My Testimony

This Christmas I received a fun Christmas card from an old friend. In her sweet card she told me how she came to know the Lord. It really blessed me, because I have known her for years and yet, this is part of her life that I didn’t really know. I thought, there are a lot of people in my life that I’ve never gotten the chance to know the “God story or stories” in their life. And I thought, gosh, there are probably a lot, even in my own family who have never really heard my God story. So here it is. Feel free to share your own God stories in the “comments” section, I’d love to hear them

I don’t have a story where I was strung out on drugs, or nearly died, or grew back an arm, or was suicidal, or abused when I was a kid or anything like that. Nope, I was just a kid who got brought to church on Sundays and I played church well. Over the years God just kept showing up in different ways until eventually I decided to stop playing, and actually live it.

The season I met the Father.

Grew up learning about the Bible, singing “this little light of mine” and trying to stay awake during sermons. When I was a kid, I didn’t really get why we did all this stuff, it was kind of just a Sunday activity. My concept of Jesus was he was a character in a rather large book, He seemed to do nice things, he had some friends, they showed up on flanel boards. I assumed Jesus loved making things out of popsicle sticks and coloring, because we seemed to do a lot of that. I kind of like the crafty stuff, but I didn’t really know what the big deal was about Jesus.

When I was 9 years old my family was transferred to Cartagena, Colombia due to my dad’s job in oil. We were actually evacuated from the country 10 weeks after moving there and returned several months later. Prior to being evacuated my mom was sick, and didn’t feel like going to her birthday dinner with my dad at the local Hilton Hotel restaurant, which was good, because a bomb went off at the hotel that night. Within a couple of days, the women and children were sent off on a private company jet, which landed us safely in Caracas, Venezuela, though it blew a tire upon landing and then actually crashed on it’s next flight. Long story short, by the time I returned to Cartagena I was fairly convinced that there must be a God and for some reason He was seeming to take care of my family.

I remember one night at church (we met in a house church/apartment that was started by an American missionary), our Sunday school teacher, Dana Huddleston, began talking about the Easter story – and all they did to Jesus when they hung Him on the cross. As she began to talk about this, she began to weep. And something happened inside me where I finally understood, this Jesus guy was a real man, a real man that she was crying about, that really did die on a cross.

My understanding of God was that He was real, He was big, and He was up there somewhere watching out for me – He was the great Father. I talked to Father God a lot when I was a kid. But I didn’t really understand how Jesus was connected in all this.

Meeting the Son.

Fast forward several years, my family had been transferred to England. Round about my junior year of high school I began to suffer from panic attacks. I was an overachiever, and stressed myself out trying to please everyone around me. My value was based on others’ opinions of me and my achievements, and I ran myself into a frenzy, basically. About that time three new students showed up at school and became some of my good friends. I noticed two significant things about these three peeps….one, they actually read their Bibles and considered that to be of importance and they seemed to take their relationship with God beyond just Sunday stuff. I watched them like hawks. I began to notice that their lives seemed a little less stressful, and they had this confidence that they were of value to God, and that’s really all that mattered, no need to strive or achieve to prove your value. This was a pretty freeing thought for me.

Around this time I also saw a very impactful movie, don’t laugh, it was the cartoon The Prince of Egypt. I remember watching the scene of the plagues and the sea splitting in two. I wondered…God, if this is really who you are, can you still do stuff like that today, and if you can, could I please see it?

I went home that night and began to read the book of Exodus in my Precious Moments Bible. I was hooked. I just kept reading. I began to talk to God again and asked Him if I could see stuff like Moses did, if I could be a part of Him doing things like that. I just had this hunch that God was bigger than I was giving him credit for and that he was really going to move again like in the days of yore. I asked for a Bible for my 18th Birthday, discovered a Christian bookstore in Kingston and like a hungry, hungry hippo began to develop a daily relationship with Jesus reading, praying, and discovering more about who He was, how He connect to God, what He had done for me – and why I needed Him at all. I went to church still on Sundays, but now I paid attention to the sermons and began to think about Jesus and dialogue with Him throughout the week.

When I got to college in the fall of ‘99, I was primed and hungry for more of Jesus. I got involved in some Christian groups on campus, went to a Bible study for the first time. I loved it. My college was very academic and even for the Christian groups on campus there was opportunity to really examine Christianity from historical and logical perspectives and to compare it to other religions, so that I could know why I believed what I believed and how I could know it was true.

I knew that this Jesus guy was real, that I really did sin, I wasn’t perfect, and I knew that the price I would pay without Him was death, and eternal separation from God. But God, while I was His enemy, died for me, because He loved me. He paid for my mistakes, I just had to accept that and turn from living for the world, and live for a good, good King. (see “His story” page for more information)

College was really a great time of growth for me, being able to get into the Word and figure stuff out and to have other older Christians from church and ministries pour into my life and encourage me in my walk with the Lord. God was really real. I saw Him move and answer prayer. I gained a greater understanding of what God was doing throughout the world and the call for His children to tell others of His love.

Experiencing the Holy Spirit

I love learning about the Lord and teaching others, and felt a call to missions. Through a very long God-story which I will maybe share in more detail at a later time, I ended up in Cairo, IL as a missionary. I had dreams and aspirations of being like the Indiana Jones of missions and gallivanting off around the world on a grand adventure. I’ve since learned that God will provide all the adventure you want, if you just seek Him and let Him do His thing.

I’ve spent the last 4 years here in Cairo, living in this small impoverished, mostly African American community, learning.
I continue to learn about Jesus, the reality of the Word of God and how truly God is as big as He was in that Prince of Egypt movie (and that Exodus book ;o) ). I always wanted to experience something like Moses, so I find it rather amusing that Cairo is in a region known as “Little Egypt”.

The Holy Spirit is a teacher, brings understanding to the Word of God, helps us hear from God and obey Him. In the past two years, my ministry in Cairo has been a prayer ministry. There is still much outreach and relationship building, but the heart of it all is based in prayer. As we began to walk into this type of ministry. The Holy Spirit began to reveal itself in new ways. I didn’t grow up in a charasmatic church or with any understanding really of speaking in tongues or prophecy or hearing from the Lord. This was out of my box, and in honestly, either ignored alltogether or looked down upon where I was from. In fact, this was true for most of my team when we began two years ago. But then things just started to happen that I can’t deny – the book of Acts became more real as I saw the Holy Spirit move amongst our little flock in the ways I saw in the Word – speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing, boldness in proclaiming the gospel, hearing from the Lord, dreams, etc. I’ve enjoyed getting to know and experience this part of God, it creates more love for Him in my heart and more love for His Word. God has really been showing me how BIG He is and how GREAT his love is for me and for those He puts in front of me. I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit working in God’s people. I don’t think my God is wimpy – He can raise people from the dead, heal cancer, grow back limbs, talk to you, really talk to you. Living everyday in communion with Jesus is a gift. One I didn’t deserve, but He offered. And everyday, because He loves me, He teaches me more and more how to experience His love for me and how to extend it to those around me. He is real, and I love HIm.

All that God has done in this story is truly His grace. I didn’t do anything, I really didn’t. And I’m still in the middle of it, and in all honesty, I still feel like a little kid in the midst of my journey with God. Everyone has a story, my story is meant to be a treasure for my own heart, and if possible an encouragement to others. May God bless you and keep you as He continues to pursue you and release your stories.