This Is My Story

I remember the exact moment when I realized I wasn’t saved.

That’s right…I said WASN’T saved.

Every time I’ve been encouraged to share my testimony, that’s the moment that always comes to mind. That moment when I was thirteen, at an overnight church event, and gave the wrong answer when asked what gets us in to heaven. I have no idea what I answered, but I know it was wrong because the leader asking (who I also do not remember) launched into a description of the gospel. I remember thinking, “Ugh, I said the wrong thing. I KNEW the answer, why didn’t I say it? This is SO embarrassing!” It occurred to me later, that I didn’t say the “right” answer because I didn’t believe the right answer.

That’s not the testimony anyone’s looking for though, is it? At least it feels that way. It feels as though we should all have this “once I was lost, now I am found” testimony. A story of how we came to Christ that fits the formula in the “how to witness” pamphlets: what was your life like before you were saved, how did you come to the Lord, what has your life been like since. I have, on more than one occasion, questioned my salvation because I couldn’t find a story in my life that fit in to the basic formula.

I did not find Christ in the midst of a raging drug addiction or violent life on the street. I found Him in my loving, middle-class, Christian home in the suburbs of D.C., but that doesn’t mean that I was any less lost when I came to Him. I wore smiles and roller blades and played the clarinet, but I was dead in my transgressions. Dead.

We all begin our lives without Him, whether our parents dragged us to Sunday School or not, and all of us who found our way to Christ were drawn to Him differently. He deals with each of us intimately and specifically (Psalm 139). All believers fit into the “once I was lost, now I am found” story, whether it looks like it on the outside or not.

I have found that I am not alone and many of us who grew up in the church had NO IDEA WE WERE LOST. I think it can be easy to ride the church wave and never really consider anything around you. The stories of the Bible are your bedtime stories. God is a matter of fact…just like gravity. Everyone around you does certain things (at least publicly) because that’s the way that Christians are supposed to do them. There is a definite “us” versus “them” vibe—churchy people vs. sinners—and it never occurs to you that you’re the “them.” It wasn’t as if my thirteen-year-old self disbelieved Christ as our savior. I didn’t actually BELIEVE anything. Everything was information gathered, stories I’d been told, traditions and patterns.

I did end up committing my life to Christ the following summer, but it took me realizing that I hadn’t in order for me to make that commitment. Although completely transformed from death in sin to life in Christ, you couldn’t tell it by looking at me. I committed my life to Christ, went home, and then woke up the next morning to do summer-y things with my friends…but I was different in my heart.

The first sign for me that I was different came when our church hired a youth minister and she showed me that we could study scripture for meaning and application in our lives. There was a thrill and excitement to that like I had not experienced before and I developed a hunger for the word of God. I knew that I was different because a lot of the kids around me still harbored their apathy, so I hid my excitement so I wouldn’t seem weird. God’s Spirit was inside of me and the Lord was sanctifying me and causing me to walk in His statutes, but I didn’t really understand that at that moment when I was fourteen. It has been a long and slow trip of development and maturity as I discover who I am in Christ and the depth of the implications of committing my life to follow Him. As I’ve studied, I’ve learned, and as I’ve learned, I’ve changed. And then it all got tested as I’ve been burned by the fires of life and trials laid before me. It will continue. I know that He who began a good work in me will complete it, but I also know that it will involve study, prayer, instruction, being mentored, and walking through a thousand different situations.

I once did not care about God other than trying to please the people who wanted me to learn about Him. I lived for what I believed was right and often just for myself, and I had no idea I was in need of any saving. I did not understand the world and was alone and hopeless within it as I tried to navigate it by my own devices. Through the example of my mother, the instruction of my father and the countless, meaningful discussions he and I had about life and the world, the Lord drew me to Himself  and I committed my life to follow Christ. Now the compass of my heart points to God. It doesn’t matter what I experience, what mistakes I’ve made, or what sadness is brought upon me—regardless of the pain and suffering I see throughout the earth—I know the sovereign God of the universe has got this. The scriptures are like air to me, but whether I choose to breathe it or not on any given day, Christ’s blood covers me with grace and love and I am being made complete. I can look back through the past twenty years and see the changes in my heart and I know however many years lie ahead the Spirit will not leave me where I am right now.

Once I was lost but now I am found. Once I was dead in my sins, but now I am alive in Christ. Once I was without hope in the world, but now I have been brought near to God and am learning to put my hope in Christ.