Tell me your "testimony".?

Question

I know I will get a lot of stupid answers to this (even though its not really a question). And I am prepared for that, but I also know that others will honestly tell me. I am just wanting to hear about how others came to know and love the one and only God.

"Testimony" seems like such a churchy word, but I think those who know how to answer know what I am refering to.

Answer 1

I came to know Christ at age of 14 when i asked for salvation. For a short time Iived the life as I was supposed to, but slowly walked away from God. Staying drunk, not going to church, not standing up for God. A few months ago, it just hit my like a mack truck, its been 10 years since the last time I truly worked for God.
A preacher said some things that got me to thinking about how I had been living my life not for God, and how He had never left me alone, He was still helping me along. My grandpa passed away about the same time, my Mom's father. During his last weekend here on earth my whole family came to say their goodbye's. I went all weekend talking to him as if nothing were wrong, and he cried with pains. Finally sunday night before I left to go home, it had been hours since we got any movement out him other than maybe a twitch of his finger or something. When I knelt down to tell him I was going home and that I loved him, he moved his whole head about 6 inches up and down in a nod of "i love you too", thats what he was waiting on, i was the only one in the family who had not told it was ok for him to pass on. And if any of you have ever dealt with Hospice Care, they will tell you that loved ones will hang on for days until they think that the ones they are leaving behind are ready to walk without them. about 3:45am Monday morning my phone rang and I knew what I was going to hear, and I did hear it.But when i got there the real breaker for me was that my Dad watched him go. He said that they had Paw's favorite instrumental gospel cd playing in the background, as one song went off my Dad said that Paw opened his eyes wide as coke can bottoms, looked up at the sky and smiled, took his last 2 breaths and collapsed, and the song " I'll fly away" started. God was with us the entire weekend. Knowing my Grandpa's love for God and Christ, and how he constantly praised God up till he couldnt speak, made me realize what my salvation that I had recived 10 years ago really meant. I finally came back to God.
I thought about the time I have wasted not serving God as I promised Him I would, it's time I cant get back. Just know that I do now, and will to the end.

Answer 2

Christian hearts (not all but most as by online polls CNN etc...) are as hard as stones and they don't know love, ask the children of Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine, ask Condi Rice, Bush, and Madeleine Albright. This is the testimony of God against you in the holy Quran in chapter 57. It is as hard as or harder than stones, get to know yourselves and forget about love. Just think how you could kill more and more innocent Muslim kids.

Answer 3

My testimony could be that I want to tell other people in the church how blessed I have been my entire life. I did some things that I am not proud of, but no one is perfect, only Jesus is perfect.

Answer 4

Through my church, I learned about the atonement and how Christ willingly gave up His perfect life and suffered for my sins so that He could know exactly how to help me. Even though He had lived perfectly, He felt the sins of every person on this earth, so that if they would turn to Him, He would know how to help them. If it were not for Christ, I would be much weaker than I am now, and would not have the opportunity to continue growing.

Answer 5

I have known God for so long, I don't remember ever not knowing he exsisted.

I also can't remember when I realized how much I love him, or how much I understand that he loves me, but I do kno I love him more and more as I get older and I understand his love more and more as I grow older too!

God Bless You!

Answer 6

My mom fell and broke an arm while going up the church steps.

No, it wasn't Lord, it was church people who didn't bother to clean the ice. But I stay stay from church nonetheless.

Answer 7

yes... when you die and meet your maker please tell him that i said, "SATAN"!!!!!

p.s. - thanx and God bless.


yeah, i said it and guess what???? he freakin' forgives me!!!! so, hehehehehe...

Answer 8

My mother taught me that the Bible was a great story book and that I didn't have to worry about going to hell because I had never been baptized so the worst thing that could happen to me was that I would end up in 'Limbo'. The only time I went to church was for someone else's wedding or to get out of cleaning duty while in training in the Air Force. If I ever heard the gospel message, it wasn't in a way that made an impression upon me as anything more than something interesting that religious people believed.

As I grew older into my 20's and 30's, I lived with the attitude of 'eat, drink & be merry - for tomorrow we may die'. I had some vague goal of leaving the world in a slightly better condition because of my existence in it and generally tried to be a good person who gave to charity, voted with insight, and wrote letters to the editor about social issues.

But as the years crept slowly past I grew despondent because I didn't see any meaningful purpose to my life. Any good thing that happened in this world was overwhelmed by a plethora of bad things happening too. I became reclusive and my latent alcoholism started to become a larger factor in my life. I stopped showing up for work, lost my job, developed a chemical addiction to alcohol and eventually became homeless around the age of 40.

Some time later I was literally living in a park in Alameda. I would borrow a friends sleeping bag at the end of the day and with my bottle of alcohol find a secluded spot to sleep where people couldn't see me and the automatic law sprinklers didn't reach. Each morning I would awaken before the liquor store opened and be there waiting with trembling hands for the proprietor to appear. Finally, some friends suggested I go into a rehabilitation program for Veterans. Since I was about to run out of money I had borrowed from my Mother, and I knew I would get sick without alcohol in my system, I agreed to their suggestion.

Now there were two programs available in the area. One was in the East Bay where I was living and one was on the peninsula in the City of Menlo Park. So, relying upon my own wisdom, I decided to go to the one that was closer to my home turf. My friends dropped me off, wished me good luck, and drove away. I went inside and spoke with a doctor who told me that my friends had made a mistake. You couldn't just show up and get into the program. He ended up giving me directions to the nearest liquor store and I walked away from the hospital, bought a bottle of liquor and found a nearby park to sleep in. It was October 30th, 2001. Halloween morning I woke up and a policeman who was passing by saw me and asked me what I was doing there. I told him my story and he drove me to a homeless shelter in the nearby town of Concord.

The people at the shelter were very nice, however since I was officially a resident of Alameda County, they told me I would have to leave in a couple of days. I figured it was just another one of the many defeats that had characterized my life in the past few years and resigned myself to life back on the streets. But God had a different plan for my life. A man who worked at the Veteran's facility in Menlo Park, 'just happened' to show up at that shelter while I was there. He had all of the information, including names and phone numbers, necessary to gain admittance to the VA system in Menlo Park. So with the last of my money I was able to catch a train and a bus to Menlo Park where I was taken into the emergency veteran's housing facility while I was waiting to enter the rehabilitation program.

Once I was in the program I was constantly in a state of stress. Although I now had a few months clean and sober, I knew in my heart that my life was unchanged and that as soon as I left there I was doomed to failure. One day a more senior resident asked me if I would go with him to take some aluminum cans back to a recycling center. As I was riding with him, I was thinking to myself "This guy's an old burned out hippie." It seemed like every couple of sentences he would say something about Jesus, and that just confirmed in my mind that he was some aging freak. Eventually he asked me if I wanted to go to church with him the coming Sunday. He said the church he had in mind was called the Abundant Life church. With my ignorance of the Bible, and my preconceived notions about what type of person I was talking to, I figured that this was probably some New Age church were women with long white robes and rings of flowers in their hair worshipped Gaia the Earth Mother, or something like that. So I made my polite excuses and forgot about it.

But God's plan for my life was still unfolding. About a month after that day, I got into an argument with someone in the rehab program. I decided that he needed to come before the community because he was always treating people with an arrogant and divisive attitude, so I brought him up in the general meeting. The result of that was a verdict that we should spend a couple of hours together on the weekend so that we could get to know each other better. We talked about what we would do and he suggested going to church. I asked him which one, and he suggested the Abundant Life church. So I asked him what kind of church it was, and he told me it was just a regular, Bible teaching church, so I agreed to go with him.

We went to the church that Sunday and sat in the back. I planned on sitting quietly, and returning to the program having fulfilled my obligation. Pastor Paul Sheppard started his sermon and I found myself intrigued by his style of preaching and the common sense and plain message that he was putting out. I was thinking "Wow! I didn't know that's what the Bible was all about. This makes a lot of sense."

After the sermon was over, Pastor Paul asked everyone to stand and I figured it was time to go. Then he started talking about having a relationship with Jesus. He started listing all of the benefits one could have through a relationship with Jesus, and as I was listening I was running a mental checklist of the things he was talking about. I kept thinking, "I want that! I want that! I want that!" finally he mentioned that a person would have supernatural guidance for their life and that's what tipped the scales in my mind. I knew that on my own I was doomed to failure and an early death. The Pastor said that if anyone wanted to receive Jesus into their life they should come up front so that the people from the church could pray with them.

I didn't know what he was talking about. People started to make their way forward and there was a lot of clapping. I didn't know what to do since I had never been to church before, but something was telling me that it didn't matter. That I wanted what this man was offering and to go up in front of all of these people and find out what he was talking about. So I walked forward, was taken into a prayer room, and I got on my knees and confessed Jesus as my Lord and Savior and opened my heart to receive the Holy Spirit.

After I left the church, with my new believer's Bible in my hand, I was wondering why I had gone up like that. It seemed like it was just another vain attempt to have something good happen in my life, but oddly enough, from that moment on, the overwhelming burden of stress seemed to have been lifted from my shoulders.

It's been about 4 years since that day at church. I have not had a drink of alcohol in all that time even though I don't go to AA meetings. I have a new life in Christ that is better than anything I have ever experienced before. I work for the Enduring Truth Radio Ministry. I serve in the Lay Biblical Counseling Ministry and the Prison Ministry and the Children’s Ministry. I have many friends from church that live sober lifestyles and while there are always times of trials and testing, Jesus has me firmly by the hand. I have to smile when I write that down because it reminds me of how that 'old burnt out hippie' from the program sounded on that day long ago when according to my own wisdom, I turned down his invitation to come to church. But God…