“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”
Revelation 12:11
We see the power of testimonies all throughout the Bible. Israel’s deliverance from Egypt is rehearsed many times in the Psalms alone. God warns us to not forget where we have come from; memorial stones are set up in Bethel, Gilgal, and more.
Testimonies of God’s faithfulness not only bring encouragement and excitement to fellow believers, but even the angels in heaven rejoice when one sinner gets saved – and they don’t even really understand salvation! More importantly, the story of what God has done for us can impact someone who does not yet know God.
I had a very average upbringing. An average broken and fixed and broken again American family. One dog. Two cats. One brother. One sister. An average middle class home in an average small town. I went to an average school with all the average cliques.
I went to the same average American church for my whole upbringing. We had an average youth group once a week. We did a mission trip once a year. One kid had a baby in high school. No one believed pretty much anything the Bible said.
Sadly, totally average.
Not everything about my life was average. I did (still do, bless the Lord) have the most wonderful grandmother. She’s definitely a supporting role in my testimony.
Grandma always only bought me Christian audio cassette tapes and music, journals, books, and Bibles. Nothing else. She had a RED LETTER Bible and… she WROTE in it!! *GASP* She read that Bible every day. She could even quote it.
She also took notes at church. In fact, her church was boring as heck. All they did was sing and then the sermon was, like, a whole hour. That was it.
She is a sweet woman who came to Christ in middle age and prayed faithfully for her husband for a few decades until he got saved – after he was already a grandfather! She looked in many different places for the truth, and the Lord was faithful to bring it to her eventually because she earnestly sought the REAL truth.
All that to say, I’m sure she prayed for me!
And somehow, I inherited some of that tenacity for truth-seeking. I don’t think you’d be reading my testimony right now if it weren’t for my grandma.
I loved my pink Bible with pink notes and flowers and journal pages when I was young. It was from grandma. (I think I still have it, even though I don’t really read that translation anymore.) I have always loved reading so I attempted many, many, manymanymany times to read the whole Bible. Starting in Genesis 1 I would get maybe as far as Numbers… sometimes. I usually stopped somewhere in Exodus. I never remember reading Leviticus and I was familiar with a few parts of the gospels. That was about it.
I learned only that God made the earth…“Duh” (in the words of my third grade self). For whatever reason, that stuck with me and never left. I actually got in trouble in middle school for not answering multiple choice questions about how such and such tiny mammal evolved into a small horse then a large horse. Instead, I wrote in capitals, EVOLUTION IS A THEORY and left it blank. That’s what happens when A+ students don’t answer one question, something about “expectations”. *eye roll*
I just KNEW that God was the real deal. The Bible said so.
Unfortunately, though, my church did not teach much of anything. My family held no worship at home. We barely lived like Christians except that we went to church each Sunday and said bedtime prayers and grace at dinner.
When I got older, I was expected (without any actual instruction) to not date, not kiss, not drink, not lie, not sneak around, not listen to edgy music, not dress immodestly, etc. You can see why I eye roll about expectations. And you can see why I ended up doing all of those things and then some. Rules without relationship equal rebellion.
But somewhere in the middle of all that….
I found out in college that this is really cliche to evangelicals, but it’s true.
A Christian ministry not far from my house hosted the summer camp. It was actually one of the only camps I ever went to, and I only went this one year in middle school. Apparently, God drew me there just to meet with Him. He would do that again for me in a few more years, by His mercy.
I remember being pretty home sick one day, but otherwise during this week, I felt the most loved and accepted and had the most fun I think I had ever had. I was really not used to being around strangers at all and wasn’t super outgoing or into meeting new people. This was when I was still in my more quiet stage before a switch flipped and my personality totally changed to loud, attention-seeking, and risk taking.
Back home, I was used to being left out, lonely, pushed aside, being the youngest sibling, not cool enough, too nerdy, all that. I hated school and I didn’t have a great time with my family. I ended up wanting to stay at camp forever, wishing those folks could be my new family and friends.
Sometime in the middle of the week, the evening chapel session was a clear presentation of the simple gospel. Totally out of character for my quiet self, I raised my hand, stood up, walked to the front, got on my knees, and cried for the next 2 hours. I had no clue what was happening, but I knew it was something big.
The camp counselor kept asking me if I was okay. I knew I wasn’t sad crying…. So yeah, I was okay. She was happy for me and encouraged me to write in the front of my bible about it. (Another thing I found out was cliche…?) I definitely still have this Bible. It’s dated inside the cover and it says I got saved, something about Jesus and I was so happy I could cry and scream and I don’t even know. The handwriting is adorable, too.
Unfortunately, that was the top of a mountain (literally, too, the camp was up in some hills) and I came down hard into a valley that got darker and darker each year.
It is hard to look back on the dark times, but my testimony is incomplete without them.
I was completely miserable the rest of my school years.
I was able to keep my good student, adult pleasing attitudes on the outside (except with my mom), but inside I was dying. Middle school brought out a lot of drama with friend groups and that pushed me head first into my two main extra-curricular passions which became idols (to get away from those crazy girls giving me issues!).
My mom and step-dad divorced. It was fairly awkward because my family didn’t show emotions well, if at all. So, it was expected, but also totally out of the blue. And we talked about it about one time ever. Against all odds, I was the only one of my friends with divorced parents. It was isolating.
I became interested in boys. And they ignored me. That was hurtful.
High school got weird because I connected better with older students, but they kept graduating and leaving me behind.
At 15, my boyfriend sexually abused me but I didn’t tell anyone until years later.
I picked up secretly drinking and smoking weed. Secretly sleeping around and secretly shoplifting. Secretly being out at night in different places than I said.
All while keeping my good face on for Sunday church, and the A+ student, star athlete, and more face at school. The teachers (except one) loved me. I was an example all the time. I loved it. It helped me convince myself that my life wasn’t really falling apart too badly, even though I dreamed of hurting myself, running away (actually I tried that once to no success), and swore I’d never come back when I graduated (also no success at that – God is gracious and merciful).
Little did I know the next boyfriend would be my last boyfriend and change my life and be a part of my testimony ….
Our relationship journey is a whole long story in and of itself, but I’ll give the short version now.
We met when we were 16 at a concert at a bar. He was not the rebel type like me, he was just there to listen to his friends play music. I got his number that night and we have texted each other every single day since then….. almost 15 years.
He had sworn off girls after a bad relationship, and his tactic was “if I talk only about Jesus all the time, she’ll leave me alone”. It didn’t work because “I WAS A CHRISTIAN”.
No really, I had been born again, but was never fed the Word of God so I didn’t grow. My sin enslaved me because I didn’t know how to walk in my new life; I did not know how to harness the power of the Holy Spirit to help me reject sin.
I had exactly zero Christian friends, knew zero people that went to church after they were confirmed into whatever denomination as a child, knew zero people that believed God made the earth, and had never heard that it might not be billions of years old. No one taught me about sin, how to identify it, and flee, as I was surrounded by it day in and day out at school.
So, back to Mr B. Every time I texted him, he said something about Jesus. So, I started asking him “tough” questions. And he had good answers. Actually, just any answer at all impressed me. No one had ever answered my questions before. He quoted the Bible a lot, too. Stuff I had never heard of.
I’m going to leave you hanging for now on our relationship and hop ahead a bit in my testimony.
Suffice to say, the rest of high school, even dating my now-husband, not only did nothing for my walk with Jesus, but I became further and further from God. I was in a very deep, dark pit of misery (including severe depression, drinking, and drugs).
During my first (which was also my last) semester of state college, the Lord finally got a hold of my heart. It was His mercy that I was even there, at the last school on my list, in the middle of nowhere. Literally, surrounded by nothing. Here was God again, writing my testimony for me, by drawing me away to a special place for a special reason.
He used a really wonderful church that I randomly attended with an old friend to minister to me. These people were happy and fulfilled. But they didn’t live even a little close to how I did. They loved Jesus with their whole lives. But they weren’t weird and out of touch with reality or how the world works outside of Christianity.
My spirit knew they had something I did not have.
It was the Holy Spirit
They also helped awaken my heart to reading the Bible. I had tried so many times before to read it, but it never spoke to me. It never made sense. I used it more as a book to try to corroborate my own feelings, or like a genie lamp – “God, I’m desperate, please say something when I flip to this random page.”
I don’t beat myself up about it too much, because I never went to a Bible teaching church before and didn’t know a single person who lived according to the Bible and had a daily living relationship with Jesus. This shows the importance of systematically teaching the Word so that people can grow when they get saved. Otherwise, there are helpless baby Christians everywhere. Like I did, they need the milk of the Word so that they can be nourished, grow, and move on to the meat.
One way I know that I did truly get saved when I was younger was that when these church folks answered my questions, they simply said, “Oh, well it says right here in this chapter and verse…. Look right here” and my spirit instantly accepted it and knew it was the truth.
Through months of questioning, I tended to camp out on the topic of the Holy Spirit. Who was he … it? How does it work? What are the gifts? How do you use them? Why is any of this important for my life today?
Being baptized in the Holy Spirit and learning that it was the job and power of the Holy Spirit to help me resist and overcome sin on a daily basis ended up having the biggest impact on my life.
I learned to pray and read the Word daily, to really study it and learn. I had NO idea that everything I ever wanted and needed to know was in there! Through the healthy companionship with this church and devouring the Word as fast as I could, I began walking with Jesus on a daily basis.
[If you are new to reading the Bible, I appreciate this book to give a big overview of the whole Bible as one book with one central message – the Gospel.]
The rest of my testimony is history! It’s been over 10 years now of daily walking with Jesus, submitting my decisions to Him, praying and worshiping in TRUTH and SPIRIT.
I could go on and on all about the many adventures I’ve had since college. Let me just say this: the adventures with Jesus are way more exciting and fulfilling than all the adventures I was running after in the world. This blog site is just one of very many!
I now have a reason for my hope of heaven, and true peace and joy that transcends circumstance. I have experienced all the love I was missing from my family and friends and bad boyfriends. And I know that it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve written out my testimony, take some time to journal and write out your testimony. Dig out all the details about the time you became born again. Think about how you learned to daily walk with Jesus. This will hopefully encourage your heart as you reflect on what God has done for you.
Then, boil it down to a few seconds or a minute or two, so that you can practice and are ready when you have the chance to share with someone who needs this same hope.
Lastly, find someone to share with! When you are thinking about sharing with people, you will come across tons of people all of a sudden. Maybe you’ve never really shared before – it’s okay. The best time to start is right now!
I absolutely LOVE sharing my testimony because it reminds me of all that God has done for me. His goodness, His mercy, His faithfulness, His grace, His love.
“The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;
Romans 10:9-15
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.
…whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard … and how shall they hear without a preacher?
And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
If you don’t have a testimony yet – that’s okay! But you don’t want to leave it like that any longer. Go to Are You A Christian? to hear the gospel like I did when I was young and begin your life with Jesus, securing your seat in heaven.