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My TestimonyI remember my mother often read to me at bedtime from a children's book of favorite Bible stories. The family recited grace before dinner. I went to church and Sunday school. Two weeks each summer I attended vacation Bible school, too. This was my upbringing-typical of many kids growing up in the northern suburbs of Chicago. Then, like many teenagers in the 60's, I looked for real meaning and identity to my life during my high school years. Sports, religion, and social activities couldn't satisfy. When I was 15, I went to a Christian camp in Minnesota. My intention was to have fun. I did have a lot of fun, but God intended much more. It was there that I heard for the first time that I needed to ask Jesus to come into my heart. Even before creation, God's desire was to live in me. Just trying to obey the Ten Commandments or striving to improve was not God's intention for me. He wanted to be my life in a daily way. In the New Testament the apostle Paul says that Christ would make His home in the hearts of men (Ephesians 3:17). One night in Minnesota that is exactly what happened to me. I went off to college at the University of New Mexico. The state is appropriately nicknamed “The Land of Enchantment.” I discovered many things, good and bad, competing to enchant me away from Christ. My conscience condemned these things, and the Lord's shining within caused me to consecrate myself to Him anew. As I prayed in my dorm room someone knocked on the door. It was a Christian who eventually introduced me to the local church. It was there in the church in Albuquerque that I found the real enjoyment of Christ, and genuine oneness among His believers. My experience ever since then has been Psalm 133: “How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.... As the dew of Hermon that descended on the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.” B.T. | Back to List |
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