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...
Wow, that is about a dozen testimonies in one! Thank you so much for sharing! God bless you as you continue to know and serve him.
Ditto. My family was into witch craft and devil worship. Decades long dirty, bloody and ugly fight to get me to the Solid Rock. If the Lord can scrub me clean, He can wash anyone whiter than snow.
Couldn't have been better if there had been angels standing there singing...And maybe there were...
I was also baptized outdoors, in my case in a pond. I was so moved by the beauty of it all that I blubbered like a baby through the whole thing!
Beautiful testimony
You overcame much by God’s Grace