(Brady) Happy Father’s Day! Love ya Dad! I’m enjoying my first week of fatherhood! I apologize for the length of this post, but I felt a strong desire to share my personal Christian testimony with you this Father’s Day in hopes of glorifying my heavenly father. I pray that this will impact you in whatever way God desires.
I was blessed with great parents that brought me up in church and set a good example of the Christian life. Throughout my life I experienced growth and became increasingly more ‘moral’. However, I was/am still a sinful person in need of a savior. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, my life has been swamped in selfish ambition. Every single decision that I made revolved around me. Perhaps the most obvious sin in my life was/is my material possessions, and the way I handled God’s resources. My desire was always to glorify myself. For whatever reason, I was clueless as to what truly matters in life. My life did not reflect the Christian walk at all! I was dead in sin and I was living in it every day.
It’s not easy to say, but I have come to realization that until recently I was not a true follower of Christ. Thankfully, that has changed and I truly given my life to Christ.
About 15 months ago, our neighbors, Adam and Jill Hodge, asked us to join them for a Bible Study group we began going through a book called “Systematic Theology” by Wayne Grudem. ST is simply the study of central themes throughout the Bible. I also began to study more on my own and began actually reading my Bible every day for the first time ever.
The Holy Spirit finally revealed to me what I had been missing all my life. I can’t really explain it… it wasn’t earth shattering, I didn’t fall on my face crying, in fact I barely felt a surge of emotion. I was sitting in church one Sunday night with Christen and we were listening to a fairly basic message. The sermon dealt with not being a “critic” of the Bible. Sometime during that one hour service, the Holy Spirit changed my heart. Let me emphasize this, I didn’t “figure it out”, I didn’t do anything to deserve this enlightenment… but suddenly, there was no internal debate raging. Suddenly it was all true, and I knew it!! I knew instantly that I had not really been a Christian throughout my life. It dawned on me that I had never truly surrendered my life to Jesus and allowed him to change my heart. I had never been “born again”.
For years, I have had some academic knowledge of Jesus, God, Moses, Sampson, David, and all the basics. I would say that I basically believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and the only way into heaven. However, this knowledge and basic acceptance didn’t make me a follower of Christ. In fact, even Satan himself acknowledges that the Jesus is the son of God, but that certainly doesn’t make him a “Christ-follower”. James 2:19 says “You believe there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that”.
In addition to a basic knowledge of the Word, I have prayed “the prayer”. In the past I asked God to come into my life. I can vividly remember experiences at ages 14,18, and 23 where I had an “experience”. I thought I felt the Holy Spirit move, and I responded… kind of. However, there was never any true change in my heart.
I had experienced emotional moments in Sermons, and in Sunday school. In reality, an emotional experience doesn’t equate to salvation. I’ve had far more frequent emotional responses to sad movies than I have to Christ. As I look back now, I realize that my entire Christian faith was merely a way of ‘hedging my bets’. I was covering my bases. I prayed the prayer just in case the Bible was right!
The truth is I never really “believed”. Well, now I do. And as a believer, I can’t help but share what I know is true.
So, despite the fact that I:
1- Had a knowledge of Jesus
2- Had asked Jesus into my life, and told him that I accept him
3- Had an emotional experience
4- Lived a relatively moral / good life
I WAS NOT A CHRISTIAN. How can I say that? Doesn’t that contradict what’s being taught in churches?
I, like other people who call themselves “Christians”, relied to heavily on select Bible verses like John 3:16 which says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that
whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”. It's a great verse, but if people who call themselves “Christians” TRULY believed in the sacrifice of Jesus, their actions and their heart would reflect it… they wouldn’t just say they believe… they would actually live a life that reflected that belief. John 14:15 says “If you
truly love me, you will keep my commandments”.
Just before John 3:16 is John 3:3. In 3:3, Jesus says “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” What does being “born again” really mean? Well, it means that we must acknowledge that our life is sinful, our desires are selfish, and we aren’t worthy of heaven. Then we must ‘repent from our sins’ by turning away from our sins. John 3:9 says “no one born of God makes a practice of sinning”. Does this mean that we don’t sin anymore? No. We will always struggle against sin, and sometimes fall into sin, but it does mean that we don’t live continuously and knowingly in sin.
As we turn from sin, we simultaneously give our life to Jesus. We sacrifice our selfish ways and replace them with the desires of the Lord. We love others, we give away money, we stop focusing on material things, we tell others about the changes we have personally experienced, we care for others the way God intended, we study the Word, and we look for opportunities to serve others. James 2:17-18 “Faith by itself, it is has no works, is dead” and “I by my works will show you my faith”. This certainly isn’t to imply that you must do good works to be saved. Good works does not equate to salvation. However, if you are “saved”, you can’t help but do good works because you understand the sacrifice of Jesus.
To take this one step farther, Matthew 7:16-20 says of Christ-followers “You will know them by their fruits… every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit… thus you will know them by their fruits.” I may have had the appearance of fruit in my life in the past, but my fruit wasn’t glorifying to God because it was intended to bring glory to myself.
I share my testimony with you as an attempt to glorify God and I pray that this has happened. If you are a Christian, then praise God. If you aren’t a follower of Christ, then I pray that you will begin to investigate the claims that the Bible makes. It will be the most important decision you make in your life.
