My Testimony

I’d like to take a minute and share my testimony with you.

I literally grew up in church, in a Southern Baptist Church. My father was a deacon, a Sunday School teacher, and just about anything else anyone needed him to be in the church, and my mother was the church pianist, a Sunday School department secretary, and just about anything else anyone needed her to be in the church. So I was taken to church just about every time the doors opened, and I honestly can’t remember a time in my life when I DIDN’T know about Jesus. This early Christian education is of the highest value to me — it formed my spiritual foundation. My family members and many people in my church — pastors, Sunday School teachers, and other church members — had a great deal of influence on me spiritually during my early years, both by their teachings and by their example in the way they lived.

I didn’t realize until many, many years later how very blessed I was to have grown up in the family I did. I was an only child, but I grew up in an extended family home consisting of my parents, my maternal grandparents, and two aunts (my mother’s unmarried sisters). Though my family certainly wasn’t perfect (none are), my family members showed me that I was truly loved. They spent time with me, took care of me, demonstrated their affection with hugs and kisses, and did many things to make me happy. I learned from them what my heavenly Father’s love is like. God loved me through them.

When I was about eight or nine years old, I don’t remember WHY, but I started wondering about baptism and what it meant. It might have been because we were having a revival at church that week. Anyway, I remember going to my daddy and asking him about baptism. So he sat down with me and explained to me about why I needed to be saved, and about how to be saved. He told me that I was a sinner, even though I hadn’t ever done any BIG bad things, because every time I lied, or said a bad word, or even thought a bad thought, I sinned. He told me that, since I had sinned, I deserved to go to hell because God is perfect and the only way to please him is to be perfect. (I already knew what hell is.) But Daddy said that Jesus had taken the punishment for my sins in my place when He died on the cross. He told me that, in order to be saved, all I had to do was to repent, trust Jesus, and accept Him as my Savior. He asked me if I was ready to do that, and I said yes.

So we knelt and prayed together there, and I told God that I believe that Jesus died so my sins could be forgiven, and that I accepted his offer of eternal life. I confessed that I was a sinner and thanked him for forgiving me. And I told him that I wanted to follow Him from then on, forever and ever.

Later during that week, I went forward in a revival service and made my profession of faith. I was baptized by immersion soon after that.

Christ has revealed Himself and has been active in my life in many ways since that time.

I experienced a number of deaths of people close to me during my childhood and adolescence. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents died between the time I was about six and the time I was about ten or eleven. Losing my maternal grandmother was especially hard for me because, as I said above, she had lived right there in the house with me ever since I was born. I had been especially close to her. Then, when I was twelve, I experienced an even bigger trauma when my father was killed in a wreck. But God was with me and comforted me during these bereavements.

I had a pretty rough time during my teenage years. I became too enmeshed with my mother (probably due to the loss we both felt from my father’s death), and I had a difficult time gaining my independence. I also developed a phobia of driving (again, probably due to my father having been killed in a wreck), and I had a hard time learning to drive and getting my license. Because of these problems, I went through a period of pretty severe depression.

But God showed Himself to me in a mighty way during that time! During my time of depression I had come to doubt God’s very existence, and one night I prayed and told Him that, if He was real, He was going to have to show Himself to me or I was about to lose my faith. Well, He DID show Himself to me that very night in a vision that was FAR more than an ordinary dream! In the vision, I saw Christ descend from the sky, and I was taken up into the sky to meet Him. When we met in the air, Christ gave me the biggest, most beautiful bear hug you could ever imagine! Now, I know that some of you may be laughing or think I’m crazy, but as I said, that experience was so VERY real that I can see it now and I can still feel that bear hug, even all these years later!

After that vision, God continued to work in my life. He provided the very people in my life that I needed during that time. First, he provided an interim pastor at my church who was willing to listen to me, answer my questions, and talk to me about my doubts without condemning me for them. Then later he provided another pastor in the community who formed an interdenominational youth Bible study group. This Bible study group taught me so much in depth about God’s Word, and I experienced a time of great spiritual growth during my involvement with them. It was during this time that I read the Bible all the way through for the first time. I also heard true stories from the folks in my Bible study group about healings and other miracles, and I even witnessed a few miracles for myself. I went from doubting God’s existence to trusting Him more than I ever had in my life up to that point! God was, and is, faithful!

Unfortunately, during that time I also was taught a few things about God that I later learned were not accurate. One example was a little bit of name-it-and-claim-it theology. I later learned that this teaching was an attempt to manipulate God into giving us what we want — which, of course, can’t be done. James 4:3 says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.” In other words, there is a condition on whether God answers our prayers or not – are we asking with the right motives? I learned, as time went along, that God is not someone who has to jump every time we ask something of Him. He has the right to say no.

Also, during this time the charismatic movement had come into full swing. While I still see a great deal of good that came out of that movement, one problem I began to see was an attitude of “spiritual superiority” among those people who had received the gift of tongues — an attitude that they were “more spiritual” than those who had not experienced this blessing. This struck me as far from the way a person who professed to be filled with the Spirit of holiness and humility should be acting! First Corinthians 12 lists the gifts of the Spirit in order of their importance, and tongues is at the bottom of the list!

So I did receive some teachings that were in error, but God made sure that, in time, I learned the truth.

During this time I graduated from high school and college and started teaching school. Then in a few years I moved out into my own apartment. I also left the church where I grew up, and I joined several other churches in succession, trying to find the “right” church for me. I continued to attend church and remained close to God (in varying degrees). I still saw Him as a heavenly Father who loved and took care of me. Emotionally I was healed of most of my depression from my adolescence, though I still suffered some bouts with depression from time to time.

I had some rough times throughout my twenties and early thirties with hurts and broken relationships, but God brought me through and helped me to grow emotionally and spiritually through the experiences. God spoke to me especially clearly through some Single Adult conferences that I attended during that time at Ridgecrest Baptist Conference Center near Asheville, NC.

During that period of my life I became involved in, and somewhat fascinated with, a kind of “Christian” psychology that, in reality, is more New Age than truly Christian. As time went along, God showed me that much of it is not Biblical — that iit is more of a philosophy of secular humanism with a few Bible verses thrown in here and there to make it sound Christian.

Then, in my mid-thirties, I left teaching. I had realized, even back when I was doing my student teaching, that I did not enjoy teaching and was not truly cut out for it. And as time had gone on, I had become more and more unhappy in my teaching career and had had more and more problems with it. So finally, when I was around 35 years old, I decided to quit teaching, go back to school at the local community college, and study computer programming.

Two years later I graduated from the community college in the top ten of my class, and I received the Business Computer Programming award. God showed me through this success, and through later successes in my programming career, that I was not incompetent (as I had come to feel that I was). He showed me that I had just been in the wrong field. Praise God that He gave me the chance to go back and get it right!

Since that time I’ve been laid off from my job and had to find a new job several times. But God has always provided a new job for me! RIght now he has provided for me to retire early after my position at Hickory Springs Manufacturing Company was eliminated. I also had to move back home to care for my mother and my aunt Mary in their latter years as they had serious illnesses, and finally had to place both of them in the nursing home. But praise God that I was able to not only place them in the same nursing home, but was even able to get them into a room together!

God has also provided a great church for me at West Hickory Baptist Church! I had become distant from God and disillusioned with church for awhile due to some bad experiences in churches. But God has allowed me to keep trying in this area, too, until I got it right! He has also shown me that a lot of things I used to dislike in church, or things I just didn’t think were very important, really are important. I’ve come to appreciate the importance of sound doctrine, of Bible-centered preaching and teaching, and of accountability to my fellow Christians in keeping me “on track.”

So, since that simple prayer I prayed to receive Christ when I was about eight or nine years old, there are many more things that I have learned about God and about the Christian faith. There have been peaks and valleys, times of doubt and times of rejoicing. I have learned that, even in the times when I have not been living very close to God, He has still always been there with me, taking care of me. He has strengthened me, guided me, opened doors for me, and shown Himself to me in a mighty way during times of trouble! I simply cannot imagine living life without the love of Jesus to strengthen me, and I look forward to going to be with Him in heaven when I die. And I have grown to have a real passion for soul-winning in the last few years.

I look forward to getting to know you better! God bless!