Testimony

Growing up in one of the only admittedly non-Christian homes in my area, I quickly learned to associate Christianity with the order and security that my home lacked. Though my heart was, as yet, unresponsive to the Gospel, I affiliated myself with believers and mimicked their external actions. Yet I silently struggled to practice any sort of obedience, since I was fighting my flesh in the flesh, and I felt myself slipping farther and farther into sin—particularly into the sins of anorexia and bulimia. At this point, I had not experienced any heart change and, in fact, had no concept of it.

I spent most of the next ten years walking through and working through various theories of change and philosophies of hope. Each one left me emptier and emptier. I acquired two degrees—a BS in Christian Ethics and an MA in Church-State studies—but I walked away with little that I could use. I was still too consumed by my internal struggle to look outward, even at that which interested me. I was a slave in every way.

Though I professed Christ with my mouth, I did not believe in my heart that God had raised him from the dead or that the power of his Spirit was now available to me. In his mercy, the Lord began to take from me the things that I valued most. First, it was a relationship; then it was my health. In his kindness, he took no more than was necessary. In his astonishing love, he replaced these things with himself. Little by little, my heart softened to the “offense of the cross,” until one day I found that it was offensive no more. It was my only hope. It is my only hope.

For the first time since high school, I began to attend church regularly and to practice the most basic spiritual disciplines—bits of prayer, regular Bible study, tithing. Within a few months of this change in practice, the Lord began to reveal to me that I needed to pursue a fellowship of like-minded believers rather than staying, for the sake of comfort, in a church whose theology differed from mine in significant ways.

The Lord led me, quickly and clearly, to a new fellowship of believers at Sovereign Grace Church. Sovereign Grace Church is affiliated with Sovereign Grace Ministries and can be most easily characterized as charismatic and reformed. I am intimately involved in a small group ministry and participate fully and with great joy in the life of my church. I currently meet with my pastor about once a month and am accountable to several women from my small group and church. It is my desire to live my life increasingly before men that God may receive glory for the work He has done and is doing in me.