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I learned firsthand that God loves everyone. | |
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I would like to give my testimony.
In California, I grew up in the World Wide Church of God. From first glance, it looks like a normal sounding church. That could not be more contrary to the truth. Ironic is the best way to describe the title. The Pastor of the church believed himself to be a prophet of God. Receiving his revelation early in his life as an advertising agent, he knew how to spread his “word.” My Mom and Dad had never known anything different so they taught me what they thought was right. They taught me a distorted Christianity. A Christianity that said God sat up in heaven keeping a tally of the good and bad things we did. It wasn’t that we had to go to church on Saturdays, or that we had to keep Jewish holy days that affected my view of God. Not being able to eat unclean foods didn’t affect my view of myself. It was the fact that I just completely missed hearing the
gospel. No one told me about the Jesus Christ who loved me so much that he gave up his freedom so that I could have freedom. A life filled with good works and doing things to please God is what I had. Along with my forming theology, there were also people in my life that drastically affected my self-esteem and my view of God. One person in particular was my elementary school counselor Mr. Perkin. Taking special interest in me, I was asked to come to his office everyday after school to help him clean his office. He made me do a lot more than just clean his office and they were things that a second grader should never have to experience. My childhood and innocence had been stolen away from me from a man that was supposed to be a guide. Taken along with my innocence was my self-esteem, self-worth and my ability to relate to men. I began to trust people and God less and less. I questioned everyone’s motives and decided that I shouldn’t have to give anyone anything. I was all I had. Immersing myself into books, writing and playing the piano, I shut the world out as much as I could. Despite everything, I can look back now and see God through every step. I can see God leaving his footprints. I had two of the greatest set of parents I could ever ask for. My mom taught me to treat people different from me the same as everyone else. She showed me an unconditional kindness toward everyone she met. The life she lived before me did not go unnoticed. My dad’s life also didn’t go unnoticed. He gave to anyone that needed it. Even before his business became successful, he was giving whatever he had. It gave me the small piece of hope that there was more to life than my own suffering. My Mom and Dad were the only thing that kept me alive. I was deeply shaken when I turned 12 because the pastor of our church was starting to realize that the church’s doctrine had been seriously wrong. We had just moved across the country to Indianapolis so I was already trying to adjust to a new house, new town and new school. Now I was dealing with the knowledge that for the past 12 years everything taught to me about church was wrong. It was a hard reality to come to. Blaming my parents didn’t sound right, so I blamed God. I blamed him for letting me go through what I did, and I blamed him for allowing my family and me to be deceived for so long. After I yelled and screamed at God and I didn’t feel like I was getting an answer, I decided that God didn’t exist at all. I had met my friend Meghann right when things we starting to get tense. She was my very first real friend. She was the only person in my new school that gave me the time of day. Because of the status you had in my life, I listened and believed everything she said to me. She made fun of me. She made fun of the way I dressed, the music I listened to, my clumsiness, and everything else that made me, me. She always tells me that she was joking, but she never let up and gave me a compliment. She never once complimented me. So, I believed her. She made me feel like I was a person who didn’t deserve to have anything. I didn’t deserve people’s praise or love because that’s what she made me believe. So I started hanging out with people that gave me acceptance. People that didn’t question why I am the way I am. So I started doing the things that they were doing. I started drinking with them, and smoking pot with them. At that point, God was just a name in a book that sat on my mom’s bookcase. My parents had stopped going to church and I didn’t believe in God anyway. After all, I religion had already burned me once. So depression set in deeper and deeper, the worse I felt the more I drank. I was only 14 and I was sneaking out of the house to go drunk with my friends. But God was working. Looking back, I can see that God was using certain situations to bring me to Him. At the beginning of my first year of high school, my older brother Nathan started going to the Christian church down the road. He would come home every Sunday afternoon excited about what he was hearing. My parents were starting to like what they were hearing too, so they started going with him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything else like it. My entire family changed almost over night, but I was still too deep in depression to take to heart anything. At least until one day when God revealed himself through a man I had never met before or seen since. I had just gotten off the school bus so my mom wasn’t home yet. At that point of my life, I was so depressed that I was willing to do just about anything to make the pain go away. Willing enough that ending my life was the only way I could see out. We lived off a busy street, so I left a small note and went out to the road. I waited until I could see a car off in the distance and when I saw one, I stood in the middle of the road waiting for it to come. The man driving towards me barely saw me before it was too late, so he served out of the way right into a tree. The man knew what I was doing and immediately jumped out of his car unharmed and came over to me. He looked at me as if I was his own child and said, “I don’t know your story, but I know that you deserve to be loved by someone.” He pulled out a book and handed it to me. “If you don’t think anyone loves you, you are dead wrong because someone does more than anyone in the world ever will.” He pointed at the book, got in his damaged car and drove away. God revealed himself to me that day. He showed me his unconditional love and he showed me that I wasn’t alone. It was then that I began to read his word, and trust Him. I started going to church with my parent the Sunday after that happened. My parents in the meantime had been very patient with their rebellious daughter. They could however see that I was really starting to understand the truth about Jesus but knew I couldn’t make the change on my own. They were smart enough to see that the public school I was in was not doing good things for me. I realized then that my parents are the smartest people in the world. I was getting horrible grades and hanging out with the wrong crowd. I didn’t know it at the time but my parents were conspiring against me a plan for my next school year (sophomore year). In the meantime, I finally decided that I was ready to give my life to Christ. On April the 3rd 1997, my mom and I were baptized together. I knew then that I was going to be in for the ride of my life. A few weeks later my parents announced that I was going to be transferred to a Christian high school and I was going to spend the entire summer in Africa on a mission’s trip. I was not excited about the news. I was still having severe trust issues with God and with my relationships so I didn’t think I was ready to embark on such a “spiritual” trip. My view of God was still not quite right. Following Christ wholeheartedly was something I wanted to do more than anything but I just wasn’t sure how to do it. I still saw God as someone who wanted me to do certain things in order for me to gain salvation. Perfection was something I knew I couldn’t achieve. My only previous exposure to the church was the legalistic one I grew up knowing. Struggling with my faith, I packed up and spent 3 months in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The summer changed my life forever. I had to sleep on the ground, eat nasty food and walk a half mile to a dirty pond just for a bucket of water so I could take a bath. All of those luxuries weren’t the reason I changed. I spent the entire summer with 31 Christians who were my own age. They were people that accepted and loved me because I am a child of God and their sister in Christ. God revealed himself through those people. I saw God’s unconditional love lived out through my very eyes. I was also starting to understand what grace really is. I saw the way the Africans lived and how they were extremely happy and content, yet hardly had anything. God used what my mom had taught me about treating everyone the same because it gave me an unexplainable intense love and burden for those people. I knew that God loves them just as much as he loves me. God was showing me his grace, mercy, compassion and his use of bad situations for a greater purpose. My testimony on that trip helped many of the girls on my team. Growing up the way I did helped me to relate to some of them. I was able to show them how God was changing me and showing me his nature. I remember reading Philippians chapter 2 and having a deep desire to follow what it said. I was praying for God to help me have a servant attitude so that I could influence other people. Serving other people and sharing Christ was starting to become a deep conviction of mine. Sitting under a tree one morning during devotions, God came to me in a little boy that was washing his clothes on a rock. The little boy came over and smiled at me and God told me that I was going to serve people like that the rest of my life. I came home that summer a completely different person. My priorities lied in things that I was reading in the Bible. I was even keeping my room neater. I think my parents kept checking to see if they had picked up the wrong kid from the airport. I had a huge heart for Christ and was ready to tackle any task he put before me. I was well intentioned, but I didn’t know anything about the Bible. My Mom and Dad knew about as much as I did, so I was really searching for someone to give me some guidance. I started going to Covenant Christian High school my sophomore year. I was required to take 4 years of Bible to graduate so I began really immersing myself into studying God’s word. God continued to reveal himself through my Bible teacher’s and my best friend’s mom. I met Laura in biology (which I had failed the year before) class. We became best friends and so I started to go to her house all the time. Her mom Noreen was very interested in my story and so she invested her time into discipling me. She taught me how to live by the Spirit and how to trust God for little things. I was starting to make an all around change in my personality and my morals. I was making better decisions and starting to get better grades. My Economics teacher Mrs. Price helped my self-esteem out tremendously. She helped me see that I was worth everyone’s time and that I really had something to say. She showed me what kind of a person I was in Christ. My sophomore and senior Bible teacher Mr. Hudson helped me learn that God takes joy in having a personal relationship with us. My junior Bible teacher Mr. Nurre gave me a fire and passion for learning about God’s word. I learned about God in every class that I took. Covenant gave me knowledge of the Word and it combined with my passion. I made such a huge change in high school that my youth minister started to have me teach junior high Sunday school. Those 3 years shaped my Christian worldview and gave me Godly adults that I could look to for spiritual guidance. I stopped wondering where God was and started to trust him. I understood grace and that I am not being weighed and measured with all that I do. Throughout high school, I continued to go on mission trips during the summer. I went to 15 countries in all and I learned something about God in each one of them. I really grew the summer after I graduated because I led a team of junior high kids to Israel for a summer to do mission work. In the midst of not getting any sleep, I learned to have patience and tolerance and I learned firsthand that God loves everyone. I came home changed again and started going to Lincoln Christian College. I have been here about a year and a half and I have really been challenged to have better self-esteem and to love people unconditionally. A good friend of mine my first year here started out the school year completely on fire for Christ, and ended up dropping out, having sex with lots of people and almost killing herself. It really shook me up and made me question whether we can lose our salvation. I really struggled over that issue but my SFG leader has helped me to see that I should not worry about it, but continue to serve people the way I have beeb\n. God continues to put wonderful people in my life and he shows himself through them. I’d like to end reading an excerpt from a recent journal entry that I wrote. This journal entry really shows how I stand today spiritually and where I wish to go. I copied a quote I read in a C.S Lewis book and then gave my thoughts on it. February 10th, 2002 I have decided to make this quote my quote for the year. “"But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away "blindly" so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self -altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth you will, nine time of out ten, become original without ever having noticed. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit every fiber of your being and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." I think this quote can say something to any reader, non-Christian or Christian. I really want to experience self-discovery through Christ-colored glasses. I realize now that nothing else matters but the glorification of Christ through his Church. I want to live out what Philippians chapter 2 says about imitating Christ. I can’t begin to say that I’ve reached the point of self-satisfaction in this idea of denying myself. That may be the point but I know that I can’t accomplish it in this lifetime. However, I do know that is it is the process that counts. It is the process that we go through to get to that point. It is our heart, our motivations, our desires and our struggles. I really want to set aside my life, my desires and the like so that I may accomplish all that Christ has set before me. I want to give myself completely to Christ and do nothing that does not involve serving Him. He is what matters.
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