My Testimony.

This is a long 'ole post, and pretty personal.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE hearing other people's story and I LOVE sharing other people's story.  I'm not a huge fan of sharing my own....but I have felt like the Lord wanting me to be vulnerable and to trust Him and share my testimony that I gave several months ago at a ladies breakfast at our church.

I have always struggled with giving my testimony.  I am thankful for my testimony, and I can cover it in about 1 min. if I am just giving the testimony of how I was saved. I was raised in a Christian home and I learned about Jesus from a young age and I wanted to give my life to him and I prayed and asked him into my heart and then when I was about 8 my grandpa baptized me.  I have believed as long as I can remember.

BUT here is the problem…..every single human that has been posed with the question….

“Do you want to ask Jesus in your heart and when you die you can go be in heaven for eternity?”  would say YES!!!!  I didn’t understand what I was saying yes to.

I wanted to go to heaven…but it didn’t really matter if Jesus was there or not.

I believe I was saved even from that young age with all that lack of understanding…because God is God and He is full of grace and mercy.  Jesus has always been a part of my life, but that was it, for a long long time…just a part of MY life, kinda like the cherry on top of my ice cream life.  I went through all the motions and did all the stuff, most of the time, and when I didn't I just asked for forgiveness and moved on.  I didn’t understand the beauty of who Jesus was or what He had really done for me.  I didn't understand the depth of my sin or the beauty of GRACE.

  Heaven definitely sounded better than Hell and I am a people pleaser by nature, and so being a God “pleaser” fell right in line with that.

If I stopped there it would be like stopping into a bunker during war time and saying that the field in front of us is full of green grass and flowers and it is beautiful and a piece of cake…but for those of you that have been out in the "field" or lived more than a few years of life, I bet you aren’t experiencing green pastures and pretty flowers???

Or experiencing rainbows and puppies everyday…..

NOOOOO!  It’s not true…it’s a war zone out there.  There is beauty but there are land mines and dead bodies everywhere.  My  true testimony and any true testimony is the struggle in life and the only way to make it out alive with any LIFE in you is to cling to Jesus…..but there is bombs going off everywhere even with Jesus in our lives.  

We are living in a battle field. And as I see the beauty of who Jesus is more and more…I long to be with him in heaven…not just my loved ones that have passed on before me.

I have learned I need Jesus to be real and alive and active everyday in my life.  I have learned and continue to learn that He is trustworthy and praise worthy and beautiful.

I understood forgiveness to a point I knew I had done wrong and continued to do wrong, and needed forgiveness and was thankful for forgiveness….but again didn’t fully understand and didn’t see the beauty, just saw the mechanics.

  I needed forgiveness and Jesus had what I needed so

 THERE, DONE DEAL. 

I was lacking LOVE and GRATITUDE and AWE for what JESUS had done for me. 

There’s been a couple of “markers” in my life that have absolutely rocked my world and started to open my eyes and my heart to his beauty.   I’m so glad God continues to teach and grow us.  I am a slow growing child.  SLOWWWWWW  toooooo slowwwwwwww. 

As I am maturing I am bummed about the time that I allowed myself to stay immature.  If I had it to do over again…..I would spend the time and invest in getting to know Jesus so much sooner and so much better.  But, I can’t go back, but I can encourage others to hit the ground running, and I think that is why I’m passionate about teaching…..I want people to learn and grow because once you know and you begin to grow you begin to see the beauty of Jesus and you don’t want to just be saved from hell, you want to live your life for Him every day.

A few of the “marks”…kind of like a growth chart….. that have made me grow and begin to open my eyes to the beauty of Jesus is my youngest sister Shauna.  She had a similar childhood to mine, but she began to change in a way I didn't even recognize her…it was so strange…I could hear it in her voice.  We lived apart so we talked on the phone and rarely saw each other….but her voice changed, is the only way I can explain it.  She talked in a way I had never heard from her before.

 I knew whatever had changed her voice….I wanted. 

The only thing I knew to do was get into God’s word because that is what she did….I had been in Bible studies and church my whole life, but I got into HIS WORD for real for myself and I prayed.  God would wake me up for a season between 330am and 400 CONSISTENTLY to spend time with HIM.  I would pray and read and I would not be sleepy it was one of the strangest and sweetest times of my life.  I journaled like a mad person.  He would show me things in His word and it was jumping off the page. 

I soaked myself in His word. 

I read it cover to cover several times in a row.   That is how hungry I was.  

Once I got a taste I couldn’t get enough and still crave His word every single day.

 I go through dryer spells and when that happens it’s me not God that gets dull or dry…but I still hunger for his word even in those times…and that is an appetite that only comes from him… TO HIM BE ALL THE GLORY!!!

The next big marker for me was when Charlie and Lashae went to Uganda on a mission trip.  I had spent most of my life (my “Christian” life) pretty against missions.  I thought they were fine and all, but until everyone in my community and this country were saved….why spend money or time outside of THAT.

God absolutely demolished that thinking.  That is a whole testimony in itself, but l will say that He changed my heart and opened my eyes and I see the beauty of missions.  I see that God could save the whole world in 1 second if he wanted to…He could feed all the hungry people, he could heal all the sick, and he could put all the orphans in families….but I see now, that He has asked us, His people to “GO” and He would be with us.  And when we don’t go or invest in missions in a very personal way…it’s not THEM that’s missing out, it’s US! 

I promise with all my heart…I am a living testimony of this.

God has it totally rigged…we think we are to go and serve and bless others and it’s always US that is BLESSED, and I know every missionary short or long term  that I have ever talked to would say the same thing.

The next huge “marker” for me was adoption.  When we adopted Esther and then Mik, I came to understand in such a hard and real, and live it out kinda way, what my adoption into God’s family is. 

I will sum it up like this…. It’s not a perfect theological analogy…but it’s a good tangible living in my house kinda example….because I didn’t understand MY adoption into God’s family  prior to DOING it in my family.

God sought me out…He did all the work….it cost Him everything and He did it before I even knew Him, He did it when I was totally rebellious to Him and He was patient when I acted like he was not trustworthy.  It is such a process and continues to be with my  adopted kids…they have trouble trusting that there will be food and clothing and shelter EVERY single day and we won’t just up and leave them someday.  The process of watching them learn to trust has taught me a lot about my relationship with God.  I have had to learn to trust Him as my provider and protector, because it doesn’t come natural to me, but despite my lack of trust

HE IS SO FAITHFUL. 

I’m still in the major learning stage of the next 2 markers in my walk with God.

God has me on a major growth spurt right now (and if you know anything about growing…there's always pain in the process…thus the word “growing pains”.  I'm growing in understanding about

 GRACE and FORGIVENESS.

I know it sounds elementary, but seriously God never runs out of ways to teach us new things or old things in new ways.

I have recently come to realize that

Grace is very scary to me.

  I like to live and parent by law.

 I love grace – Grace is what saved me and allows me to stand righteous before God.  Grace is what allows me to live eternally in heaven with my Lord and Saviour.

The biggest thing that scares me about GRACE is that I don’t trust myself or my kids or husband,

I’m scared if we fully understand the freedom and the gift of grace we will go wild – in other words I don’t trust God to be God and to keep us in line using his Holy Spirit in us.

I want to control myself and my kids and I hold the law over all our heads often times.  I constantly remind myself and them the consequences of sin and then maybe the fear will keep us all lined out.  This is a vicious exhausting cycle.

Because I have lived with such fear, I saw my sin and the damage of it pretty minimal and I knew that I had been forgiven and was pretty thankful for that forgiveness, but lacked the passion about God’s GRACE and FORGIVENESS.

 I have seen people that have been lost for a lot longer and experienced the consequences of their sin, and once JESUS changed them, they had such

 GRATITUDE and LOVE for JESUS.

 I wanted the passion and the love without going backwards.

I have been praying that Jesus would be my first love.  He talks in Rev. to the church of Ephesus about all these things they have done right…but they have forgotten their first love

Rev. 2:2 

 ² I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. ³ You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

⁴ Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 

I felt like Jesus was never truly my first love…maybe for a day here and a day there or a church camp week or something…but that can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t think about anything else kinda love didn’t happen for me until I got into His Word and got to know Jesus personally …and then it was still pretty spotty and mechanical at times.

I have had the same amount of love for people and things in my life as I had for Jesus….I have loved my babies and my hubby (sometimes) and my grand kids and running and food and sleep and all kinds of things to the same extent and sometimes with more passion and commitment than my love for Jesus.

                                                                                               

I had been asking Jesus to make me love him like my first love…because the love that I have for Him has to come from Him.

  I wanted my love for my family to look like hate compared to my love for Jesus like is says in Luke 14:26  and that was just NOT the case.

Luke 14:26 (ESV)

²⁶ “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters,yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 

I loved Him but I felt locked up and I know there is more to be had…

Awhile back I was listening to a John Piper radio broadcast on the computer and he talked about the story in Luke 7 about the lady that washed Jesus feet with her tears…and then later in the chapter the parable in Luke 7:41-50 and I heard it in a fresh way that ripped my heart into a new found love for HIM.

To sum up the text, in Luke  7:47 it says:

⁴⁷ Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.

John Piper pointed out that perhaps even the sin that Jesus has spared us from is something to be just as grateful for.

When I heard it put that way……..it’s like my life and all the sin that I committed and could have committed flashed before my very eyes.  I was weak in the knees literally thinking about all the sin that I did and the sin I didn’t do but could have.  I have committed every single sin known to man in my heart…but some (very few) I didn’t act upon, THANKS BE ONLY TO JESUS.

That is GRACE GRACE GRACE and it made me fall in love with my Lord at the kitchen counter like a freaking tidal wave.

1 John 3:15 (ESV)

¹⁵ Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

Matthew 5:27

²⁷ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ²⁸ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  

  I have hated, which according to scripture is murder… and lusted, which is adultery, and been angry, drunk, I have abandon my whole family I’ve been divorced (in my heart)…and on and on and on…it has all been in my heart and much of this gross sin I have acted on and some he protected me from acting on. 

God protected me from so much, and so many consequence, and HE has FORGIVEN ME and saved me from so many consequences on this earth and also the ultimate consequence of living in hell.

 That’s GRACE!  That’s amazing GRACE!

The same fear and locked up heart that has kept me from acting on some of the sin in my heart has also kept me from living fully alive with commitment and a passion for my Lord and Savior. 

I would only go so far in my sin for fear of what people would think…and I would only go so far in my love for Jesus for fear of what people might think….

God is chipping away at all that.  I'm learning to trust GRACE and love FORGIVENESS and love Jesus with more passion and zeal. 

This is the thing that gets to me…..is it’s a level playing field…..we all have sin, committed and uncommitted sin…we are all full of _ _IT…..if you know what I mean.  

There is enough grace and forgiveness for everyone and JESUS can be ALLLLLLLL of our first love, if we only grasp our desperate NEED for HIM, and give our lives to HIM, He can and He will fill us with HIMSELF.

If He is not our first love, we have settled for a counterfeit love.

BECAUSE

HE  IS LOVE!!!!! 

The more I love Jesus, the LOVE

 of

 my life,

the more LOVE I have to love the loves 

in

 my life.