My Testimony

Hey guys!! Sorry I have been lazy and not blogging lately :( I know... shame on me... but I will be blogging more often soon since I am going to be starting a new bible study this week and I will want to share with you guys as I go... plus they have this awesome blog hop thing once a week during these online bible studies... so that should be pretty cool... anyways, on to today's business... I am going to share my testimony with all of you today. I didn't want to post this sooner because I was giving this testimony to my church today for the very first time ever... there are things in the written version that I left out this morning because I was trying not to take too long. LOL! There will be a video version coming along at some point in time and I may post it as well, but for now, here is the typed version... hope it touches someone!



In Revelation we are told that our testimonies are our most powerful tool against Satan. Although I can't recall the exact chapter and verse we are told there that the head of the beast will be CUT OFF, his power will be CUT OFF, because of our testimonies and witnesses to the power of Jesus Christ. God began laying it on my heart many months ago that I should give my testimony. I argued, pleaded, and drug my heels. I had every excuse in the book why I couldn't or shouldn't get up here and tell all of y'all the sordid details of my past. But He kept nudging me and nudging me, so here I am. I don't want to dwell a whole lot on the details of my past but you have to know where I was, what Jesus carried me out of, in order to fully appreciate just how miraculous and life changing the blood of the lamb really is.

Some of my very earliest memories is of being in church with my Granny. I was brought up good ole, traditional, Southern Baptist... tried and true. I was baptized when I was 8 because I was the "new girl" in the Sunday school class and the 3 most popular girls were doing it so I did too. The church where I spent the majority of my life, from 8 to 18, was your every day, typical, small town, Baptist church. In the 10 years I attended there we must have gone through 4 or 5 preachers. All the deacons were related and if you stepped on one of their toes you stepped on all of them and it wouldn't be too much longer before you were politely asked to leave. I guess out of survival instinct those preachers didn't get around to teaching true scripture too often. I am not judging or condemning those people but you have to understand, I was in church every time the doors opened, but I was never taught or shown how to have a life based on scripture. I was never taught the importance of being IN the word.

So my church experiences were not as beneficial as they could have been, to say the least. Then take into account my home life. My parents divorced when I was very young and my father was not present for most of my life. Neither of my parents had close, personal, daily relationships with Christ at that time, and my mother's second husband carried a Bible in one hand and a constant beer bottle in the other. Because I was not strong in the word and my faith was not scripture based I was very vulnerable to Satan and his lies. My step father was very verbally abusive towards me and every time he said something negative Satan was there to back him up, and I had not yet heard all the many truths of God's word about who and what I really am IN him, so I believed those lies.

Through a lack of good father figures and a lack of scripture based faith I was left to develop my own image of God. Just like a celebrity in the tabloids, you hear all this stuff about them, so you think 'oh yeah I know who they are', but you only know parts of them, half truths, and even some all out lies about them. That is how I "knew" God. I knew what I had heard about him, what others had told me, but I had never taken the time to sit in his presence, read his word, talk and listen with him, and get to know HIM right from the source. I decided that God was this big, intimidating guy sitting up in the clouds shaking his head at all the bad stuff I was doing. I decided His love for me was based strictly on my performance. When I was good He loved me and sent blessings and when I was bad he took away his love and blessings and I had to earn them back.

When I was 16 I attended a true love waits weekend retreat with my youth group. At the end of the weekend I made a promise to myself and God that I would save myself for marriage. Less than a year later I met an older boy who showed me a lot of attention I had never had before. My self esteem and confidence were non-existent and he preyed on that. Despite any and all warnings from my mother I decided I was in love with this boy. By the time I turned 17 my true love waits promise was broken. Then here came Satan again, whispering in my ear, telling me I had failed God, I had broken my promise, I was dirty and defiled and he could never love or look at me again. I had messed up and could never earn my way back into God's good graces so why even try? Shortly there after my step mom had a little girl and three weeks later that little baby girl passed away. There was Satan heaping on the guilt and agony, I was so bad and God was so angry with me that he had to take Chloe away to teach me my lesson. Had I ever read the word and been in the scripture I would have known that these were all lies. I could have armed myself with God's word and not believed these things. But I didn't. So from 17-23 my life spun out of control. That older boy I had been seeing turned abusive and controlled my mind and much of my life for several years. He would yo-yo in and out of my life. During the times he wasn't around I filled the void with alcohol, occasional drugs, partying, and random men. I felt empty inside and kept trying to fill the holes with these worldly addictions, never seeing or knowing that those holes were God shaped and He was standing just in the background waiting for me to notice him and turn to him again. I broke every commandment there is... all 10 of them.... some of them too many times to count. I lived life thinking I had lost God's approval so what's the use? I might as well enjoy myself now and then when I am really old and gray and lying on my death bed I can ask forgiveness and it'll be all good.

Then in November of 2007 my cousin, who was only one month younger than me, died of leukemia... 5 months later, just after my 22nd birthday my grandfather died too. During those first 5 months after Lauren passed I crawled into a bottle and stayed there. When Grandaddy followed so soon after it snapped me out of it. I was an ostrich with my head in the sand and God came along and kicked me in the behind. I realized there might not be an old and gray death bed to ask for forgiveness on...

But my faith still wasn't scripture based so that "wake up" was very brief. Although I got out of the bars and settled down with one man, my life was still way off track. Between July of 2008 and November of 2009 I met and moved in with a man, got pregnant, got married, found him cheating, had the baby, and watched him walk away. I had sworn to myself all my life that I would marry one time and one time only. When I married it would be for keeps, divorce was NOT an option. But when your marriage is based on 'oops we got knocked up we better do something' instead of being based on God, it can't last long. So from November of 2009 until March of 2011 I was lost and struggling. I was barely treading water financially and trying to raise a little boy without a father... I was totally lost once again.

In March of 2011 we found the Hubbard Cowboy Church. Even when I strayed from God and church I had always had this little nagging in the very bottom of my heart, the back of my mind, like a craving for a relationship with him... even when i ignored it. So when mom found the website for a Cowboy Church i thought, well why not... southern baptists didn't do me any good, let's give em a try. The first time we walked up we were greeted like long, lost family members. The very first sermon was on why you need to be in church. As the Sundays went on I found that I was being given true scripture teachings for the first time in my life. Every Sunday God was convicting me of something through these sermons. But I'm stubborn so you know that's not the end of the story.

Last January I decided that my new year's resolution was to draw nearer to God. You see the more we came to church and the more I really listened to the sermons and let them sink in, the better life was getting. My life was turning around. I finally made the connection... when I am trying to get closer to Him things get better. So you know I posted this on Facebook of course... and at the time I had no idea what kind of prayers and power I would bring on myself by putting that down in some form of writing. This last year has been nothing short of amazing for me. Through out the year I can't count the many times that I felt the presence of God, drawing me back to Him; The many times that I felt and noticed Him working many things in sync with each other strictly for the purpose of turning my heart back to him. Songs on the radio at just the right time. Bits of scripture dropped in front of me by others, or social media, or on my phone, over and over again. I finally read the book "The Shack" even though I have had it on the shelf since it was first published and never opened it. Even something as small as a book planted yet another seed in my heart.

But I think the biggest turning point was late September, talking to my sister on the phone, she told me she had signed up for an online bible study through Proverbs 31 ministries. In my head I was thinking, oh that's nice but I could never do that, when do I have time for a bible study. And then I heard my own mouth going, "oh i would LOVE to do that with you". Huh? Then I thought, oh well maybe she will forget... a week later my book arrived in the mail because she had signed me up. The bible study changed my life. God had been preparing my heart all year to be open to that bible study... and boy did it blow my socks away. It is called "a confident heart" by Renee Swope. Although the entire thing was life changing there were parts that touched me deeper than others. One being a deeper look at the story of the woman at the well. I thought I knew that story already but when this study took me deeper into it I could not believe how well I related to this woman.

Long story short, this year I finally found myself in the word. Now I find that I can't get out of the word. If you don't hear anything else that I have said today I want you to hear this part... No matter who you are, no matter what you have done, no matter how long you have gone without being close to God, He is still there waiting on you. He still loves you. When you turn to Him, when you accept Jesus, it really and truly is all washed away. Romans 8:1 says "therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." The most wonderful truth I have learned this year, probably the most wonderful thing I ever will learn, is this... No matter how "bad" you think you are the blood of Jesus is enough. I lived a long time believing that God's grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness applied to everyone BUT me. This year I have learned that when you think like that you might as well be looking Jesus in the eye and telling him "your sacrifice wasn't good enough for me, your blood wasn't strong enough to cover me". I assure you His blood IS strong enough.

I want to leave y'all with two things... 1. you can not worship what you do not trust, and you can not trust what you do not know. The only way to get to know God better is to get into His word, spend time with Him, listen as much as you talk to Him... if you seek Him you WILL find Him and you will never be disappointed. and number 2. There will ALWAYS be more power, love, grace, and mercy in the blood of Jesus than there is sin in you... He's got ya covered...