Christian testimonies

Milkias
It I find it difficult to explain to others what I thought of God in my childhood. I even find it difficult to understand it myself, largely because I gave so little thought to it. I was no different from other children growing up in Ethiopia in the 1980s. I remember my father being religious so, from childhood, I grew up believing that there was a God. At a tender age I was inclined to think of God as the great judge whom I must please with all my effort and do my utmost not to offend.

I was only ten when the family moved to London. My father was keen for us to receive some form of regular Bible teaching. I had a high regard for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church with all its history, pomp and outward show of religion and at school I prided myself in describing myself as an Orthodox Christian, as though that made me authentic and not one of those people swept away by a recent, newly-founded sect. Such was my pride when I was but twelve or thirteen years old. As the nearest Ethiopian Orthodox Church was far from where we lived, my father walked into the nearest Church, which happened to be an evangelical Church, and asked if his children could receive regular Bible teaching! I couldn’t stand it! It was bad enough going to Church on Sunday mornings though the biscuits and tea served after our Saturday morning class enticed me a little and I went.

I sometimes found that the preacher on the Sunday got a little too personal. He spoke of the need to be right with God and come to Christ but I only wanted religion on weekends to give me respectability in life. I expected God to help me when I needed him. In my heart I didn’t want any commitment; nothing to stop me from enjoying my life and living the way I wanted to live. In my teens the talk of ‘coming to Christ’ made me uncomfortable and I would race out of Church straight after the service before I got talking to one of these evangelicals.

I had no clue what it meant to be a Christian but I took great pride in labelling myself one. I had no concept of the character of God, no real sense of having offended him or feeling any need of Him. I was quite ignorant of real spiritual truths and had no real depth of character. Outwardly I lived my life just like anyone else, perhaps better. I was noted for my religious interests by my friends at school but inside I was rebellious. I was accustomed to doing, saying and thinking things which I would now be too ashamed to relate. I had ambitions to carve myself a good career, live comfortably with a bit of religion and good works on the side. I thought that by being good I could please God and everything will be all right in the end. Whenever my foundations were shaken and my teenage life hit a blip I would pray to God to help me out my troubles. Despite my stubborn refusal to take Jesus Christ seriously, I was challenged by the lives of Christians who seemed to have something that I didn’t have. It was as though they really knew Christ as a person and had a living relationship with him: to me, Christ was distant, a mere figure in history. In truth, they showed up my hypocrisy.

I made a real effort to become like one of them. I started to pay more attention as the preacher spoke on Sundays. I sensed that I had a lot of religion and head knowledge but was confused by my Christian friends who had a different motive to mine in their lives and delighted in Jesus Christ. I began to study the Bible daily at length and to pray that I would become a real Christian if I wasn't one but I prayed this prayer half-heartedly because I thought I could make myself a Christian. I figured I had a part to play in getting myself to heaven; perhaps by being more prayerful or a more zealous student of the Bible. However, for all my religion I was miserable.

When I was in my first year at University I began to see my ambitions for success and search for pleasure were the real motives in my life. I knew that I had offended my maker but what could I do to be right with Him? I had heard the Gospel (the good news that Jesus came to put sinners right with God by taking their punishment himself) so many times that I could preach it but it never occurred to me that if I came to Christ as a guilty sinner that I could be right with my maker! The thought struck, though, when I was at my wit's end and it turned my world upside down. I am sure I knew it in my head all along but it never made any real impression upon me.

Over the following weeks and months I was filled with a sense of sins forgiven and a love for Jesus Christ. The Bible began to ‘give’ as I read it. What was formerly dry and intellectual was now full of exciting truths which warmed my heart and filled me with a sense of wonder that God should ever have anything to do with an ignorant, rebellious sinner such as myself. The sins which once enslaved me which I couldn’t stop doing, now seemed ugly and offensive. I still struggled with them but I began to see them in a new light and hated them. For once I could pray to my maker! I could trust the promises of his Word, the Bible, and walk with him in this life and in the life to come.

The Lord guided me through University and my first employment. There have been real times of testing and trial but the Lord has been faithful in keeping me. As a scientist I have found the Bible of immense help in understanding the world around me. I know its message is founded in real history so I can trust its biology, geology, astronomy and every area it touches upon. This world, which God created, was never meant to be full of death, disease and suffering as it is now. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, once enjoyed God’s friendship in a perfect world. Their rebellion has had a catastrophic result as we see today with humanity being cut off from God and awaiting the judgment. I have come to see that I had inherited Adam’s fallen and rebellious nature. I have also come to see that God has spoken throughout the history of the ages through his Word, the Bible. All who want to be right with their maker can find a free pardon in Jesus Christ and they will be given a new nature and will enjoy eternity with him.