LISA’S TESTIMONIAL
Hi! My name is Lisa and I’m 17 years old. Here’s my testimony:
I started going to a Christian summer camp when I was 12, the same year my dad had gotten remarried. That was the first time I was introduced to Jesus on a personal level. I had always gone to church with my family, but it never really meant that much to me- it was just a practice and not at all a way of life. Anyway, when I came home that summer I felt really good about God and Christianity, and I started reading my Bible everyday and trying to act the way my friends from camp would have, but after a month or so it wore off and I went back to being the same old person. I carried a lot of resentment and hatred around in my heart, focused on my family- I resented the situation that I was in because of my parent’s divorce. I went back to that camp the next summer and had another spiritual high and then another low year, but the next year, when I was 14, I decided that something needed to change. The day after I came back from camp that year, I asked Jesus into my heart and started my faith walk with God as a spiritually newborn child. I still held onto a lot of the anger from the divorce, though, until the next year at camp. During a devotion on “personal darkness,” for the first time I was able to say out loud all the darkness I had inside my heart because of the divorce. It felt so good just to acknowledge that it was there, something I had been denying to myself and to God for awhile. That year when I came home from camp I stayed on a spiritual “mountain top” all year long- I felt closer to God then I ever had before. And this summer I took the biggest step of all (with God’s help, of course!) Finally one day I realized that I no longer wanted to be mad. It was time to let go of all the hurt, anger, sadness, and pain that had plagued me for so many years. So I gave it all away-to God- who is so much more better equipped than I am to handle my struggles. I only wish I had realized that sooner. But in any case, He took all the anger and hurt away and now I am a new person. Now my heart is filled with love rather than hate- and because of that I am able to get closer to God than I ever could have imagined! (1 John 4:8: “God is love”!)
In Christ,
Lisa
Vivace15@aol.com