Dear Dylan tell me how faith has changed your life ? Does faith helps in the most hardest moments in life ? Without faith we are nothing we need faith to communicate to our Lord God. He save us and faith we use it everyday. The people of the world don't know faith is needed and they are using faith everyday without them knowing. No one is thankful and people want more and more, they want to buy and sell humans have needs and need to destroy and no need to do that. Pray for people do not do that and people use their faith in God to love and do thy will.
Emmanuel, I don't do topical testimony style witnessing to my faith, but I can express what Jesus Christ has meant to me over the 82 years of my life. I'll share a bit of my life in general terms.
I was born into a Christian, church going home that embraced the word of God and the Triune God it is about. When I am asked, "When were you saved", my honest answer is, I'm still in the process of salvation. If I'm asked in modern evangelical fashion, "Are you 'born again' and when?" I do not know when God gave me birth from above, and that is not unusual for someone born into a truly Christian home, you just 'knew' Jesus personally from earliest childhood. I
publicly professed my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior when I was 9 years old, and then had believers' baptism by immersion.
My Christian walk has been one of faith, most often taking place providentially when I did not know it at the time, but became so clear when looking back in my life. In other words, I never prayed to God, "Lord, you know I am walking to work and need a car..", to awake the next day seeing a new Bentley or Mercedes in the driveway. I of course petitioned the Lord on certain facets of my life and the lives of others, and my prayer was answered, just that I did not recognize it at the time of the answer or the manner of it. But God has truly been faithful to me, so my life has been one of living by faith, based upon the faithfulness of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So while I do not have a testimony of being a hit man for the mafia, or a hopeless drunk in the gutter from which God miraculously gave me new life, my life did go through 3 or 4 stages that are like broad stepping stones in my 'being saved' on my Christian journey. From my late teens up through my 20s, I underwent severe difficulties in life to where I actually became suicidal. I am not one to say
God spoke to me, but I did experience that moment when the Holy Spirit brought a verse to my mind: "See now that I, even I, am he, and
there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand." (Deut 32:39 KJV) Then I went through a few years of examining my belief system, and from scripture and teachers out of the past, I dropped some doctrines I had been taught and came to understand more clearly God's sovereignty over all, and that included my process of salvation until my
"whole spirit and soul and body is being preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it" 1 Thess 5:23,24
There was a time when counseling was suggested to me, but I chose to read carefully, ponder and pray over the wisdom in the book of Proverbs asking the Lord to teach me and correct me from those words. Looking back, it is amazing how my life went successfully through another of life's major hurdles. I was always a bit of a loner, not antisocial, but came to a point where Ecclesiastes 4:8-9 was a serious matter for me. I prayed over that passage for years, and then unknown to me, my prayer was being answered without my realizing it. I was given the privilege of being a helper for a recent immigrant from China as he struggled to adjust to the western way of life. He became like the friend who sticks closer than a brother, until now, because of the vast difference in our ages, he is like my son.
Sometimes we Christians are so fearful of pride in our lives, we lack honest encouragement. This young man asked me some questions about the Christian faith, and then flat out asked me to teach him about Jesus Christ. What an honor,
and responsibility, that was! Later, I received an encouragement from God in a manner which was as if the Lord had patted me on the back, smiled and said, "Well done son!" I refer to a statement this young man made to me, "You know why I asked you to teach me? It was because I could see you took your faith seriously and as you live life, you constantly studied the Bible to find answers about 'how'; and also, you were not a Christian for social and career networking purposes, you truly know God."
I suppose this is as much of a testimony I can give, but it is a life of faith, we truly live by faith, which I see as "the faith once for all delivered to the children of God", Jude 3. In some ways, I think of this as the "faith
of Jesus Christ", Rom. 3:22 in the KJV
and the NRSVue. I'm often told I should study after teachers of today, our modern scholars; but, the teachers I find trustworthy usually come from 2, 3 or 4 centuries in the past... but, I'm studying the New Testament
that was written 19 centuries in the past, and I do not find there is truly anything new under the sun as the churches of Christ learn.
Emmanuel, I suppose you were asking for my testimony, and this is as close to a testimony as I can give. God has truly been good to me, and a protector through life in many ways.
