Before I share anything else on this blog, I’d like to share the story about how I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior. I love hearing the testimonies of others because I think God gets so much glory and it is always a huge encouragement to me, so I would like to share my story.
I grew up in a family where God was never really the first priority. My mom enrolled me in Vacation Bible School over the summer when I was really young, and we would occasionally go to church. There were brief periods in my life where at least my mom and I would attend church regularly. But throughout this time, I believe that I had some kind of demonic presence in my life (I believe that I was possessed but it’s also possible I could have just been horrifically oppressed). I remember waking up in the middle of the night one time as a kid and desecrating a New Testament for no good reason that my grandmother had given me. And throwing temper tantrums about going to church on Sundays when we did go (unless it was my 2nd grade Sunday School class because my teacher was one of my favorite school teachers). My mom once told me that she would come in as I was sleeping as a child and hear me in what sounded like “evil sounding gibberish”.
When I was 8, I decided that I wanted to get baptized. Not because I had accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and had truly understood what I had done (apparently I had, but I have no memory of it, and was only doing it because I knew that I had to in order to get baptized). I just thought the idea of being dunked into a pool sounded cool, and I also wanted to be able to drink grape juice in church and knew that I had to be baptized before I could do that. However, the church we went to was one of those churches that has an “age of accountability” before a person gets baptized, and I was not to that age yet. It was probably a good thing that I didn’t get baptized then because at that point I didn’t understand Christ’s sacrifice nor did it didn’t mean anything to me.
My adolescence was rough. I was picked on in school, and I was really angry about it, but most of the anger was unjustified. When I was in the 5th grade, I started dabbling into the occult, playing with an old Ouija board and playing other occult games that are common at sleepovers. While I didn’t notice it at the time, it was also around that time that the evil/demonic activity in my life stepped up. I was a lot angrier, but it would get to the point where I felt like I was outside my own body doing horrible stuff to people and that I didn’t understand why. Like it wasn't me doing it, but it was and I had no excuse. But I felt like I had to do it anyway, even if I didn't want to, so I did. I'll spare you the specifics on what some of those things were. I’d feel hate against people for no good reason (even people I was supposed to love), and I’d fantasize about ways that I could tear them down.
Simultaneously, I went through several phases in my spirituality. I did go to church throughout some of this time, but it was never without a fight. I’d go hide in the bathroom to avoid having to go to Sunday School, or pitch a fit outside for everyone to see, and it was such an embarrassment to my parents that they stopped making me go altogether. There was one point where I truly and honestly believed that I was the center of the universe and everyone and everything around me was there for me and my benefit, including other people. Then I went through a phase where I called myself an atheist and completely rejected the idea that there was even a God (I didn’t actually believe this, though). After that, I decided that I wanted to be Wiccan and so I bought a book where I could learn to cast spells and manipulate my own environment. I thought maybe I could curse all of the people I hated and make their lives miserable that way. I also thought that I could make guys who I liked that didn’t pay attention to me (I didn’t seemed to be noticed much by guys in the 9th grade) fall in love with me. However, none of that really worked for me and nothing changed so I got out of that phase, and from then until my freshman year of college, I just decided that I didn’t care about anything having to do with God. I was young and invincible. I could worry about that later. And I told myself that I was happy.
But I wasn’t. People stopped picking on me in high school, especially towards the end, but I was still full of unjustified hate and bitterness. I had a few really good friends, but I never felt like I fit in anywhere except with those few people. I wanted to be well-liked and admired. I had this inane desire for people to envy me, and if it wasn’t fulfilled I wasn’t satisfied. And it wasn’t fulfilled at all. People didn’t envy me. Instead, parents didn’t want their children to have anything to do with me because I was such a poor influence, and those people themselves saw right through me into all the ugliness inside and avoided me. Some of it may have all been in my head, too, because I was constantly paranoid. But many didn’t know about the inner-turmoil inside of me, because I kept it to myself and tried to pretend like I was ok. There was something missing in my life, and a huge gap inside my heart. When guys finally did start to pay attention to me around my sophomore year of high school, these guys became the thing that would fill the gap where I was empty and hurting. I always had to have a boyfriend to make me happy. And if I lost one, I’d have to go find a replacement in order to be happy again.
I went off to college thinking that it was a fresh start and that I could completely reinvent myself and then everything would be ok. In some ways I did reinvent myself. I told myself that I would be open-minded towards people, and I made more efforts to reach out and try to make friends. I even pledged a sorority my spring semester of my freshman year, excited that I had been “accepted” into a group of people. However, the same core issues of my heart where there, and I still felt myself harboring random hate in my heart that had no explanation. I felt like a slave to it. I also still had to have a boyfriend to be happy about myself. But it was here, in this new openness where I met and observed so many Christians who were sincere people and were genuine about their faith. I never attended their ministry events or attended their Bible studies that year, but their lives silently spoke to my heart in ways that would later prepare me to have my own encounter with the living God!
Everything changed in the summer and fall of 2003. I was beginning my sophomore year of college. Over the spring and summer, I had three near-death experiences. One involved hydroplaning and a semi running me off the road (which nearly sent me into oncoming traffic), then a car accident exactly a month later (into the path of a tornado) where the car I was riding in flipped and there probably should have been serious injuries. Miraculously, no one was hurt, and we were able to get out of that path before it hit. Then a little over a month later, I got really sick and wound up in the hospital a few times. These events acted as a wake-up call to my mindset on invincibility, and made me realize how fragile my life was. If I had died, how would people have remembered me? Where would I go after I died? Deep down, I knew the answer to that question, that it deeply disturbed me inside.
I felt very convicted about all the horrible thoughts that felt owned me, and all of the horrible things I had done to different people throughout the years. I had always felt like this stuff defined me and that there was no hope that I could be anything else. I mentioned earlier that I believe I had a demonic presence in my life …I didn’t really know anything about demons or how they could inflict people that at the time, but I also felt like, while those actions and thoughts defined me, that I didn’t understand completely where they came from and what motivated me to want to think and do these irrational things. It was like an urge that I couldn’t explain, and it would come out of nowhere. I felt like a complete slave to my thoughts and actions, and I wanted to be set free.
It was one crisp afternoon in October of 2003 (at least I think it was October…I can’t remember the exact day; I just remember how I felt that day). The library was having a used book sale, and I was on the way back from my Calculus class. I like to read, and I wanted to find something to read outside since it was such a nice day. As I was browsing the books, suddenly I felt an urge which was similar to the kind of urges normally I felt in that it was completely unexplained, but at the same time completely different because the urge was of a completely different nature. Rather than feeling the compulsion to do something mean or hateful, I had the urge to buy and read a book about Jesus! I found a book by Bob George called Classic Christianity: Life’s too Short to Miss the Real Thing for 25 cents, and so I bought it and began to read it on a grassy embankment under a grove of trees right over by the library.
It was literally as if shackles had fallen from my eyes! (Acts 9:18) I felt like the Apostle Paul did after he had been blind for three days and could suddenly see again!
The author explained how the Bible says that EVERYONE has sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23), and that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23; not just physical death but also eternal separation from God). Wow! I had always had this idea that being a Christian was about not sinning and that the only people who could be right with God were those who hadn’t screwed up. The reason that people died and went to heaven is because they had lived a good like and been a good person (which I knew was already beyond me because I had been a bad person). But now, I realized that I was no worse than anyone else. Everyone was just as guilty as me in God’s eyes. In a way, this to me was good news because before I had felt so alone and beyond hope. But now I knew I wasn’t. If everyone is guilty, then there must be some way that we can be reconciled with God, right? After all, some people claim that they know they’re going to heaven.
I kept reading….”but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 6:23 contd.). Eternal life was a gift? Again, I thought it was something I had to earn by being good, or maybe since I now knew that everyone was guilty of sin, something I could now earn by being good from that point on. But a gift? A gift is not something that a person could earn, like a wage. This was truly good news indeed! But how could I have this gift? And what did Jesus have to do with it?
The author then shared the story of Jesus coming to earth as the Son of God, living a blameless life, dying on the cross, and then being resurrected on the third day. And that by this sacrifice, God accepted it as payment for our sins so that we could freely receive salvation as God’s gift. Romans 5:8 says that “God demonstrates His own love for us, in that while we were STILL SINNERS, Christ died for us”. It was the same story that I had heard countless times at a younger age in Sunday School and VBS. Before, I had always thought it to be nothing more than a nice story, but now this story was powerful. It had personal meaning to me. It meant that after all the horrible stuff that I had done to people both in my actions and in my thoughts and after all the horrible things I had said against God Himself, that he could still forgive me! I could be made clean! Why wouldn’t I want this gift?
Revelation 3:20 says “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If ANYONE hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him”. I knew that I was hearing God calling to me. It was something I couldn’t resist. All my preconceived notions of being a believer in Christ were completely shattered. It wasn’t about being a good person or being legalistic (“don’t do this, don’t do that”). God wasn’t keeping a tally of all the good and bad things that I had done in my life! He had sent his Son so that I could be forgiven! It was only a natural outpouring of my heart to cry out to the name of Jesus, asking for His forgiveness and asking Him to come into my life and be my Savior (Romans 10:9,10,13). It wasn’t a prayer that I was reading off a page, or repeating after a pastor; it was a heartfelt cry of my soul!
From then-on, my life was truly changed! No longer did I feel unexplained extreme emotions of hate or urges to hurt people. It was replaced with joy! I wanted to go around and tell everyone about this awesome discovery that I had just made!! I no longer felt like I was a slave to all of the sinful things that I had done, but that I was set free. This spirit that I constantly felt torturing my soul over all these years had gone! I will admit that I still feel it try to come back into my life and try to take over again (especially when I am going through a stressful time), but it can't and it never has because I have victory in Jesus Christ!! Over time I discovered that I no longer needed antidepressants. I was truly free! I had this outpouring of my spirit to want to do good things, not as a means of earning favor with God, but because I love God and want to bring Him glory. It was affirmed in my spirit that I was truly a new creation in Christ! (2 Corinthians 5:17). It wasn't like I never got mad or never met a person I didn't get along with again, but that behavior or thought pattern no longer owns me like it used to. Instead it has been replaced with a gentler, more quiet spirit, that is closer in resemblance to the Lord Jesus Christ!
I started reading the Bible, and learned so much about who God was and what I could expect as a new believer. I felt led to ask lots of people who I had hurt for forgiveness. God still reveals news situations and asks this of me 5 years after the fact. I see all sorts of God’s promises being fulfilled in my life. I made many new friends in my new faith, and lost some of my old ones who were less accepting of the change in my life. I’ve seen God work all sorts of miracles. After much prayer He healed my underactive thyroid, which I was told was something that I’d I’d have the rest of my life!!
Not everything changed in my life overnight. For example, it took me a while to break the habit of always having to have a boyfriend. I was no longer feeling an insatiable need to have that in my life, because now the presence of God in my life filled the gap that I was feeling in my heart. But I was just used to always having someone around, and didn’t want to give that up right away. But God has done a mighty work in my heart, and now I can say that I am satisfied as a single woman. Marriage is a desire of my heart still, but now I can truly say that I could go my entire life without ever being married and still find the same satisfaction in the Lord that I would feel married. I feel that God is calling me to be a missionary, so it’s possible that this may be a reality for me. One thing I do know for sure: God's plan will be the best plan!
There are still many works that God is doing in my life. An example of this is that after so many years of being cold towards most people, He’s been teaching me how to love people the same way that Jesus loves us; teaching me how to be compassionate and warm, how to share my heart and not just my judgments, and how to bear the burdens of others. I spent so many years being cold and closed to people I never took the time to get to know,but God is continually breaking me of old habits. I still have a long way to go, but I praise God for the work that He is doing within.
I could go on and on about how amazing God is! God can do the same work in your life as well. He loves you, and desires for you to love Him. Will you let Him in?
