My Testimony

Growing up in church all my life, I believed I had heard just about every sermon any pastor could muster up.  I listened to those sermons, as well as listened to Sunday School lesson after Sunday School lesson,  and genuinely tried to live up to what I heard.  After all, that was what church was for, right?  To be told how to live according to Christ and strive to be just like him? I was a model leader in our youth group; I was well liked, and felt very welcome among the young people of my church.  I loved the Lord, at least I thought I did.  It turned out I had fallen into a trap that many teens who get into church do.  I loved the approval, attention and comradery that came with a youth group who went on many activities and were very good friends.  My “salvation” was nothing more than a glorified, self-righteous after-school club and God’s grace isn’t needed for that.

Armed with this “righteousness,” I set out and found myself a wife straight out of high-school, and didn’t even wait until she grew up.  When she did, I found out she did so unfaithfully, and we were divorced after two years of marriage.  My oldest son was conceived during this trying time, and I was distraut.  How could God let this happen?  I had followed Him all my life!  It wasn’t fair!  There were many nights I spent alone, screaming in my mind, sometimes screaming out loud.  I was angry at God, and it would take some time before I would even think about going back to church.  This isn’t how it should be.

My two loving grandparents took me in.  They helped me get on my feet; even pay off a car that had been repossessed during my “marriage.”  I worked for a roofing company, and “lived.”  I worked, I ate, I showered, and slept.  I did it over and over again, just “living.”  Suddenly I heard my son, Dakota, had been born, and had been taken by DHS because drugs had been found in his system.  I played the game, I did the visitations, and I got my son.  It was the first real thing I had to do since my divorce.  I was learning to cope. 

Later, I met my wife, Karen, who Dakota giggled at the first night he met her.  He was only 4 months old and I had never heard him laugh like that before.  Karen and I were married a year later.  During this time, I started attending church sparatically, even after Karen and I got married, I still didn’t attend very regular.  I continued to go, eventually regular enough that I found myself enjoying the “approval” of it all again.  I started leading a group called AWANAs on Wednesday nights in my church.  I started listening to what the pastor of the church had to say on Sundays.  Eventually I started noticing a common verse appearing over and over again, a verse that rose up in my memory more often than not when things about me got quiet.   “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.  Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’  And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’(Matthew 7:21-23)  The Lord was showing me that all I had ever did in His name, I did for the wrong reasons.  Though I “lived my life for Him” my motives were wrong.  It was then I realized how the Lord looked at the heart.  I was just as lost as someone who had never heard about Christ.  And I had wasted so much time.  There, in my car, on my way home from work, I prayed that God forgive me for my sins.  Because I had sinned for so long.  I was using God as the reasons I did everything I wanted to do and justify it whether it was wrong or right.  I was angry at God and had no right to be.  I was just getting what my own selfish, sinful flesh wanted, and I was tired of getting what I deserved.  I wanted grace, and God was there to give it. 

There was no light that came down from Heaven.  There was no voice I heard with my ears.  There was only a stirring in my heart, and a new love and respect I found for God who had loved me and forgiven me.  There wasn’t an immediate change, but over time I realized my desires were different.  Sin no longer had its appeal – it no longer felt good to my flesh.  I had a new desire, although it was a growing desire (I didn’t change overnight) and the more I read of the Bible the more I realized I must be closer to God.  He must be my Lord completely, nothing less would do, and it never will.