My Testimony

My path to come to Jesus has been slow process over time. It first started when I was about 16 years old. I had been suffering with depression since elementary school and at the time it had been getting worse. I have been very shy my entire life and never had too many friends. When I was in high school the two friends that I had started to hang out with me less and less and started to hang out with other people. This left me by myself and started stronger feelings of embitterment within me. I remember that I started to get sick of everything and started to wonder what would happen when I die, because I have also had suicidal thoughts since elementary school as well. I only tried to kill myself once, in the third grade, but it was a half-hearted attempt. I never really made a very serious attempt because I don’t like pain; I have been scared of suffering physical pain since I was about 4. If I ever did kill myself I thought I would just make it as painless as possible, such as O.D.ing on pills or just shooting myself in the head, thinking those were the most painless methods.

Being by myself increased my depression and suicidal thoughts. I also started to feel incredibly embittered toward the world. I started to think that all my problems in life were other people’s fault. I started hating people and thinking that humans are world’s problem, destroying the environment and killing one another. I started to wish that all humans would just die thinking that this would be better. Then I always got sad at the thought of others having to suffer and it made me just wish that I would die.
Another thing that I remember increasing my depression was the thought that all I see is everything in life and that there is nothing else. I started to think that once I died that was it, nothing else; I would just go into the ground. I was raised with the thought that there was a God, but it just never came up much, except my mom trying to take me to church when I was younger but I put up so much of a fight that she gave up. One of the only other times God was brought up was when I tried to kill myself in the third grade my mom was upset and asked me that “didn’t I know that I would go to hell if I killed myself?” This stuck with me most of my life but during my teenage depression I started to forget it. I realize now that my thoughts at the time were turning toward atheism. I started to think that there is nothing else in the world except what we see; this thought depressed me even more.

I’m not too sure what started it but I started to watch TBN around this time. I remember that I watched an hour a week because of a Simpson’s episode where the mom told the kids that God only required an hour a week of time from them. So most Sunday mornings I would get up and watch an hour of TBN in my room then I would go onto something else, such as play video games or read books. Over time of watching TBN they seemed to talk about reading the Bible and praying a lot so I started to do both. This didn’t mean that I was saved, just reading the Bible and praying because at the time I was still playing the GTA game series and reading Harry Potter books, most of the time right before or after reading the Bible.

I started reading the Bible at Genesis and got through the entire Old Testament without being what I feel know as truly saved. I heard people talking about sin but I never really knew about it except for the Ten Commandments. I figured I was fine because I never killed anyone, I didn’t have sex with a married women and I never told a BIG lie such as lying in a murder trial. It wasn’t until I came to the New Testament and read where Jesus said that to be angry with someone without a cause is the same a murder and to look at a women to lust for her is the same as committing adultery in your heart. I was shocked. I realized that I had sinned then. I never knew that Jesus said that. After that I realized the things that I did were sinful. I realized that I would go to Hell for doing them. I tried to turn to Jesus, but I kept doing things that I knew God said not to do. I became discouraged and for awhile I wondered if Hell would be so bad. The Bible says that people love to sin, using the strongest word for love in the Greek language and for me that was true. But every time I thought about it I couldn’t handle the thought of going to Hell, it scared me.

There came a day when I was watching TBN again and I felt this deep conviction inside for the things that I was doing. I felt scared because I realized that I had kept doing them and that I was going to Hell then because I choose to keep doing them. I got scared at the thought of Hell again and felt bad that I didn’t really turn to Jesus. I remember that I was crying thinking that I was lost and that I would go to Hell no matter what now. As I had these thoughts and feelings going through my head I just felt like God was telling me it’s alright, just come to Him and He would forgive me again. That he would help and strengthen me and save me from sinning again. I remember asking Him to forgive me again and to come into my heart and after that I felt a happiness and all my sad thoughts at the time went away.

From then on I have been growing stronger in the Lord. He has freed me from sins that were engulfing my life. One big thing for me was my cussing stopped. I had a very foul mouth and cussed a lot. My cussing just seemingly stopped. I don’t really remember when, it just did. Another thing was my hatred for my dad went away. I remember cussing and cursing him a lot. I hadn’t heard anything from him since I was about 4 and I hated him for that. I hated him for the last letter he sent me, one of the last sentences said “I will see you soon” but he never did. I used to imagine him coming around again so I could kill him for what he did. If I saw him again I wanted to do something to him, anything. At the very least punch him in the face, anything to make him suffer. Those feels just went away when I asked God to save me from them and help me to be the person He (God) wants me to be. That in its self seems like a miracle to me, for I hated my dad A LOT. For that to just go away when I asked God to save me from it was amazing.

That’s my story of how God saved me. I feel know like He brought me to Him to save me eternally but also for whatever I was going to at the time before I was saved. God is still working in my life and continually is changing me into the person that He wants me to be. That’s one reason why I created this website. I want others to know the work that God is doing in people’s lives and the many things He has done. God is at work in the world and many people can testify to that. I want people to realize that it’s not what we can do to save ourselves (because our works are as filthy rags to God [Isaiah 64:6]) but what God has done for us to save us.