Share your testimonies.

[searchingsoul]

How did you come to be a christian? Have you had any moving experiences at any point in your life? Has God spoke to you to do something yet?

 

[Bernergirl]

http://dogismytypist.blogspot.com/2006/07/moment-of-truth.html

The intro post to my blog a.k.a. my testimony.

 

[Robskiwarrior]

Quick sum up...

I was brought up as an anglican, made a commitment to Yahuweh when I was 8 years old, moved on with my life stil as a Christian - did not like talking about Yahuweh much as I was a very quiet person... Then one year when I was 18 we went to Spring Harvest (Christian festival in the UK) for a day. Yahuweh spoke to me there and basicly told me to become an evagalist... this scared me to death, so I picked up a Youth For Christ (UK based organisation) magazine about Op Gid (year out programe). I signed up and went for the interview and got in, even though I was still scared, and quite shy.

Now the testimony kinda begins...

I started the year out in Birmingham at a 6 week training "camp". There I learnt alot, and met a group of great people... Anyway I was in worship one night in the evening service, when I heard Yahuweh say to me "You're going to marrie Jude" Jude was a girl on my course doing a year out like me - I had known her for weeks only... I took this as my mind playing tricks on me and continued to worship.

After the service my friend spoke to me and told me that he thought he heard Yahuweh say to him "Rob is going to marry Jude" So that kinda freaked me a little. Then the day after another friend told me how in the evening worship she heard Yahuweh say, yes you guessed it, "Rob is going to marry Jude"

So I though ok, if this is real it will happen, thanks for the heads up - I did not tell Jude a thing. We got to know each other very well, and stayed in contact through the year.

Half way through the year we had a mid-year retreat. We all met up and reflected on how the year was going basicly. I woman from Canada was preaching, and when she finished she said "Go sit somewhere quiet and ask Yahuweh what He wants you to do".

So I did... I found a quiet spot and said "Ok, What do you want me to do" - as soon as I had spoken the words I heard Yahuweh say to me as clear as day and in an instant as loud as a large bell ringing all around me "Go tell Jude you love her and you're going to marry her" well that was just insane, I had no doubt Yahuweh had spoken, it was like nothing I had ever heard! BUT I told Him how it was a silly idea, and that she would be freaked out... So after a lot of arguing, I said "ok you make the opportunity" Left it at that and went for lunch...

I was starving and lunch was the best looking Jacket potatoe and Beans you had ever seen. Jude came and sat down next to me and I was just about to tuck in when I just felt increadably sick. I could not eat it, and I knew why. I turned to Jude and said "I need to speak to you" So we left the table and went outside...

Outside on the wall for about 40 mins I stammerd and stutted, half way she had a toilet break and I even asked her if she knew what I was going to say... I finally got the words out "I love you, and I think Yahuweh said we are going to get married" - She looked at me with no shock on her face and said "yea I know."

After nearly diying and calling her a git for not telling me she explained that Yahuweh had told her about 4 months ago in a conference she was helping at.

We have to wait till the end of the year to start "dating" as it was a non-relationship year. then we got married the year after - 5 years later we have 2 kids.

Anyway after we had left the year and made our plans for marraige we felt Yahuweh was calling us to Manchester - so we went. We joined the Eden Project in Salford, although we thought that it was the correct thing to do as we were trained youth workers it just did not click right, and to cut a long story short - we recived a vision of what Yahuweh wanted for Eden Salford, and it was rejected by the leadership. Those leaders left and now the vision we had of Eden has happend. lol.

So 5 years of living in Salford really hit me hard, and I slipped into depression, it was confusing as I did not know where Yahuweh was in all of it and became a pain to live with. I always knew He was there watching me but I did not understand what He was doing, I was soo on fire when I came to Salford...

Anyway - 6 months ago, the depression lifted! Just like that, and then about 3 months ago Yahuweh came back! He told me to leave my Job, which I have now down, He has financed us so well since that we are better off than when I was working - and whatever he is doing in Manchester/Salford it seems to be rising each day! These are exciting times!

We have come along way to get here, thats a very condenced version I hope you enjoyed reading my babble lol (excuse spelling, can't be bothered to check, and im dyslexic so there will be some lol)

 

[heymikey80]

(I wrote this awhile back)

I'd started and stopped church by the fourth grade, no fellowship --> no sense of belonging --> no participation. Christian, though. Really: knowing Jesus died to pay for my mess-ups, Bible reading, the outstretched hand to be a Friend and a Mentor to me -- really to me. I didn't get that from church fellowship though, but in words from listening and reading. I'd been to different churches: Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, liberal, conservative, liturgical, charismatic.

But I don't recommend quitting church by the fourth grade. It put me in a real bind.

Without that grounding, I didn't know what was real and what was fake. I learned the pseudo-sciences in a formal junior high school class. What's pseudosciences? Uh, I think Christians call it "the occult": astrology, palm reading, satanism: the works, and by a paid professional, who told the school what he was going to teach. They responded, "Okay, put it on the curriculum," no lie. Hey, it was explicit coursework. I can do coursework!

And I tackled philosophy. Spinoza was a love from high school. 'Heard about him from hero-worship of Einstein ("Spinoza's God"), then I read him and something clicked. 'Got a little dry in the geometric proofs ("So, what is a mode?" "Ice cream!" [Sorry, little inside joke!]), but His letters and "Theologico-Political Treatise" are amazing.

Then I had a raw, cliff-hanger encounter with existentialism in a high school class purported to teach English. I was thrown off-guard: y'see, I actually adopted what I found to be sound thinking, and existentialism sounded pretty solid to me. I was having nightmares over it. If you ever really adopt existentialism, you're in for a struggle too, just deciding whether or not to kill yourself. Their thinking's flawed on one point: suicide. They tried to fight against it, but the thought process honestly leaves the option open. I thought I was done-for with Albert Camus, and so did my classmates: I saw things wrong with his thinking that ... well, he must've realized them, himself, because he died in a 1-car, 1-tree high-speed accident. My thought life was slooowly turning me upside down. I was struggling just to figure out why I should go on.

Then I found my parents were going to get a divorce. It was the perfect time to pound me right into a crater. 'Shattered me from the inside out.

Well, my pieces were transferred to a Christian high school affiliated with a conservative Presbyterian church in Augusta Georgia, my last year in high school. That first Friday I met the "Greatest Youth Pastor in the Western Hemisphere" (Joe Novenson, now at Lookout Mountain Pres' in Tennessee: http://www.lmpc.org ). He was teaching directly at me, the whole year. He had to be. I went back to Sunday School to get more from him than the monthly devotions. The school also required Christian Apologetics (philosophical and theological defense of Christianity). So did I! And I got answers. Bigtime. The answers had me spinning my thinking another 180. It was mind-blowing, stuff I'd never heard before, coming from quotes of ... Jean Calvin, Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitfield, Cornelius van Til, O. Palmer Robertson. "Where've you been all my life?!" All centered, all dependent on one Person: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

After just one year, I was off to college. In college I took philosophy every chance I got, I read what all I thought might cause me a serious problem. My thinking was still new, and I had to know how strong it was. I went to the library looking for books to snag my mistakes: history of the Presbyterian Church, the Utilitarians, the Unitarians, the Romantics, the Marxists, the Liberals. "Know thine enemy." Now, I didn't get everything, and there are gaps in my reading. But I had a profound fear of having my thinking ripped out from under me again, that scared me. I wanted to make sure the foundation was really Rock under there.

Of course, y'can't stick with straw men: you have to go to real men (okay, women too!) and interact with them as well. That wasn't easy: in fact, it was probably the hardest thing I ever did. In fact -- this is the truth -- I often can't believe that I actually did it, it still scares me so. I learned to avoid friendships, from my upbringing in a conflicted home. We moved around, too (15 times before I graduated high school). My parents' divorce hurt, and at that point my confidence with any relationships was just destroyed. I was alone in any group of people, even friends.

But by junior year, I was working with people in the dorms, talking with open atheists and arguing, befriending, working at every level I could feel comfortable with. I didn't do this to confront; we got involved in discussions and they naturally moved to the philosophical issues of God and ethics, which were just cake to bring Jesus Christ into. I wanted them to deal with the reality. I wanted to see what they saw, and make sense of it in my own life. I have to say, they pushed me further into Christianity than I probably ever pulled them.

One Saturday night I went to the group I normally hung out with, and they were laughing about something as I walked in the door. One of the guys pointed at me and said, "Nah, don't even try: he knows what he's talking about." I was surprised: I joked, "It couldn't be about the homework!" Then they told me: one of the exchange students was an atheist, and he wanted to challenge me to a debate about the existence of God. That was a new one on me: normally, we talked but we didn't get into big conflicts. It lasted ... oh, ten minutes. And the guy who was laughing smiled wide, said "See?" and walked out laughing.

I wasn't as vocal as I would've liked in college, and I was still recovering from those personal scars that hampered my own "serve" in ways I'm not proud of. But Jesus Christ couldn't have changed my life more profoundly than if a freight train had hit me. Truth does that.

After college I got involved in volunteer youth ministry, and got experience and help from an assistant pastor who worked with Campus Crusade, then with a number of churches. Youth ministry also makes you intensely aware of your own failings, too: because you see them happening in the youth group kids. You care about them. And it's really chilling to see your failures.

It's still difficult for me to get involved with people, but it helps to know y'all are out here, and also the kids I've worked with in my own church. My wife Carol is just amazing with relationships: heck, she's stuck it out with me as I tackled some of our relationship issues with all the grace and poise of Bozo the Clown. And she supplements my youth work with friendships with certain kids I have a tough time reaching. She plans, she adds stuff to our activities, and all on her own: I couldn't have the force of will to make her, she's sensitive to it. I sure wish I had that sensitivity.

It's pretty cool finally "growing up" in church: you start to realize, Hey, this counts. This isn't "stuff I gotta do": it's the Spirit moving in me, to turn the world upside down. And I've gotta let it out, or get graciously run-over in the process.

 

[Breaking Babylon]

You can find my testimony link in my profile. It'd be a blessing for you to read it.