My Testimony

When and how did I become a Christian? It was May of 1994, shortly after my 16th birthday. Sunday being the start of the week, the previous week had been a rough one. Some background is necessary, and I beg your patience as it is relevant and important to what will follow.

My parents divorced when I was three. In the fifth grade, I left my mom in order to live with my dad. My dad’s dad died when he was very young and he never had a father figure in his life. He didn’t know how to be a dad. We were extremely poor. Our phone was always disconnected and sometimes we had electricity. Our trailer was poor to say the least.

Because my dad and I couldn’t get along and the living conditions were so bad, I slept next door on my aunt’s couch for 8.5 years. She was quite dominant and condescending. That too is an understatement. I was told often that I was trash and would never be anything but that, like my father. Soon, I devolved into an uncontrollable terror. I learned to curse from my family, and I cursed my family. I took martial arts, and I fought my family. Dysfunctional does not begin to describe my home life.

By the time I got to high school, I was in trouble often. Some days, I would get off the bus in town and terrorize the town until I met my dad at the lumber plant in the evening when he got off work. I fought with knives, broken glass, and anything else I could find. I have the scars to show it. By my sophomore year of high school, I hated everyone and I felt like everyone hated me. I didn’t want to live, but I was afraid to die.

I was no atheist. I knew God existed and I hated him; just as Romans 1 says. On the Friday before my conversion, I had tried to get a certain young man on the bus to fight me. To goad him, I cursed and mocked him sister incessantly. The things I said to this young girl, no one should ever hear — much less be called. But the young man would not fight me. Finally, I let him off the bus. It was a disgusting display of depravity, and I shall spare further details of that event.

When I got home, I got in my car and drove to my mom’s for the weekend as I was required to do. When I got there, I was informed that I would be going to church with them that Sunday. That had never been the norm for me. I retorted, they could go. I would be going home early Sunday morning. I eventually lost the argument and was told I could go home after church on Sunday.

In protest, I said I would drive myself so I could leave immediately after the service. When I turned onto the road the church was on, I rolled down both windows on my car (manually), and turned up my radio so all could hear the explicit lyrics from the gangsta rap I was listening to. I wanted everyone to know that I was coming in protest. I hated them already, and I wanted them to hate me. I didn’t want to be there, and I wanted them to not want me.

In we went. I forced my family into the pew by making a scene so I could position myself on the end of the pew. My plan was to make a run for it at my earliest convenience. As the service progressed, this tall, skinny man in a black suit began to preach. I mocked him in my mind the entire service. He looked like the undertaker on a cheap Western movie. I think I even quipped out loud that someone should get him a sandwich before he died of malnutrition.

But throughout that service, my worst fears came true. I began to feel shame for my sin. I began to hate the sin that I had loved, and I began to love the God that I hated. During that service, I came face to face (metaphorically) with that One whom I so desperately did not want to know. I had a plan to escape the service. I sat with my left foot in the aisle waiting for a change to rush the back door. When my opportunity came, I like to say that my foot betrayed me. But that is an immaculate description.

What actually happened was this. Throughout that service, the God who I hated crushed my hard heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). He whom I hated had lovingly pursued me in a manner consistent with Francis Thompson’s great poem, “The Hound of Heaven”. He had chased me through multiple counties, following the trail of blood and tears and destruction I left in my wake. He had cornered me in a pew in a little white cinder block building and used a frail, pencil-thin preacher to call a total stranger to repentance and faith through the message of the gospel.

And as God demonstrated his unmerited favor towards me, he so worked in my heart and mind so that what he wanted me to do became exactly what I most desired to do. I repented and came to Christ by faith. I wept the entire way home. I was so ashamed of how I had come onto the property. I came in like a lion, and I left in humility and embarrassment for my conduct.

I will spare you the details of later that Sunday evening, though they are truly remarkable events. I will end by telling you that the next day, I walked across the commons area at school towards the young man I had tried to fight the Friday before. As I approached, he tensed up. When I got to him, I was weeping uncontrollably. I fell on his neck, hugged the guy, and through the tears and snot (sorry), I told him I was sorry. Shocked, and with an entire school and faculty looking on, he asked me what happened. I didn’t  have all the details, but I explained as best I could how I had come to Christ by faith the day before. I later learned that this young man was also a Christian and had prayed for me.

You may ask when I stopped hating Christ. That is when. I realized that it was for my sin that my Savior was beaten and crucified. But I also realized that because he lives, I could live also. And I do live now. And the life I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God who gave himself for me.