What I shared at all Broward mid-week: My Testimony
I don’t know if any of you are like this too, but I tend to make up arbitrary guidelines and then live by them like they’re some kind of rule. Now one of these rules I came up with really young was that I would be baptized at 13, so when I was 13 and a half and I saw my window of opportunity closing, I started studying the bible. It was pretty hard and there were things I learned about my character and I realized I wasn’t as “good” as I thought I was, especially when it came to sins of the heart. So after having to count the cost twice, I was baptized about a month before I turned 14.
Even after being baptized I depended a lot on other people’s faith and my own strength rather than relying on God. Whenever I was troubled, instead of going to God whether through prayer or even reading the Bible, I would just go to my friends. So when they started leaving God, a lot of my faith in God went with them. Around that same time I started having conflicts with some of the sisters in the church and began to find it really hard to forgive them and just love them. My sinful nature is that whenever I’m hurt by people, I react by thinking, “I don’t need them anyway” and then I’ll just avoid them. But, being a kingdom kid, I knew what the scriptures said about thinking you didn’t need parts of the body and I knew that you can’t call yourself a disciple and not love your neighbor. But by that time my heart was hardened to the point that I didn’t want to fight to change, so I just left God.
Once I was in the world and college, I started to fall into a lot more sin, mainly the sins of commission. I was deceitful with my parents so I could be immoral with boyfriends and my pride had gotten to the point where in my mind I could justify anything I did just to ease the guilt.
I truly believe it is because of the constant prayers of a lot of you and more than anyone, my parents that I’m here today. I can only explain my change of heart as a work of heavenly intervention. I was driving to work on a Thursday afternoon when I suddenly realized that everything good in my life that I thought I had worked for or deserved were really gifts from God and that meant he had never left me, but I was the one who turned away from him. After that I knew I had to get my relationship right with him and I started studying the Bible.
After studying with sisters and really reading what the scriptures say on my own I realized I had never had a true relationship with God and that I hadn’t made Jesus Lord of my life, so I decided to be re-baptized on October 26, 2008.
I would like to thank all of you for your prayers and support and especially for your love and forgiveness in welcoming me back into this amazing kingdom.