ELDER
Email: [email protected]
TESTIMONY
I grew up in a family where we attended church regularly. I would have called myself a Christian, but I know now that I had no delight in God throughout my childhood or adolescence. I was far from Christ. Rules kept me safe in some regard, but I know that what my heart truly loved was entertainment and pleasure, not God. Not until high school did I start to take God and the Bible more seriously, but I clearly still preferred sin. And it was a preference I was powerless to change. My heart was dead. I can’t place my finger on the moment God brought my dead heart to life. His work on me was gradual. God’s pursuit of me had me coming nearer to Him each year as I learned more. But a more pivotal moment came when I had attended Capernwray Bible School in New Zealand. I was painting a fence during an outreach week and listening to John MacArthur preach on Love and Obedience from John 21, a sermon passed on to me from one of the staff members. From then on, God began in me a more significant, deeper pursuit of Him in His Word. I grew to love the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but my love for God Himself was minimal. This pursuit of knowledge led me down a dark road of doubt and depression that lasted years. But God is faithful to complete that which He starts. I praise Him for that affliction, as painful and heart-wrenching as it was. “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes…in faithfulness [He has] afflicted me” (Psalm 119:71, 75). God rescued me by opening my eyes to behold the magnificent, perfectly sure, soul-satisfying beauty of Jesus Christ. God shone in my heart the light of His glorious grace. He is the Good Shepherd. He loves His own. He will not relent from doing all that it takes to bring His sheep into His presence for everlasting joy. I was a rebel sheep from the beginning. But God loved this rebel sheep from the beginning and rescued me with His nail-pierced hands. “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name!”