7/23/23

When I was going to school at Plymouth State, I was invited to a Christian club meeting. At first, I didn't want to go. I didn't know what to expect, but I figured it would be too long, too uncomfortable, and too boring. It probably wouldn't be fun. . . or memorable. . . or life changing. It blew me away. People were so excited to see each other, even if the last time had been less than a week ago. They couldn't wait to hear about how last week's topic had unfolded, how the week went, or what might be coming next. Everywhere I looked there was so much laughter, joy, care, and love - all in this tiny, small classroom that I had no idea about.

I look back at that night often, seeing it as a steppingstone and a door opened by God's grace. I think what I saw that night was a beautiful, accidental, revealing expression of John 13:34-35 and I always smile when I see another one. That text reads: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

In the following months I started going to different churches challenging my existing ideas of what Christianity was all about. I was agreeing with broad ideas of love and peace, but still thought church was just a crutch for people who needed it at the time, and the Bible was the longest game of telephone, losing something with each generation. I came to the point where I was actually asking Jesus, pleading with him, whoever He was, to help me believe in Him. A few days later I was driving home for a short visit (probably mostly for a homecooked meal and free laundry). I see this beautiful sunset and stop to take some pictures. I get back on the road, but almost immediately pull off again, because I'm just drawn to what I'm seeing.

I'm looking up at the sky, thinking about what the future might have in store. All of a sudden, I'm hit with this wave of calm and security. It felt like any hint of anxiety or fear of the unknown was swept away, like my future self had just mind-melded with me, showing me that everything was going to be fine. I wish I could capture that feeling and give it to everyone I meet, to experience what I did. I still can't really describe the feeling, but the closest thing that comes to mind is peace. I literally stepped back because this wave had like pushed me. I looked around looking to see if someone was pranking me, or if anyone saw what had just happened. I then realized that this was it – this was what I was looking for and has asked for. Jesus became my king and savior.

I get back on the road and start tearing up. I call up my friend Nicole, who had first invited me to Cru and tell her the news! She starts shouting with joy and saying that she and others at Cru have been praying for this, which just brings more tears. As I'm getting back to campus, I'm telling her in a text that after I put my stuff away and get settled, we should all hang out to celebrate. Minutes later I'm walking up to my door, with my bag in one hand, laundry in another, when Nicole opens the door with a smile - everyone's already there to greet me. We spent the rest of the night sharing stories and singing whatever songs we knew, praising God.

I'm not very vocal with my faith, especially with people who aren't believers. But this relationship with Jesus is too big in my life to pretend like it isn't or to be quiet about it. He is so much more than I could've imagined, wanted, or can explain. I want this to help me express that, and live my life in a way that says to Him: Thank You. Faith Family, will you help me be a man of integrity and stay strong in my commitment to Christ through accountability, encouragement, and prayer? I need you. Thank you. 

7/23/23

I waivered almost an entire lifetime between moments of being very open to God being real and there for me and doubt, stubborn denial, chalking everything up to coincidence and resistance. And also wanting God to prove to me that he was real by showing me something that I could see with my own eyes like moving a lamp or a piece of furniture. All this while thinking we just lived and died and there wasn't anything more to life than that.

Then one day about a year ago, while just standing in my kitchen after seeing an inordinate amount of photos of space and the universe a sudden undeniable understanding moved through my body, staring in my gut, and moved through my being making me aware that God is real, created the entire universe, you and me, and every living thing that enables us to

live on this planet. I had asked God to move a lamp but God moved and changed my heart in an instant.

Since then I've had an absolute appetite to read God's word and to learn his truth. The truth that Jesus was sent here as our lord and savior. It fills me like nothing in this broken world ever could and I've felt so very blessed that you have all welcomed me here to grow and worship with you.

7/23/23

I was born in Massachusetts into a christian home and I was told the gospel along with my siblings since the day we could begin to comprehend that kind of information. I grew up believing in God, going to church and reading the Bible every so often. I told everyone I was a christian and believed it but never actually surrendered to Jesus; I lived my life the way I pleased; I was a christian in-name-only until I was fifteen.

NH -

When I was twelve years old, my family moved here. I had a pretty tough time with it. I had a hard time making new friends, especially since I was homeschooled. I became antisocial very fast and after we joined this church, I was too scared to try to make friends or even talk to anyone. I felt like I was being torn apart every time I made my way to youth group because I knew I would be standing awkwardly alone as always and I was crushed by the intense weight of people pleasing that I had laid across my own shoulders.

There were also many difficult circumstances that had occurred in my life around that time, from family struggles, to mental and physical struggles that I found very hard to grasp, so I disregarded God and became depressed, angry and thought only of myself. I was consumed with self-pity. I read lots of books and watched lots of movies to try to distract myself from my "horrible" life and I vented my emotions though yelling at my family and friends... a lot. My relationships with my siblings went very downhill and my parents were distressed by my behavior... but this isn't the end of the story.

Bible Class -

When I was thirteen, my mom signed my sister and I up for Lighthouse Co-op and just randomly, when I was picking my classes, I chose a Bible class. During this class, once a week, I was taught the Bible, the gospel and basic theology. I had heard the gospel a thousand times before, but this felt like the first time; this was the first time I truly understood the gospel. During the Bible class, I realized how little I'd actually taken in regarding the Bible. I developed a newfound fascination with the Bible and wanted to learn everything there possibly was to know about it. And so I began my zealous, year-long studies of the Bible. I became so blown away that Christ would die for someone like me... His enemy. I was only in the class for a couple months before the pandemic struck and the class had to be canceled. You would think that my new interest in christianity would have slowly faded away after the Bible class was canceled, but it actually grew stronger. I had lots of time to dig as deep as I could in the Bible and ask my dad question after question and of course he was very happy to answer all of them. During this time I got to know the LORD, started developing a relationship with Him and  began my repentance process.

My repentance process was more subtle. Some of it was when I was thirteen and fourteen at the time of my Bible studies but most of it was actually when I got saved and after when I learned how to not think legalistically as you'll learn about in a minute. God brought one sin at a time to my attention and I repented, and of course even now, God is still sanctifying me in this way.

Unfortunately, I didn't fully understand for my childhood or when I was fourteen that I am saved by grace not by work, and I developed a legalistic mindset. It took me quite a while to wrap my head around the truth that God loves me so much that He would fully pay my unfathomably huge debt; that He wouldn't only forgive my past sins, but also my present and future sins simply because He loves me.

The more time I spent with the LORD and in His word, the more I began to change. My depression and anger were fading away, I began to spend more time in prayer and in the Bible than watching movies or reading books; in fact, those things became completely uninteresting to me, and instead of yelling at my siblings, I found myself trying to repair our broken

relationships. But though Christ was a part of my life now, I wasn't fully surrendered to Him; I was still living for myself.

February 21, 2021 -

At last, on February 21st, 2021, which was a Sunday shortly after I had turned fifteen, I sat down to listen to the sermon as always. The sermon was about what it looks like to truly follow Jesus and surrender all to Him. At that moment I realized that I had been living for myself all this time when I thought I'd been living for Christ. I realized that I hadn't surrendered all to Jesus and that I wanted that to change right then. (l realized I was a christian in name only.) I thought to myself, "I've seen the evidence, I know that God is real. I know that the Lord loves me and I love Him and I know that Jesus gave up everything to be with me so I want to give up everything to be with Him. Right here, right now, I choose to surrender all to the love of my life Jesus Christ." Right then and there, everything changed. Suddenly nothing was about me and everything was about Him. The very way I thought was altered; my heart was transformed in an instant.

After Saved -

It has now been over two years since the Lord completely changed my heart and I got saved. God has done amazing work in my relationship with my family; my siblings and I are friends again and a few weeks after I got saved, my dad explained to me what thinking legalistically looks like and how I don't have to think like that because of what Christ did for me. And

so I learned to not think legalistically and simply accept that I don't have to maintain a justified status before God, because Jesus does that for me, but to do the works out of love and rejoicing in what The Lord has done. 

Now I live every day for Christ and through Him my relationship with God grows deeper still every day.

8/20/23

Throughout most of my life, God and the subject of Christianity in general had no relevance to me. I didn't know much about it. The whole thing always seemed more like a fairy tale than anything else, and it didn't really hold any special place among other world religions either. In my mind it just got thrown In with everything else. My father was, and still is a die-hard atheist. My mother, although she was a Christian, didn't share her views with us, as it wasn't exactly welcomed by my father. Whenever the subject came up he never wasted a minute before going into a good sized lecture about every way that God's existence was impossible. It never struck me that he never tried to disprove Buddhism, Islam, or anything else. All he cared about was disproving the God of the Bible, and as a kid, my dad was the greatest guy in the world, so I took his every word as truth. My mother on the other hand kept to herself about the subject, and there wasn't so much as a single Bible verse quoted in our family for over 20 years.

Through my adolescence I too considered myself an Atheist. I'd always had a very logic based mind, and I was always good in fields of technology and natural science. This was around the age where I first started getting asked the question: "Do you believe in God?" Well I was always under the impression that science disproved God. It caused me to grow the sense that I was above religion, and that religion was only for people who were scared of death, and that somehow, I just knew better than everyone else. When my parents split up about 4 years ago, My mother was led back to her faith. From an atheist's perspective, I personally thought she was insane. I surmised that it must have just been some form of guilt or fear that had caused her to turn to religion, so I decided not to read too deeply into it. As she started going back to church, she would always ask me to come with her, but I often declined. On a rare occasion I would go, but I always despised it, at least that was the case until I was 16.

On Christmas eve 2021, FCBC was holding its usual service in the evening. My mother had asked that all her family be with her, so I went along. There was something unusual about that night though. As I'm listening to the sermon, it was the first time I remember biblical topics piqued my interest. For some inexplicable reason, I wanted to know things. The secular world teaches much false Information about the Bible, and unfortunately I was victim to that, there were many wrong ideas I had about the Bible, and about God. But luckily that was all about to change. I started just whispering questions to my mother right there in the pew during the sermon. I was slightly annoyed that she couldn't answer all of them, so she suggested I just talk to one of the pastors myself. Until then I didn't really know I could do that, so I was all for it. We reached out to pastor Josh and he was more than happy to meet with me, he was on sabbatical at the time so I had to wait a bit. But around early March we got to talk for the first time. What was supposed to be roughly an hour chat ended up turning into a 2 and a half hour theological debate about the origin of human morality. It is still one of my favorite memories. All the questions I thought would lead to me proving Josh wrong, only ended up working against me. We eventually decided we should conclude and we would pick it back up another time. The last thing Josh suggested to me was that if I was genuinely interested that I take it back to the book itself, and he handed me a Bible. I went home with even more questions than I'd arrived with. 

Over the next two months I was obsessed with learning what it all meant. I met with Josh as often as I could, always just throwing tons of questions at him. No matter how odd or extensive the question might have been, he always had a satisfactory answer. It was also around this time I started going out of my way to get to church more. I wouldn't ever admit it at the time. But I'd grown fond of all the wonderful people I'd met there. Even though I wasn't a believer, they still accepted me. I wasn't always the most loving individual, but I was definitely able to feel it in this church. It was always sort of bittersweet, as I knew you were all connected by something I wasn't part of. But I'd eventually learn that it was my own fault.

When I wasn't at Church or grilling Josh for answers, I would often join my mother for her personal Bible study, she would listen to the word and watch sermons, and I was able to just take it in and apply it to my existing knowledge. I could never Thank my mother enough for the constant figure she was in my conquest for knowledge. No matter how deep my intellectual rabbit holes were, or how confusing the subject got, she was always willing to do her best to explain things to me, and to find the answers I wanted. Eventually I reached a point where I should have been satisfied, but I wasn't. All the things that I thought disproved the faith, ended up being wrong themselves. I was at a place where Christianity looked more believable than what I thought were my solid world views. The last thing I scrutinized was the book itself, was the Bible really reliable?

I wanted to just ignore the question and go back to my comfortable ideology, but the thirst for knowledge won me over. I spent all summer researching where the Bible had come from, and most importantly, the reliability of the four gospels. My mother also offered me many books that conveniently helped with my questioning the scriptures. Things like "The Case For Christ" by Lee Strobel, which is still one of my favorites. For months most of my nights were dedicated to finding where it all came from, and to my dismay, all I found was that many before me had already asked, and found the answer to this very same question. No matter what, I couldn't find anything beyond simple theories that the Bible was fabricated in some way. This was definitely the hardest part of it all. Here I was, a staunch atheist, now faced with the proof that everything I thought I knew was a lie. I by no means wanted to believe in God, but not doing so would go against everything I now knew. I was furious. Out of rage I decided to pretend the past year hadn't happened, but it seems God was done waiting for me.

My few days of ignorance didn't fix anything. I remember him showing himself to me many times throughout this short period of time. I began to recognize God's presence in science of all things, the very thing I thought disproved God, but I eventually recognized how the very structure of our universe is so delicate that it would be absurd to think it didn't come from intelligent design. He would show himself through people too. I remember just a few nights before I was saved, I was talking to Mr. Zarges. Right before we parted he suddenly turned around and said "the Holy Spirits coming for you" I laughed it off and wished him a good evening, but in reality "disturbed" didn't even begin to cover the feeling I got from that interaction. I felt like no matter where I turned I couldn't escape what I now knew.

On the night of October 16th, I was pacing and contemplating things. I finally decided to put my pride aside for a second and think about all of it. If I knew for a fact God was real, what sort of logical person would I be if I ignored him further? I was alone in the dark, with a racing mind the first time I prayed. Just me and the Holy Spirit, as I was being stared in the face by the truth I didn't want to accept. it wasn't the typical "ask Jesus into my heart" type of scenario. I simply asked to be shown what I was missing, I wanted to know why I felt the way I did.

What happened that moment wasn't what I expected. I wasn't suddenly enlightened to some previously unknown truth, I wasn't sent some divine message either. Instead I experienced peace. I still didn't know everything, but for
the first time In months I was okay with it. Instead of knowledge, I was given acceptance. I already knew more than enough to know God was real, but he's the only reason I got there. That kind of peace is beyond compare. I was finally able to see and appreciate his patience with me, and understand how loved I really was. I was able to pursue the knowledge of my God peacefully, already knowing the truth. In a mere nine months I had been "harpooned" as I like to say. I had been given a desire to know things against my will. I certainly fought him along the way, but he pulled me in nonetheless, and I couldn't be more grateful. He has successfully saved me from myself. I don't know how my life would have turned out without him, but I most likely would have wasted it chasing the things of this world. luckily I'll never have to know. He has given me a wonderful faith family, a real purpose, blessings that I don't deserve. and the prospect of eternity with him. Now I am his to use as he sees fit to bring others to his glorious kingdom.

For much of my life I didn't know what it meant to truly have a relationship with the Lord. I grew up in a Christian home, went to all the events, went to church and youth group every Sunday, and even volunteered at a Christian camp for many summers before I realized what it truly meant to follow Christ and give my life to Him. I would have long conversations with my mom about where I thought would spend eternity and ask her al' of my doubtful questions and still

be left with doubt and fear about God and eternity.

I'd like to share an analogy. Even though I am not a pastor I'd like to give it a try! I took a Microbiology class this past semester and for the final project our professor gave us two unknown organisms that we had to identify using the skills and the tests we had performed earlier in the semester. At first, some of the instructions made my head hurt, but she just kept saying "I know it doesn't seem like it now, but it will all make sense eventually". So, for a couple of weeks I went through the motions, running tests and taking notes but not having a view of the whole thing. It didn't seem like I would ever understand the end goal until there was one day I was looking over my notes and everything clicked!

That is the way that my spiritual life was up until God got my attention and I finally fully understood what the hope of the Gospel meant for me. I went through a difficult season and during that time several people from our faith family poured out love and care for me. Witnessing these people live the Gospel in their daily lives, seeing that their actions matched their words in displaying the love of Christ—their testimonies were powerful evidence to me that

they had a relationship with God, not just a religion. That is when I realized that I wanted that same thing. I surrendered my life to Him and I now have a relationship with the Creator who loves me enough to send his son to die for me. I started wanting to worship and learn. My desire to get baptized today comes from the desire to be obedient to Christ. I know that baptism will not save me, but it is an outward profession of Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and it is in

Him that I have true salvation and living hope

I've been attending FCBC since I was in Middle school. Many of you have seen me around the church, I grew up as a church kid. Do you know what a church kid is? Are you a church kid'? Prayed the sinner's prayer more times than you can remember. It wasn't that I was trusting in a magic incantation. I had a seed of belief, but it hadn't germinated completely yet.

In my young adult life, I was good but not godly. What I desired was not God. This became clear to me while I was stationed overseas in 2018. Separate from this Faith Family it became clear that knowledge that I had gained, had not made it from my head to my heart. Free, isolated, I made choices to please me. Looking at myself in the mirror, I had to come to grips with the fact that I did not desire God. But what I was doing wasn't satisfying me. I was surprised to find that I was worse than I thought. With all the safeguards removed, my desires were self-centered, and selfishness is what sin is. At this point, I didn't just know I needed to be saved for the first time, I really felt like I needed to be saved experientially.

I tried to live up to the perfect law of God on Iny own. My obedience was external. Just like doing the right things, obeying your parents, meeting their expectations, meeting their standards, and still not having a relationship with them. In the same way, I learned to be obedient to God without having a relationship with him. No one would know that I was avoiding God by being a good kid but relying on myself and human wisdom. I had thought I was all set growing up in Christian home. What a blessing that was, however, I constantly avoided God by doing things my way and with my own strength. My obedience wasn't relational. My faith wasn't relational. It was all transactional. Even after growing up in the church [ still hadn't quite opened my heart to a relationship with God. I had to learn another hard lesson. Not only was my obedience external. So was my repentance. During my time overseas God revealed my true selfishness to me. [ knew I was doing the wrong thing. It was a long road to change. thought that I had repented, but I would slip back into it because all I had done was change externally. I thought I had to fix it. To try harder. Be better to stop the behavior I knew was wrong. But my heart hasn't changed. Even my repentance from doing the wrong was still avoiding God. But God began working in my heart and I first had to realize could not keep his law. I couldn't keep it externally. So, God saved me from having to live up to his perfect law. Christ kept the law perfectly and out of joy and love for His Father. Now, giving control of my life Jesus Ineant every time failed he covered me in His righteousness. I am now right before God because of what Christ did. My human failings are no longer what God sees. Now, I desire a relationship with him. Specifically, I've been working on giving more control over to him. I tried to do all this stuff under my own power. Now, I'm giving him control.

Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with ail your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight paths.

Romans 6: 1-11 says, 'What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So, you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to

God in Christ."

When I was going through the baptism packet that we had to read, there was a question that asked, 'what was your life before Christ?', and found this question a little hard to answer. Because I had grown up in a Christian home and went to church every Sunday, I didn't really have a life before Christ. I mean, at that time I hadn't accepted Jesus into my life as my Savior, but I was still being brought up as a Christian. Which I don't want to take for granted, because I know that being able to be brought up in a Christian home is such a blessing and a privilege, but it makes these questions hard to answer because I never had a big sinful past to draw me to Christ. But eventually I did realize that because of my sin I needed Christ to be my Savior, and not just a Savior. I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and come into my heart for the first time with my grandmother, but about a week later I sat down with my mom and prayed to God again, because in my six-year-old heart I was afraid that the first one hadn't counted. I needed assurance that even the after praying for Salvation, I would still need help to be more like Him. After this, God worked slowly through my life, but he worked none the less. Now, I've never been able to talk about my feelings very well, so I grew closer to God knowing that He's a friend willing to listen to my problems and my worries, and the things that I can't sort out. I started to love reading my Bible and not having it feel like a chore, and I started to see more and more how much God loves us and how much I needed Him. And now I am ready to take the next step of obedience with a public confession of faith that is baptism, which is a symbol of dying to my old self and rising with Christ.

I have grown up in church and have always been surrounded by strong Christians whether it was my family, or my friends and their families. I was always told and taught that your family's faith does not make you saved. You need to have your own personal faith, personal repentance, personal trust and personal relationship with God to be saved. As I grew up, the realization of needing my own salvation and relationship with God grew into a desire and I sought after God and asked Jesus into my life at a young age. I can’t remember the date of when I got saved, or even how old I was, but I know I am saved because I have seen real change in my life that only Jesus could do. Early on after I asked Jesus into my life, I had a difficult time trusting and believing that I was really saved. At times I would get overwhelmed and feel afraid, wondering if God had really saved me and wondering if I needed to do anything else to go to heaven. This selfish idea of salvation led to me asking Jesus into my life over and over again because I wanted to KNOW and be sure that I was saved and would go to heaven one day. In the beginning when I asked Jesus into my life, I know now that my main motive and reason for wanting to be saved was because I wanted to escape hell and go to heaven and I knew repentance and accepting Jesus is the way. But overtime, as I got older and matured more both as a person and in my faith, my original desire to be saved has added on a desire for a real and honest relationship with God. Overtime God did help me overcome my anxieties and doubts and I can have peace knowing God has saved me. Romans 10:13 says, “'For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Now I do believe, trust and have peace that God has saved me only through his Son’s sacrifice on the cross, and resurrection after death.

Throughout my life I have always struggled with completely trusting God and having peace in His plans for me. This lack of trust in God’s plans has led to overwhelming anxiety and worries about what the future holds. I’m the type of person who always wants to know the plan so I can expect what is going to happen. I want to be able to plan and know what is going to happen years in advance. But one of the core pieces to having a strong healthy relationship with God is faith. When I start to question and worry about the future, something that my dad has told me over and over is that I don’t need to have everything figured out right now, I just need to take life one day at a time and trust God with each day. And slowly over time the pieces are going to come together, and I’ll see God’s plan unfold. I’ve had to come to the realization that God doesn’t want us to have all of the answers and know everything right now, because He just wants us to trust Him and have faith.

When I left home three years ago to go to college, my faith and trust in God was quickly put into practice. Going away to college really helped me grow in my own personal relationship with God. Being away from home and away from my friends and family pushed me to trust God in EVERYTHING. There have always been times in my life where I needed to trust God, but I believe that I have grown the most in my faith these past 3 years, then I have in any other part of my life. Another part of my faith journey that has grown a lot these past years, but more specifically this past year, has been how I pray. Another part of making my faith my own, has been prayer, and how I pray. I have found myself spending a lot more time in prayer than I used to, and this discipline has helped me to practice my trust in God. I’ve been adding something new to the way that I pray which is ending my prayers by saying, “Not my will, but your will be done God.” This is one of the ways I have been actively putting my trust in God. Acknowledging that He is in control and that He ultimately knows what is best. I can go to God with my needs and even my wants, but at the end of the day I want to surrender my desires to Him and trust in Him. I want to get baptized today as a public way of showing that I am choosing to Trust God and act in obedience to what He has called me and all believers to do.

As I was working through writing my testimony, one of the questions was, "What was your life before Christ?" And honestly, I wasn’t really sure how to answer that because I didn’t really have one. I grew up going to church. I attended Sunday school, I listened to TobyMac, I even made a profession of faith when I was 9 years old. Now I know what you’re thinking, but don’t be too impressed. I was mostly just afraid of going to hell. As I got older my life continued in pretty much the same way that it always had. I had no real desire to be with Jesus, just a fear of His absence. I kept Him in my back pocket as a “get out of jail free card”, I didn’t treasure Him.  

I don’t remember when it happened, it was about a year ago, but one day I came to realize that I knew and believed in Jesus and His sacrifice, and it just didn’t matter that much to me. The things of the world were more important to me. And that was the moment I realized how lost I had become. I couldn’t believe that after everything He had done for me, I could be so numb to His sacrifice. And then I began to wonder how He could even want me when He knew how I would react. And I just kept thinking about John 3:16, which anyone who has ever gone to Sunday school will know, specifically the beginning “For God so loved the world… For God so loved the world, For God so loved me.” I tried to put myself in His position and I couldn’t understand it, if someone treated me the way I treated Him I wouldn’t even put in the effort to be friends with them. The more I thought about it the more I didn’t understand that type of extravagant, selfless love. So, I began to spend more time reading my bible, hoping to find something about God that explained why He loved me so much. And to give you the short version, I didn’t find the answer I was looking for, but I found so much more. I started to get a little understanding of His jealousy, His righteous anger, His pain when we choose the broken, rotting dreams of this world over Him. I realized finally what my sin was costing me, how much I needed God in my life, and I was filled with the desire to know Him more and to seek out discipleship. Through His strength I am now doing things I wouldn’t have thought possible a year ago. And now I want to take the next step of baptism as an outward symbol of the change that Christ has worked in me.  

Some of you may know me but for those of you who don’t, I will begin by telling you that I procrastinate a LOT. So, Tuesday morning, a week or so before my baptism I started to collect my thoughts about what I should write in my testimony. I went through the morning with a constant nagging of what should be put in and what should be kept out, and as I was thinking I came to the question, “Why Christianity?” Growing up in a Christian home I felt like maybe I was biased. I hadn’t experienced the world from a different point of view, a different religion; I grew up believing in Jesus and that He was the only right way.

So, I spent my life in church, surrounded by church people, in a Christian home with church friends and a biblical foundation. I spoke fluent Christianese, I asked Jesus Christ into my life at age 12, I attended the church events and tried my best to be a great Christian kid. I knew these things wouldn’t give me salvation; they couldn’t save me from my sinful nature, but if I was too busy serving myself and, occasionally others, then I never really did have to think about what my eternity would be like. It was easier that way, to pretend that Jesus wouldn’t come back anytime, or that I had years of life ahead of me that I could use to serve God. Occasionally I did think about where I would end up, but I never really got very far. When I had wanted to hide from God, the devil and my sinful nature made it sufficiently easy. However, I’ve learned, God always finds a way, back in my life, back to my head, and I know now He’s reached my heart. In complete honesty I wasn’t looking for Jesus when He found me, I wasn’t trying to serve Him, I was only focused on myself. And while I served myself, God planted seeds in my life. Small ones, almost unnoticeable but man did they grow! It was the small questions from close friends, long sermons from pastors, little comments from my family members. From Sunday school lessons to schoolwork at home I was completely covered in God’s grace as He patiently taught me who He is in my day-to-day life. Looking back now, at all I’ve gone through and learned, it seems ridiculous that I didn’t see God’s hand in my life. His love spread through His people; His work done through His creation; His words taught to me in the most unlikely ways. But my favorite part of all is that even when I didn’t want Him, even when I didn’t think I needed Christ, even when I was entirely focused on myself, He was still there. He listened to every prayer, He loved me every time, He heard every cry and every single laugh; He was drawing me closer when I did even know it. His overwhelming love has stayed with me through my entire life; it’s never left me.

While writing this I’ve tried to figure out what exactly it was that pushed me towards baptism, and I don’t think it was ever one thing. It was the hundreds of little things God sent my way that worked through me to give me the courage now to stand and announce to the world that I am a follower of Jesus. Baptism can’t save me, neither can any of my actions I know that, but Christ can, and I want to tell everybody about it. My Savior’s good news, my Savior’s sacrifice, my God’s justice, His love towards me and what He can do for others. I’m done travelling down the wrong path chasing my own desires, I’ve studied and sat on the side lines of Christ’s race for too long; I’m running now. And I’m going to fall short; I’m not going to be strong enough to finish but my God can. Leaning on Him, praying to Him and trusting in Him is what I’m focusing on, devoting my life to His work.

So, why Christianity? Why did I pick Christ? I could pull up the statistics of the Bible, I could talk about the miraculous life of Jesus, the hundreds of years God has saved His people; I could reason with you on why it is more logical to believe in God. But that’s not what captured my heart, His love did. Turns out I am biased, biased for Christ; I want Jesus more than any other and even more amazing, He wants me! I grew up believing in Jesus and that He was the only right way. I still believe it and I want my life to show it, so when my Savior comes to bring me home or I go to Him, He might tell me “Well done my good and faithful servant” and I can spend eternity in His wonderful presence.