My testimony

Like many Christians I was born into a Christian family. At the age of 5, with help from my mom, I prayed my first prayer to God, asking Him to come into my heart so that one day I could go to heaven. I grew up not attending church regularly, but always having faith that Jesus Christ died for my sins and because of that I would go to heaven and in addition believed that God would always be there for me, guiding me and providing for me so that I could live a good life.

In high school I was very involved with different churches and even taught a bible study in a Christian club. I was very happy in my walk with God and thought for sure that I was following His plan because I was spreading the gospel and having a fun time doing it.

Upon entering college however, I decided to put God aside and followed my new desire of partying and drinking, a definite ‘no-no' in the Christian community. Thus post-graduation I often said that I just wasn't a Christian during those years, regardless of what I knew or didn't know about God; I didn't act like one who believed.

The next year of my life, as for many post-college graduates, was very difficult and left me feeling very hopeless in my new "real world" situation. Thus I turned back to God and asked him to send me a Christian friend to lead me to a church. This request actually happened the next day in which the new intern at work led me to a church where I spent almost 2 years attending and becoming deeply involved in a weekly bible study.

That time ended when I had an opportunity to teach English in Korea, which I took immediately, left that church, my country and followed my new desire.

In Korea, I decided to once again join in on the partying nightlife but this time justified it (in my own head of course) with Sunday attendance to church where I even served on a team.

I still believed in God and Jesus as I had 20 years prior, but my actions as a Christian were no different than those of a 5 year old. I did whatever pleased me at the time. When I was hopeless I turned to God, when I was bored, I turned to the world, when I felt guilty I came back to God on Sunday only to get a jump-start on falling away from Him. And throughout all this back and forth I kept in my mind that it was "okay" because I was still going to go to heaven when I die.

However, through the immense grace of God, He one day instilled in my heart a desire to want to learn the Bible, a book I realized I really knew nothing about after 25 years in this faith. I asked people at my church if they could teach me the stories in the Bible or anything about it, yet it was a co-worker of mine who led me to the true light. This light is not the "light" that I had spoken of so ignorantly before during my "good Christian days", this light is the Word that gives life spoken from the one pastor who has received it from God. I can now say this confidently because I have witnessed it!

In John 16:25 (now my favorite verse) Jesus says, "Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will speak plainly about my father". I was shocked to realize that Jesus admitted to speaking figuratively because that means the Bible is indeed hard to understand, thus not just anyone should claim to being able to understand it.

God allowed me to see the Bible as a sealed book so that when it began to open I could perceive that the time HAS come in which Jesus is speaking plainly. That time is today!!

This Word, the opened Bible, is no longer the thoughts of man that are unstable. This spirit is not that of our own fabrication that starts hot and quickly turns cold. These Words are the unchanging truth grounded with logic that we as humans have come to understand on earth, being created by God, and spoken through the Counselor that Jesus promised in John 14:26.

All that time, I justified my actions through god in my own thinking, going to him and falling away and going back again, just like the Pharisees and Sadduces who followed scriptures through tradition and taught god's words, with their own thoughts. This pattern doesn't lead to heaven no matter how much I thought it did. Only through God's truth which is now being given at this time, can we have what we as believers desire, which is to know God and have eternal life.

Think about your faith and what it is grounded in. Is it grounded in just one hopeful story that you have heard about, or is it grounded in an unchanging truth given directly from God whose grace and mercy and love is so much that we get to be alive at this time where we understand it? The Bible is not a book only happening from 2,000 years ago; it is a book that is happening today! We are living in the "Bible times", but if this Word is still closed to you, then you are not living it. I pray then that you will seek it out and really live this blessing!