Testimony Part 1: Salvation

My Path to Jesus

Hello everyone! It has been a realllllllllly long time since we have posted. It is good to be back. I’ve felt like for a while now that I needed to share my testimonies. Yes! You heard that right, testimonies not testimony. I’ve seen God come through so many times in my life, and I haven’t shared too much with others. This is a problem, so I’m going to change that. You see, when I look back on what God has done in my life, it encourages me even through my present afflictions! Revelation 12:11 tells us that one of the ways we overcome the evil one is “by the word of their testimonies”.  My hope is that my testimony would also encourage you and remind you that God is faithful and good. Lord willing, this is the first part of many testimonies to come. We are going to start at the beginning with the salvation testimony, of how Jesus saved me!

Salvation testimony:

I grew up in church and attended Sunday school. My family was pretty faithful, and we rarely ever missed a Sunday. However, I really wasn’t interested in any of it. I believed in God, but I didn’t live like he was Lord over my life. To be honest, I never paid attention in church, and I thought it was very boring. I even cheated on my Sunday school tests. (Can you believe that?) I liked the idea of being “religious”, but my heart wasn’t transformed. I like the pharisees in Matthew 23:25 that cared more about the outward appearance instead of my inward righteousness. I wanted people to know I was “religious”, and I had great pride in that. I thought that just because I went to church and to Sunday school that it was enough. I thought I had my ticket to heaven by just merely doing outward things, but I did not have any relationship with God whatsoever.

Flash forward to high school, I was doing competitive gymnastics and hoping to get a college scholarship. All I cared about was gymnastics and my life revolved around it. I thankfully by the grace of God got a gymnastics scholarship and committed to a D2 school. It should have been a joyful season but during my senior year of high school I ended up with tremendous anxiety. I learned later it was OCD (more on that in a later blog post). Life was miserable. I felt the constant dread of waking up knowing I would have to face the battle all over again. I was too afraid to tell anyone the deep and dark thoughts and emotions I was experiencing so I became good at hiding it.

During that time, I had a friend who was a born-again Christian in my homeroom who would often say things to point me to Jesus. I honestly would kind of get annoyed with her when she said these things, but now I am so grateful for her boldness. I know God was using her to plant seeds in my life. I really started to wrestle with my faith during my senior year. I remember wanting to know if I was really going to heaven or not and what are the requirements for being saved. Then I did what any millennial would do, I started searching for these answers on the internet. Thankfully, the Lord protected me from non-biblical sources and brought me straight to the truth. I read time and time again that Jesus is the only way to heaven.

About a year and a half later, I wasn’t wrestling with my faith anymore. God had made it clear to me that Jesus was the way, the truth and the life. I understood by His grace that I was a sinner and in need of a savior. There was nothing I could do to save myself. I thought that I was “good” enough because I went to church. I thought my works would be enough, but oh how I was deceived. I could have never entered the kingdom of heaven based on my merit. There was only one person who was good enough, and His name is Jesus. He came down from heaven to live a sinless perfect life that we couldn’t live. He became the perfect sacrifice by dying on the cross, so whoever should believe in Him will not perish by have eternal life (John 3:16). I can see now that God was using my anxiety and my friend to point me to Him and that He was guiding this whole process. I’m so grateful that He saved me from my sins and myself. I am made new in Christ. His work on the cross is my greatest testimony. I am immensely grateful that the Lord changed the trajectory of my life when I was 18. I hope it encourages you as it does me remembering this first part of my testimony.  More to come in part 2!