Christian testimonies

Joshua
On the 21st of November 1991 I was born into a loving Christian family. Ever since I can remember I was taught about God. I used to love the stories and had a good knowledge of the bible. Every week I would go to church but never listened to the sermon. Church was just something our family did each Sunday and I wished I could be allowed to do things with my friends instead of church. Despite what I knew and what I did, I didn’t know what being a Christian meant and I told everybody I was one because of my knowledge.

I was 8 when I was first affected by the gospel. I can remember the sermon involved the Pharisees and how foolish they were. I sat there smugly thanking God that I was not like them. But I was; I was just as foolish as the Pharisees were. That night I thought seriously about being a Christian for the first time. For the next year and a bit that followed I sought after God. I prayed every night that God would take away my sins. Then I began to pray less and less, and then for a few months I stopped seeking and tried to ignore the fact that I wasn’t a Christian.

Then in the summer of 2002 while I was playing in my room a thought suddenly hit me. What happens if I die right now? What will happen to me? I will face God’s judgement and go to Hell for I am a sinner. I ran downstairs to my mum and dad’s room and grabbed the bible next to my dad’s side of the bed. I turned to Mark’s gospel as I had been told it was easy to read, so I read from the beginning.

I got to chapter 2 and read of Jesus healing the paralytic: “Which is easier to say to the paralytic ‘your sins are forgiven you’ or to say ‘Arise take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the son of man has power on earth to forgive sin.” Mark chapter 2 vs. 9 &10. This means Jesus has power to forgive MY sins.

I properly realised for the first time why Jesus came on earth, to save sinners from their sins, sinners like me. I knew that there was nothing I could do to get to heaven on my own. Not my church-going or the fact that my parents were Christians could save me from my sins. I cannot put my hand on an exact time or date but it was soon after this that I knew I had been changed, I felt at great peace and I knew Jesus as my Saviour. It was nothing I had done; only the love of the Lord Jesus Christ saved me for he died on the cross to save me from my sins.

I didn’t know what to expect back at school. I thought life would be much easier than before but I was wrong. I told all my friends when I was back that I had become a Christian. “Yeah,” came the response, “You’ve always been a Christian, your dad’s a pastor, you go to church every Sunday, you know loads about the bible and you’re well behaved.” And some people just nodded their head not understanding what I meant. My heart sunk as I tried to tell them about what being a Christian meant.

The next year I began secondary school. This was a much harder challenge and I was blown away by the sinfulness of the place. My primary school was a Christian school and most people were friendly towards God and some teachers were Christians. Here almost everybody was hostile to the things of God.

My conscience was like a triangle in my head, every time I would do something wrong the triangle would turn around and it would hurt me. But as I went on, the edges of the triangle were filed down so when I did things wrong I didn’t care. I was putting things like sport in front of God. He was becoming less and less in my life and other things more and more.

Throughout the whole of my first year at school I had slipped further and further away from God. Then in the 2004 summer holiday, on the church holiday, I spent time with lots of other Christians each day. This showed me up, that I had been backsliding and through the love of God, although my love for him lessened, his love for me stayed the same. I went back to school to make amends and began witnessing to my friends.

Although I have lost a couple of friends because of this since then, I am glad to bear witness of the wonderful things Christ has done for me and could do for you too. I urge you, whoever is not a Christian here tonight, to seek for God to save you from your sins before it’s too late.