My Testimony

Some may know me well, some may know me not so well, either way, I think my testimony speaks very heavily and directly to many a person who has been raised in a Christian home. I pray that I may state what the Lord has done in my life in a way that causes you to turn to the Lord Jesus in true repentance and faith.

I was born and raised in maybe the strongest christian home I know. Three siblings who all pretty much got along incredibly well; two parents totally dedicated to raising their children in the way of the Lord the best they knew how, always willing to sacrifice all for us and always willing to teach and correct us in love. When I was 6 I began to attend a very, very strong Christian school that was and still is the most Christian 'Christian' school you'll find for 1st through 8th graders. In it, we read the bible literally everyday and were consistently taught the great truths of the Word of God. Before Christmas of my 6th year of life, our family sat down for an advent meeting; my father read a passage from Luke, I can't point to what the passage was exactly, but I know I was scared for the first time in my life for my soul. I went by my parents bed and lead by my parents I prayed what I guess is known as the 'sinners prayer'... I was not saved that day, and I know that only know looking back after 16 years of thinking I was. The words were all right, the intentions of my parent were right (although maybe a little bit to impatient to see their first son brought into the redeeming love of their Savior), but my heart was not changed and I certainly did not know what it actually meant to be transformed in my heart to serve the Lord Jesus Christ at that age. There was no counting the cost in my life nor desire to follow after Christ with all my heart, picking up my cross to follow Him.

Throughout most of my younger years, I certainly was the picture of a good Christian kid in many ways on the outside. I wanted to always please those in superior to me, I always wanted the favor of everyone around me, and the best way to have favor with people in a Christian community is to be a respectful, nice kid. In third grade I won the character award for my grade; I couldn't have been any happier. I knew this award meant that everyone thought I was such a great kid, my parents were extremely pleased, and I was all ecstatic to have some visible relic of the thing I desired more than anything else, the favor of men. However, when I was handed the award, someone told me: "Character is who you are when no one is looking." This began to weigh heavily on my heart, and I don't think it ever stopped weighing on my heart. For the first time in my life, I think I was convicted of my sin. Being the good Christian kid I was, this sin lay in the secret place, this fatality was right in my heart. When no one was looking, I was not obedient to my parents. When no one was looking, I was addicted to playing video games when my parents told me I could not. When no one was looking, I was indulging myself in all the things I was told not to. But on the outside, I was just a good a Christian kid.

1Samuel 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as man sees;for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

This was the ultimate reality of my life all the way up to my senior year in HS. I kept living and looking great to all those around me. I was smart, quick to understand God, and what He wanted and asks of us in the Bible, quick to assent to the belief in God in my mind, but none of it was in my heart. I suppressed the truth that my heart was as wicked as any murderer or adulterer, I suppressed the truth that I was entirely inclined to do none of the things God would have me do when I was out of sight of all other men. I served a god who I had created and formed in my head and in some crazy, blind way thought I served and lived for. I will tell you one thing I know about my human nature... My heart and mind are the greatest deceivers I have ever known. Satan has a hold on many a mind splitting the mind and heart, letting the mind believe God and serve Him, while keeping the heart utterly holding onto salvation in themselves, the love of the world and all that crucified Christ. What a terrible place to be in! Convinced thoroughly in your head that you have all that Christianity has to offer, but having a greater poverty of heart and soul than could ever be imagined.

Before my senior year in HS, I had one of the main idols in my heart rooted out. I loved playing sports, it was almost my entire identity in HS. I played 4 sports between my SO and JR year in HS, but before my SR year, I tore my acl in the third football practice of the year. All those things that I spent my time doing were taken away, and I was left to the loneliness and poverty of my heart for the first time. During those 6 months of recovery, the wretchedness of my sin-filled heart became more and more evident. Addiction to terrible things started to creep into my life, un-wanted and un-desired, but sin has a way of completely turning a man against himself... I believe without God and His sovereign grace, we are absolutely self-destructive, and I was certainly beginning to see this then. Half way into my senior year, I began for the first time in my life to actually search the Scriptures for myself. Starting in Proverbs 1, I began to actually read the bible for an answer. At Proverbs 23:26, I stopped: "My son, give me your heart and let your eyes follow my ways." That verse cut me to my heart, I wept several nights over reading that verse. I knew something was desperately wrong with my heart, but I had no idea how to give my heart to God. The truth was and is that most of the American 'church' has no idea what this means. I was duped into thinking I was as Christian as I possibly could be; no one told me that Christ required an entire repentance, turning from loving all the things that I love in this world to Christ. I thought slowly but surely I would just grow up in this Christian life as I slowly 'matured' in my walk. But not understanding and being blinded to the fact, that in Christ, I have my very life. Why are we so quick to gloss over Christ and His cross? This is everything. As a SR. in HS,I was convicted of my heart full of sin, but despite growing up in a bible-teaching church and home, no one was able to lead me to Christ. No one was willing to tell me that I actually needed to repent and be born of the Spirit, no one was willing to stand up and question my assurance of salvation despite the fact that the only assurance we are to have of Salvation is supposed to come from God and His Spirit testifying with our Spirit and our lives reflecting His work in us.

Why are we so quick to soften, yea even counter act the reproofs of the scriptures? I pray that we all look at the consequences of not hearing the reproofs of the word of God listed in Proverbs 1:24-33... "How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you."(Proverbs 1:23-24) Read on! These are our eternal souls we are dealing with, it is foolish not to think and ponder over these things.

I went on, thinking that in being sincere about sin with others, sincere about who I was, maybe I could figure this out. My life did not change one bit, I slowly slipped back into my comfortable 'Christian' life. By the time I went to college, I was excited about the opportunity to serve my god in college. I had even gone to China and back to share this god of mine with others, I thought I was starting to discover and get closer to God, but when I got alone, I was still desperately alone. I was empty. I was in complete denial of God in my heart, even though my head believed otherwise. In college, sincerely I pursued this god I had known in my head. I tried to read my bible, I tried to go out and pray. All the time living in sin, living in addiction to some terrible things. Proclaiming and professing Christ, while holding on with all my heart to so many things that I loved in this world. I did not want to go out and get drunk, but I certainly was not seeking God with all my heart, which is a prerequisite to finding God according to Jeremiah. I was a walking hypocrite, calling myself a follower of Christ, but having no cross to carry.

By the beginning of my Sophomore year of college, I was again confronted with my hypocrisy. Again, thinking I was still a Christian, I said to myself: "well, I will follow God, but I still want to have a girlfriend, popularity, and success and honor in men's eyes." This is utterly contrary to what the word of God teaches a follower of Christ should be, but every voice I heard that was a part of Christianity absolutely affirmed me, maybe subtly, but definitely affirmed me in my 'balanced' approach to my walk in Christ. It was not a matter of doing things, giving stuff away, even praying or reading my bible, no it went much deeper. I did all those things, I went on the mission trips, went to a Bible-preaching church, even did alot to defend my faith, read books, gave money and time to help people out... But deep in my heart, I was desperately addicted to this world, sin, self-righteousness, Christ was far from my heart. Its amazing to me, looking back on it, that I could think so absolutely little about Jesus Christ and still call myself a Christian. If we are not completely enamoured with Him and Him alone, we have missed Him; He is our very life if we are actually in Christ, "For you have died and your life is hid in Christ."

After a year of seeking self-gratification while giving total mental assent to the Lordship of Jesus in my life, I came to crashing, face-planting, halt at the end of my sophomore year. Everything fell apart, I was lost, broken, everything that I had made my idol ahead of Jesus was rent out of my life in violent succession. Yet, still, I had absolutely no inclination that Christ was not the center of my life, I had no idea that I had absolutely missed Jesus somehow after 20 years of hearing Him preached and taught by everything I was around. How is this possible? I am certainly foolish, but I have a hard time believing that someone did not soften the sword of the Word of God along the way when telling me about it. I fear more than anything, that I was no different at that time in my life than literally everyone I found myself around. Some people lived differently than I did, but there was no one who I knew that consumed themselves with Christ. The biggest and deepest roots of my heart at this point in my life were very literally ripped out, my heart lay open, oozing with self-pity, depression, and all kinds of stuff. I am sure many have known the sorrow of the heart when you realize that many of the pillars and pleasure you built your life on in this world were swiftly and easily knocked out from under you; what a terrible stat many of us live in!

I spent the next 6 or 7 months in state of some depression and some anguish, still living in terrible sin but unaware of the consequences of it. Total depravity had not quite set into control my life, but I was teetering on the edge. Everyone has their own secret sins if they know not Christ in their heart, mine began with laziness and spread into all kinds of addiction and up until the second semester of my JR year, I actually thought they were not that big of a deal, mostly because no one knew about them, or at least how bad they were. Finally, after not turning at all the rebukes and convictions that the Lord had sent my way over 4 years, I fell extremely hard on my face into a terrible addiction to gambling my second semester of my JR year (Spring of 2008). It began in laziness, luke-warmness, but in God's good mercy, He let me fall, fall and fall.

I don't even wanna tell you the depths to which I fell, the shame and desperation of a wicked heart is unbelievable. I fell and fell until a year later, after spending a semester out of school because of this addiction and many other spawns from it, I met someone who literally for the first time in my life showed me a different way. Somehow, after all this, I still thought of myself as a Christian, do you see the deceitfulness of the human heart? We are not saved by grace through faith to live in continual addiction and self-destructive behaviour in complete defiance to God, but instead to do the good works that God has prepared for us in advance. Christmas of 2008 I met a man who not just in word, but maybe even more so in earnestness and passion of heart showed me that there was much, much more to the Christian faith than I had been living out in my heart. From that day, I began to question my own salvation, sometimes not really worried about it, but still it was in my mind. "What this person has and what I have are absolutely, completely different, yet I call myself a Christian just like him." I began to listen to some salty preaching that my sister had given me, and although I was not convicted of just how desperately I needed Christ, I definitely started to see that I had certainly missed something growing up in this 'Christian' world that I had grown up in.

For the next half year or so, God began to lead me to a place where He could meet me. I was no different in regards to my sin, but God put me in a place where I was somewhat insulated from the devastating, numbing reality of a completely tossed away life, around godly people who were pursuing the Lord. Slowly but surely, I felt my heart being tugged away from the desperate hole that I had dug myself into. The life of self-destruction and sin was becoming more and more vile to me, yet, I was still stuck desperately in it. I tried and tried to resist the addictive nature and the sin that so easily beset me, but no power in me could do anything to stop it... Just as no power in me could crucify myself on a cross, I could not rid myself of the dead and sin filled me. One week, I became desperate. I said I was sick, but I was simply just sick of my soul and self. I saw in the trueness of light maybe just a glimpse of my heart and saw how desperately sick I was, the incurable sickness of death and sin was completely filling my heart. The addiction and sin was there in abundance, and the realization came to me how much God hated it. I was doing terrible things right in front of His eyes. Have you ever realized this? His law is holy and just, yet we are all transgressors of it. He cannot take us as we are, we are wretched, sinful, haters of God. I became fearful of God that week...

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.

On that Sunday, I came home from church completely broken. Got on my computer and watched a sermon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiZkicY0qj8
Maybe one of the simplest sermons you will find, just one godly man quoting word for word the sermon on the mount. The sermon on the mount has a couple of purposes, but maybe more than anything else, it is there to expound on the law of God and make it so that every man is absolutely, unequivocally condemned under it. for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. I was killed that day, completely utterly cut off from any hope of overcoming and saving myself. There is no way to describe to you what happened to me that day, but I know, I died with Christ on the cross. God took me as I totally and utterly repented and put me in with Christ so that I died. I died so that I could be raised in the newness of life. I died so that Christ could live in me and through me. I died, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I died so that I could live!

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.


Faith in Jesus Christ puts us into Christ. If our life is not radically different, if we do not have a hatred for sin, if we are not new creatures, then I have to ask, have we actually be born again? Its a terrible thing to miss one of the very first things Christ tells us in the Gospel of John. I hope we actually understand what it means to come to true repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, otherwise, all righteousness is as filthy rags before God, all our trying will get us no where and all the proclamations of preachers will do us no good. The Gospel is the be all and end all of our hope and life, if we have not really received and taken into our hearts, we have no life.

"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" (2 Corinthians 13:5) A great sermon on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky8dTyPpiAo

Do not trust in a prayer you prayed in 2nd grade. For: "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." (Matthew 7:21)

Ask yourself this simple question: Is Jesus precious to you? Unto you therefore which believe He is precious
Do you look to Him for your life? Is your life filled with Him, desiring His will and His holiness in your life? I pray that we fail not to search our own soul and lives to see if we really are in Faith.

And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)