My Testimony :)

Hello Everyone!

    Wow, I can't believe we haven't posted since June! Time's just flying. My sister's getting married in a couple of weeks so I've been busy with all that joyous wedding stuff! I also just haven't really had anything to share lately. Until now! There's this song that I hear on the radio pretty often, it's called "All This Time" by Britt Nicole. In the first part of the song she says :

"I remember the moment, I remember the pain. I was only a girl, but I grew up that day. Tears were falling, I know you saw me hiding there in my bedroom, so alone. I was doing my best, trying to be strong. No one to turn to, that's when I met you." I love this song, and the more I hear it the more it reminds me of how I really came to know God. So I thought I would share my testimony with you guys! That first part of the song, as cliche as it might sound, perfectly describes the moment I truly discovered the Lord.

   I grew up going to church and learning about Jesus, but I never fully understood it. The best way to describe how my relationship was with the Lord at the time would be to say that I had my "fire insurance." You may have heard this term before, but if you haven't, what it means is that I believed in God and I had asked Him to forgive me of my sins, and I knew I would be saved from going to Hell. But it was just a surface relationship, I didn't really get it yet. So when I was about fourteen I had been going through some difficult stuff, and the best way I knew how to deal with it was to shut down. Slowly I began to shut out my friends and my family, I didn't want to do anything or see anyone. I just wanted to sit in my room alone and wallow in my own self pity. I didn't understand life, I didn't want to live it anymore. What was the point? All life gives us is a bunch of pain and suffering, and then we die anyway. I had been having suicidal thoughts for a while, but I couldn't bring myself to actually do anything. So I prayed to God to take me away, I just wanted to be with Him, life on earth was pointless. Then one day when I was about sixteen my Dad had enough, so he started yelling at me about how I need to snap out of it and change my attitude. Although this only sent me to my room hating life even more, this time I decided to grab my Bible. I just sat on my bed for a while, looking at it and asking God to guide me to the right page. When I opened my Bible it was the book of Philippians, and the first verse I saw was Philippians 1:21, "For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." So I thought about it for a while. I understood the second part, it's what I'd been wanting for the past couple years. But the first part is what I needed to focus on. "To live is Christ." Then it came to me, like God was speaking to me Himself (which He was.) My whole purpose as a Christian while on this earth is to share the Lord with others. Christ died to save us, and when we accept Him as our savior His Spirit lives in us. Therefore, to live is Christ. At that moment all my confusion, my fear, and especially my anger was gone. God had revealed His purpose for my life to me, and for the first time I truly understood what being a Christian was all about. 

   So now here we are, two years later, I've finished high school and have now applied to YWAM to attend DTS next spring! Looking back now I feel so ashamed of the way I had been acting, but I also know that God used that time in my life to reveal Himself to me, and I couldn't be more grateful. Near the end of the song Britt says "I hear these people asking me, how do I know what I believe? Well I'm not the same me, and that's all the proof I need. I felt your love, I felt your grace, You stole my heart that day." I think that's the best proof of Christ we could ever share. People are always looking for "facts" because they need proof before they believe anything. But we have proof - our personal experience of God's love and grace towards us. Whether they believe it or not is up to them, but we're supposed to share it anyway. 

  I haven't really shared this much before, but I hope it's helpful. If any of you are going through a hard time and just don't see the point in going on anymore, don't let Satan trick you into thinking life is pointless. We're supposed to live our lives to honor the Lord and bring others to Him, but that's exactly what the enemy is trying to prevent. He's going to lose in the end, don't let him get the best of you. Stay strong in the Lord. :)