My Testimony

My mom has always felt I was meant for the ministry (although I had not been very convinced of it.) She was not supposed to be able to have children, and my dad was most likely not able to, either. Despite, the odds against her, the Lord finally gave my mom a child. That child grew up to become me.

I was very fortunate to be raised in a Christian family and in church. When I was five, I started talking to my mom about being baptized. I didn't exactly understand what it meant---but I realized that the end result was become a  Christian and being with Jesus for eternity. By the time I was almost seven, I understood what it meant to give your life to Christ and follow Him in baptism. In January 2001, I was playing Upward basketball. I was reading through some of the devotional material one evening and came across the Sinner's Prayer. (I'm not a fan of the Sinner's Prayer because many people use it to turn salvation into a one-time act of ritual, rather than a commitment. In my case, it was god to have had it in the devotional, because it explained to me how I could be saved.) While my mom was fixing dinner, I prayed and asked Jesus to come into my heart. A few weeks later, I was baptized by the music minister of the church in which I grew up.

It's so easy to make the commitment to follow Jesus when you're young and sheltered from the pressures of the world. As I've grown up, I've realized more clearly what it means to be a follower of Christ. After I joined my church in February 2012, I began to see Christians living out the Gospel. I also read the book Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman. These two things have really made me realize that a decision to follow Christ is a decision for self-denial. As Jesus said, a person cannot serve two masters. So many times, Christians try to compromise with the Gospel. We try to find a between religion and the way we want to live out lives. But Jesus came to turn religion on its head. (Indeed, His death shook the very foundations of first-century Judaism.) Living for Jesus means "taking up your cross" and dying to this physical life. Gradually, I've been learning to detach myself from how the world sees me and from the physical aspects of life. Like any human, I still fail (much too often).But I know that no matter what I do, God will always be there for me, waiting for me to repent.