who believes upon his name and turns away from their sin and asks for forgiveness.