The power and encouragement in sharing our testimonies comes from seeing how God has moved in our very unique lives in very personal ways to deliver us from judgement through our faith in Jesus Christ, in his blood shed on the cross for our sins, in his death and resurrection. Because He lives, we also have new life.
Please post your own story of coming to faith in Jesus Christ. If you have a testimony of answered prayer, that would be appropriate here, too.
Dear Readers, please keep in mind that this is a devotional thread.
In 1 Peter 3:15 we are exhorted to “always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is in you.”
Please share your testimony or answered prayer here.
God has blessed you with a second chance
this past year btwn the cancer/chemo/radiation, China19 threat, major abdominal surgery and almost a month in hospital, i really dint know if/think i’d even be here today...
but by the grace of God and the prayers of my FReeper family i too have been given a second chance
may God bless
From a molested and abused child, to a suicidal teenager, to a man who has everything, God, through His Personifications as Jesus Christ, God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Great Unmanifest, has delivered me to joy in this world (I wish everyone could have a life as fabulous as mine!) and realisation of the immortality and eternal joy of the soul--mine and that of everyone.
Thanks to Him, I am exquisitely happy--and fortunate--in this life and looking forward to the life to come.
The root of my testimony centers upon my “Daddy” and no I have never called him that. He grew up in our small community with his mother being the one that took him to church. He married my mother and they began to live the typical farm life. When I was nine, I witnessed my Dad and Mom give their lives to Christ. From there, it has been a lifetime walk with Christ for Dad and Mom and Dad’s 50 years of commitment to the community and the church. Not as a minister, but just a constant example of what a life for Christ is all about.
I believe it was seeing my Dad go all in for Christ and his family that led me to make my commitment to Christ 2 years later at almost 12 years of age. I think also, for me, God knew it would take my actual eyewitness of my Dad’s commitment to be a constant reminder for me in my life.
I enjoyed the typical teenage life, with all its tempations and indulged in some of them, as they would say ‘walking right up to the edge’. But I took a more serious turn in my relationship with the Lord as I headed to college, thus avoiding going over the edge. I completed college and headed back home to farm and live. I met the right woman with the right family (the inlaws) at the right time, married and had my own family. So, I have lived and worshipped at the same church along side my parents for all these years.
All this sounds idyllic, but like most charts, the more one examines, the more ups and downs and fluctuation you see. My life with the Lord has been a constant introspection, even after years of being saved and following Christ, that I have deep wonder and despair at times, that Christ would give his life for not just me, but for even me. His grace and mercy are unimagineable.
Again, I know the Lord could overcome it all, but I shudder to think at times, what I could have become, knowing myself, if I had not had that Dad’s example and making my commitment to Christ at my young age. I think I could have gone mighty low without that happening early on.
Whether coming to Christ early on or going through so much, like so many do and then experiencing salvation, God is there making the commitment to us. Thank you, Dad and thank you Jesus for all you have done for me.
In this introspective walk with the Lord, I seem to always have the burden for others and what they are going through. I try to go where led or who the Lord brings to me (he does) and attempt to provide some peace and friendship. In a way, again, make a commitment like my Dad did for himself and his family. The final point would be, that if you are a boy, man, or Dad that is reading this and have not accepted the Lord, give your life to Him. He will take it from there.
I got saved through a failed relationship with a guy I was very much in love with. He was more interested in someone else.
I was devastated and considered and dismissed the options of psychiatric help, and the fleeting thought of ending it all.
I too, was raised Catholic, but one did not just talk to God casually, and besides, I had not been to church in years.
One day, in despair, I prayed and told God “If You can straighten out this mess of a life of mine, You can have it. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll even become a missionary and go to Africa, because I’d rather be happy doing what you want than keep on going the way I am.”
I remember it like it was yesterday, and that was back in 1977, 44 years ago.
Through a series of circumstances that I now look back and see how God worked in my life, I ended up working with a Christian who witnessed profusely, and when he explained about asking Jesus into your heart as an act of your will, I thought “That’s it! That’s what I want! Jesus, I don’t know what it means to ask You in as an act of my will, but I will You in!”
After that, without anyone instructing me of all things I was supposed to do as a Christian, I thought *I need to start going to church. And I need to start reading the Bible, and giving. Where on earth do I buy a Bible?*
The Holy Spirit led me in all that I needed to do.
Your testimony was quite impactful to me...and thank God/Christ that He was able to guide you through your challenge.
My testimony is not nearly as intense although it was truly life changing and allowed me the strength to protect my two daughters from satanic evil after my wife, literally “the girl next door” had lost a battle to breast cancer at 28.
God bless you, Carbine!
Thanks for making this thread and sharing your testimony. Encouraging others to do the same is a powerful thing.
My first encounter with the Lord was as a small child. Due to the influence of my parents and Sunday school teachers, I came to understand my need to be saved from my sin, and I asked Jesus to come into my life. I had only a very basic understanding of this, but God has been faithful to work in me over the years and to teach me His word.
When I was younger I thought that the Christian life would be one where I felt a sense of accomplishment as I made progress in learning and doing the things God wanted me to do. Even though I can see some progress and changes, I’ve found that what has grown is my sense of inadequacy and failure. God has brought me through many trials and temptations as well.
This process never quits being painful, but I have found that even though things may not get easier, when Christ is with you, you will get stronger. Perhaps this comes from learning to rely on His strength rather than our own.
I was a teen during the 60’s and very much a member of “The Woodstock Generation”. Being and artist and a musician also placed me in the midst of drugs, free sex, and leftist politics. There was something in me that knew I was a lost soul, but that only caused me to sink deeper into nihilism, leftism, eastern mysticism, witchcraft, and self-hatred.
My husband and I married at 19, and were dirt poor. Since the only vehicle we could afford at the time was a motorcycle, I learned to drive on two wheels. A female biker who could ride on her own was unusual back then so, I got some respect and self-esteem from that, as well as being the front-(wo)man for a rock/blues band. So I was immersed in two somewhat sinful worlds, as a biker and rock musician, with all the stuff that went with that.
In 1981, my husband had a “Damascus Road” experience on a curvy road in Boston called “The Jamaicaway”. While he didn’t crash the bike, God gave him a vision of where he would go IF he did. It was shortly after that we both came to the Lord in a Pentecostal Church outside of Boston. Of course, I quit the Blues Band and got swept right into the Music Ministry, probably before I was mature enough to handle it.
Anyway, we went through some really difficult times, including church splits, false accusations, family issues, etc, and we finally moved away from Boston (for a job that never materialized) to Florida.
In Florida, things went well for a while, but then, due to a hideous bout of depression my husband took his own life exactly 10 years ago tomorrow. At the time, we didn’t have a church because we were so disillusioned, but We still had our faith in Jesus. About a year before my husband’s death, I had joined FR and started the Jerusalem Thread. The largest amount of kindness and support I received during that terrible time was from the Brothers and Sisters on Free Republic. I will always thank God for that!
In Florida, I became a Music Minister for an outdoor church that reached out to “outlaw” Bikers. The church still exists in Pompano Beach, although I have moved back to Boston. I am president of the Boston Chapter, and still have my colors.
Now I play bass and piano (not at the same time LOL!) at a very humble little A of G Church nearby. I love the church and its people, even though we can’t hug each other due to COVID regulations. The governor doesn’t want us to sing (!) but we do anyway.
The point I am making is that the Church is the Body of Christ, not a building, or a denomination, or a conference, or a synod. And, although I went through some really horrible stuff and did some SERIOUS sinning, Jesus never left me nor forsook me.
He was always there, calling me, even when I didn’t want to listen.
And now, I feel like I have come home.
Wonderful thread!
My testimony is too long and probably too shocking to post...But I do have one...
I'm the reason Jesus was Crucified...As he was carrying that Cross stumbling up the hill he was telling his Father, 'Father', I don't want to do this'...
And the Father tells him, 'there's a fella a couple thousand years up there in the future and he's a mess'...'You have to do this for him'...
Thy Will Be Done...
My dad was raised in a Christian home...Reformed, I believe...My mother says she got saved as a teenager...They didn't go to church but my mother made sure the church school bus picked me up on Sunday mornings...
My dad was on the battlefields of Europe from 1941-1946...He came home as an alcoholic...Wouldn't even allow hunting guns in the house, 'he had seen enough killing'...He was however a proud and patriotic American...He marched in all the parades where VFWs and the other organizations marched...And in spite of himself, he was a great dad...
Went to confirmaton class at about 13 at a Covenant Church and received my free bible (which I still have)...Went thru the motions of getting saved...Never got baptized...
At 14 or so attended the church youth groups...The counselor would take us roller skating, hay rides and other things and often he would just pick up a bunch of wine and we'd all ride around and get drunk...He introduced one of my best friends to the queer lifestyle...And that poor kid had one rough, tormented life as a teenager...He died at 37 from AIDS...
Left that hellhole and never went back to church for about 20 years...But God gave me a conscience and always seemed to have his hand on my collar, even if I didn't recognize it at the time...And I was right up there with Satan putting Jesus thru his paces...
When I hit the bottom is when my wife left me and I had contracted the somewhat rare cancer that had killed my 26 year old sister the year before...One night, must have been a Wednesday, I was driving around crying and drove by a church that I didn't know existed and pulled right in the parking lot...Like the truck had a mind of its own..Parked the truck, went up the few stairs and in the door for the first time in 20 years...Immediately a group of people walked up to me, put there arms around me almost like they were expecting me...They prayed over me and for me and I prayed...
That's a quick outline of my testimony...
Of course when I got close to God the devil got even closer...I would have made the prodigal son look like a saint...God drug me thru or out of the mud so many times I lost count...
My most memorable account as a Christian was at my baptism...A man who I became friends with after my divorce used to be a lead singer in a band of a bar I would frequent...He came to Jesus just before we became acquainted...He somehow moved into a beautiful house sitting on a beautiful lake...It was at this house that the pastor of my newer friend and a good share of his congregation agreed to come to this house for a baptism...One baptism...Mine...
Out in the lake with the congregation on the shore singing hymns...Couldn't have been better if there had been angels stand there singing...And maybe there were...
But at the end of this, my dad in his sixties quit drinking and ask Jesus to save him...At the time he was divorced from my mother...And at almost 70 my mother started going to church with me and asked to finally get baptized...And she did...I thought she was going to drown...I think she and the pastor did too...
Now, to the people who claim there's no such thing as a sinner's prayer, or that we can't have a personal relationship with our Lord, you do not know God...You might know who he is but you don't know him...But you can...It is far better to call on the name of the Lord long before you hit desperation...Life will be so much easier for you...
As a 16 year old "cradle Catholic", I was yearning to know God and on my walk home from Mass one Sunday I prayed, "God, if you are real, if there is any such thing as truth, I want to know it.". Within a month or so of that prayer, I was in a Sunday school class at my Grandparents' Southern Baptist Church and the teacher handed me a Bible and showed me John 10:28-30. I read:
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one.
A light turned on in my soul and I understood for the first time that I can know I have eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ and I will never perish or be taken out of His hands. I received Jesus as my savior that day and my life was not the same. I don't claim to be a perfect Christian or that I don't have ups and downs in my walk with Christ, but He has NEVER given up on me. He was/is always faithful to forgive me and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. He keeps His promises. He knows His own and we hear His voice and follow Him because He is the Good Shepherd. His grace, mercy and love are inexhaustible and I praise Him every single day.
Please post yours, too!
When I was in my late teens/early twenties I had some really horrible, traumatic things happen to me that completely destroyed my life. It went on for years (They ended up in prison). I really don’t want to go into any details on here. I was in a really bad, dark place and it felt like I could not lift myself out of it. I had reached the end of my rope and did not know what to do. I started looking to God and praying. I asked him for strength to be able to get passed it and move on with my life. I prayed several times daily and prayed in bed before I went to sleep every night. I prayed so much, I would sometimes fall asleep in mid prayer.
Then something amazing happened almost a year later. God sent me my husband.
He brought a joy and happiness to my life that I had never experienced before. We both fell in love and were inseparable. I felt like I had finally started to live. He helped me through the darkest period in my life and for that I am forever thankful.
I still deal with nightmares and flashbacks from time to time, but it has gotten easier to deal with. It’s not nearly as bad or as often as it used to be. It is all due to God, prayer and the love and support of my husband.
We’ve had a lot of rough moments in our marriage. Medical problems between both of us and two out of our eight children, many pregnancy losses, various jobs that came with a lot of harassment, problems with extended family and we are still going strong after 21 years. Life can be really hard sometimes.
We will not allow anyone to break us.
Praise be to God!
thank you for your testimony and for sparking this discussion 30cal.
i’ll try to keep it short and too the point, but i have to admit, revisiting that time and before hasn’t been pleasant for me. i’d like to forget about all of it to be honest. there is a lot of the past i didn’t want to reexperience. but, what follows is what i believe was my path from spiritual death to Life, the Truth—the Living God, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
i prided myself on being completely unspiritual. i was a “realist.” i styled myself as dependent on no one and contemptious of the weak spiritual and Christian people, like my best friend. i saw around me. intellectually, i never completely rejected God, because i could never completely reject the people of God who kept ties with me, like my best friend who for reasons i didn’t understand then, refused to let me drive him away.
my brother, probably in part due to my selfish attitude, went yard and became a card carrying athiest/progressive. but, i told myself i never wanted to be tied down to anyone or anything, especially marriage. looking back, it was me and my brother ganging up to torturing my poor friend whenever the subject of spirtuality, politics, or Christianity came up. it was awful what we did to him, but he kept faith with us. he told me after i converted that God was the reason he never gave up on me.
in reality back then, i was selfish, isolated and basically clueless about the suffering of people around me, although i would never admit it. to me, i was fine. really a good person who didn’t bother anyone (clueless of course as many others have told me otherwise after my conversion). i was hard-hearted and becoming more loveless year by year. at the bottom of all of that was fear and self-loathing. but of course i couldn’t see that in myself because i didn’t have any truck with the spiritual or even much emotion beyond contempt and sometimes anger at the circumstances and Christian or religious beliefs of the people around me, including my mom who was a buddist and my dad who was, i think, a believer, but not a doer of the faith (i never saw him in church until his funeral). i was withdrawing, really becoming a middle aged loner as the years piled up. still, i was living “the good life” in the eyes of the world. i had it easy—a good education, a good job, good health, making money, and i was doing what i wanted with it.
spiritually, i was the with the walking dead around me. the world, of course, cooperated with me in all of this. but there was always my best friend from HS who remained faithful to me and God through it all, despite the pain i was causing him. he kept inviting me to his church to see his band play (we were both musicians in our youth). but looking back, God had a different plan, which he was about to unleash.
first he brought real love into my life though my wife of now 22 years. she taught me how to love and serve her, and she became precious to me. she wanted children, i of course was indifferent as usual. but, we tried and failed. then she was diagnosed with endometriosis, so we tried the world’s solution surgeries and invitro fertilization. boy, my perfect life was messed up now. that failed when my wife became very ill. then God nearly took her away from me, that’s when you start praying of course, even if you don’t believe. a miracle, new cutting edge surgery and the best surgeon in the world was delivered to us in the nick of time. at that point, i was finally believer in God. you know that amorphous God of the Bible that you hear about that delivers you from trouble. the God the selfish always call on. the selfish me was thankful that, although she had lost her ability to have children (which was nothing to me really), i had not lost her! but she was devastated by that, later having some insight and love, i realized having children was more important to her than me or her even life. and i could see her pining away for children. she brought up adoption which selfish me didn’t want any part of. after all, how would that reflect on me as a man.
i was changing slowly (not like the instant transformation of some Christians), slowly i was learning to be a servant of others. just enough to think finally of someone else, and put them a little above my own interest.
so i agreed to start looking in to adoption. the whole thing from start to finish, was an big ordeal for me, horrible at times, draining in every way, and most of all humbling. i was completely out of my depth and out of control by the end. i had to give up and rely on my friends, others and, gulp, even God to get me and my wife through it. that old pride was going and self-reliance was gone, we needed help and i was asking everyone i could for it. we found a secular agency after trying fostercare, doing our own ad campaign, even asking planned parenthood for help. boy that was another eyeopener for me. they couldn’t careless about adoption, or couples looking to adopt, and you’d think it’d be a natural for them. the world was becoming clearer for me, as God was remaking me. finally i was being rendered teachable, for the first time in my life since childhood.
but then another miracle, a birthmother contacted us (by mistake it turned out, she actually though we were someone else), and we started the process of helping her again. there are of course no guarantees in this process, this all has to be voluntary and we had to accept that. again, we were out of control. we gave the birthmother complete control. we had to trust her and the birth father with our future.
finally the trip to the hospital. we were there, but i had to track down the birthfather and get him there. the birth was difficult (a c-section had to be done). it was an all nighter. we finally went home, awaiting the decision.
two days went by, we thought with sinking hearts they would keep this beautiful baby, maybe it would bring them back together. it was just too much of a sacrifice for them (notice i finally had compassion for some one else—God was working on me, changing me already). but then the word came, eventhough they had named the boy, called him by their last names and got him clothes, they decided to let us adopt!
she brought the baby to us in her wheelchair and handed that precious boy to us at the door of the hospital. at that moment, i was overwelmed with joy, mindful of her great sacrifice, as i received her gift to us. i believed—this was the pure gift of God! my heart was full of sadness for her, but gratitude to her and to God. and then, with this new life in my arms, i realized the grave responsibility God was placing in my hands. i realized how small i was in His grand scheme. i lacking i was in knowledge, really. how foolish i had been, when i though i was wise. anyway, there could be no other explanation, no other way the whole journey could be explained. God had dragged me kicking and screaming to the door and i was finally knocking.
soon after i went to see my faithful Christian friend and his wife from HS. turns out he was overjoyed and mindful of every step along the way, knowing that God was bringing me to Him. that i had become a seeker. later that night my brother came over, he and my friend started in on the same old discussions and arguments. this time i just listened as they talked. i was agreeing with everything my best friend was saying, whereas my brothers talk had become complete nonsense to me. i thought to God, this is my confirmation. my mind had been completely transformed. i was and am 180 degrees different from what i once was. a miracle really. again i thank God that he helped me out of the mire.
i still had (and have) a long way to go, and many struggles ahead in this race to the end. back then, i didn’t even own a Bible yet, or stepped foot into a church except to hear my friend play, but that was day, i really started to live.
Isaiah chapter 53. Amen.
Over 50 years ago.