My Testimony As A Christ Follower
As far back as I can remember, I knew of God. God placed me in a home that religiously acknowledged Him and attempted to reckon themselves with Him. It was helpful to start out in a family culture that was free from apparent idols and at least acknowledged God’s actual existence. I have much to be grateful for in that way.
When I was six years old, my parents had moved across the country and began attending a Gospel preaching church. I am told, somewhere in my early childhood between six and eight years old, I accepted Jesus as my Savior and “prayed to ask Jesus into my heart.” Try as I may, I can not remember this moment.
Around ten years old, I acknowledged my simple testimony of faith in Jesus before the church and was baptized. I verbally agreed with the Pastor that I knew Jesus was the Son of God who came to earth to save His people. He lived a perfect life and then willingly suffered and died in my place, to pay the price for my sin. Three days later He conquered death and came back to life. Because of Jesus, I am saved.
With a relatively new found faith in Jesus of his own, my dad began attempting to lead our family through Bible study and Scripture memorization. My memories of the resistance he encountered from the family are no less than astonishing!
Plowing through, he must have had some level of success at consistency because at one point in my young life I had the entire chapters of Romans 8, Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 13 memorized. No doubt, some of those early teachings continue to help me even today. I am forever grateful for his fumbling faithfulness.
Although God was most certainly present and working in our home, there was still profoundly rooted immaturity, bitterness and rebellion equally present. Life was privileged in many ways but complicated, selfish and sometimes downright tragic.
For myself, I had faith in Jesus but continued to live as self-focused as they come. I was angry, hurting and confused. A dramatic repeating cycle of ‘rebel and repent’ defined my teen and early adult years.
But God was ever present and gave me tools I didn’t yet know how to use. He was patient and waited for me to understand my need for Him. The day came when I finally found the end of myself. I was twenty-five years old, empty, broken and genuinely repentant. Much like the Parable of the Prodigal Son described in Luke 15:11-32, I came to God with nothing, and He gave me everything.
Only God knows if I was actually saved as a girl. I don’t know if my moments with God in those early years were merely His faithful pursuit of me, or if I actually knew Him, but was in an ugly long, easily distracted process of weeding out sin. I look forward to Him clarifying that story for me someday. Whichever the case may be, He ultimately won me by His love.
The last thirty years have been an extended series of privilege and trials. Throughout, God has been faithful to direct and draw me to Himself. He continues to build my faith in Him. He is teaching me to love as He loves and to serve as He serves, though I have yet to do either perfectly.
Recalling these life events, these early encounters with the one true living God, I am in awe. Only God knows the depravity He pulled me from. He knows it all and yet while I was still stuck and covered in my constant sin, He chose to love me and save me.
To God alone be the glory!
I would dearly love to hear of God’s faithfulness to you. We glorify God in the sharing. And we encourage each other to press on in humbled gratefulness.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks