What's a Testimony?
    You are probably asking yourself right now, "What's a testimony?"  Well, a testimony in court is the story of what the witness experienced first-hand.  In a court of law, testimony cannot be from a second-hand source (that is called hearsay).  My testimony is simply my experience with God.  Why I know and believe that God is who He says He is.
My Testimony
    I was raised in church, and was brought up with all of the Bible stories, songs, and games normal to a kid in the church. I had no real knowledge or understanding of God, I just knew that He was this guy that we seemed to do an awful lot of praying to, especially when we needed something. In the seventh grade, at camp, the speaker asked us if God existed. Of course, I figured that God existed, I hear so much about Him.  It seemed to me that it would have been a waste of time to talk to something that didn't exist.  Then, the speaker asked us to prove that God existed. I couldn’t do that. As the point of meditation, the speaker challenged us to ask God to manifest Himself in our lives as part of camp. That day, during my quiet time, I told God that if He existed, He should prove it to me. That night, two boys who were quite unlikely to become Christians went forward as part of the altar call. It was not so much their decision for Christ as this voice in the back of my head saying, "See, I can work...watch me do it." From that day forward, I believed that there was a God.

    The following spring, I was struggling with many of the issues that face seventh graders, I didn’t feel loved or accepted. On Easter Sunday, our youth pastor gave a talk on what exactly it meant for Christ to be crucified on the cross. It was then that all of the Bible stories that I had memorized for 13 years came into focus. Right in the middle of Sunday School class, I realized that Jesus had come because I had separated myself from God through my actions. In my heart, I recognized that this Jesus was something that I needed to be able to be friends with God. I went up to the youth pastor and told him what had happened, and I started Baptism classes the next week. During that time, I acknowledged my sinful nature, recognized that I couldn’t be "good" without Christ’s help, and accepted Christ into my heart. I was baptized two weeks later.

    As a result of this decision, I have walked with Christ since. However, my walk was a crawl until my Freshman year of college. (Five years ago) It wasn’t until I entered college and was "on my own" that leaning on God’s shoulder became important to me.  I learned that God wanted to be acknowledged in my every day life.  He wants us to see Him in every little detail that happens, because God is not a God of chaos, but of order.  He has taught me countless numbers of things through His word, Campus Crusade for Christ, and the High School Group where I am a sponsor. God not only loves me, but wants me to know Him more and more every day. His presence in my life is my joy and my strength, and I want nothing more than to help others realize this.

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39

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