Testimony

As promised, here is my testimony of faith, as delivered at the Christ Redeemer Church baptismal service on July 12 and at the Sunday morning service on August 23.

"It’s hard to say exactly where my journey to faith began. I didn’t grow up in a Christian home; my father didn’t buy into religion, and my mother was a Christian nominally at best. She used to drag me to church sometimes, back when I was still young enough to be scooped up and thrown in the back of the station wagon, but that was the extent of my exposure to Christianity, and I came to associate going to church with near-mortal boredom. Before long, my mother got busy with other things, and I was off the hook. My father would have been willing to drive me to church if I’d wanted to go, but I didn’t. I was too young to want a relationship with God for myself, or even to understand what that meant.

I cruised along for the next few years until the day after my sixteenth birthday, when my father told me that he and my mother were getting a divorce. My mother was an abusive parent and she and I did not have a good relationship, but even so, I had always turned to my family as my refuge, to be the one place where I could dwell in constancy and relative safety. And that was torn away from me.

The next months passed by in a blur. My younger brother and I went to live with my father. As the divorce and bitter custody battle unfolded, I found for a time that I could sustain myself emotionally on the us-against-the-world pathos my father, brother and I had formulated. But it was an artificial solution, a quick fix, and it didn’t last long.

The combined weight of high school and family troubles soon grew to completely overwhelm me. It just became too much and I couldn’t keep going. I didn’t snap, or break down, at least not on the outside. But all the pressure and despair I was feeling started getting directed inwardly, and there grew a searing pain in my heart. And seeing the void left in my heart by the loss of the family structure I’d needed so badly made me realize that there were a lot of other voids that needed filling, too. That’s when I first realized that there was something missing in my life, something bigger than what I’d lost, and something I desperately needed.

When I arrived at Dartmouth in September 2005, I had done some thinking about God. Did I believe in Him? I believed that there was a supernatural power that ordered things and made them happen a certain way, so in that sense I suppose I believed in God, or at least in a God-being. But was I a Christian? Definitely not. I didn’t know anything about who Jesus was or what he did.

What defined the early days of my Dartmouth career was my interaction with Christians. Of everyone I met, they were consistently the nicest and friendliest of the bunch. I continued spending time with members of the Navigators because I liked them and I felt comfortable around them. And for the first time I was intrigued by Christianity and I wanted to learn more about it. So I got involved with a freshman Bible study and joined some of my friends in regularly attending CRC. And it didn’t take long after that before I came to profess Christ as my Savior and Lord.

Accepting the reality of sin was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever had to do. I didn’t want to believe that deep down, I and everyone I knew was a sinner. Admitting that to myself, though, enabled me to truly embrace the fact that Jesus went to the cross as our substitute. His death paid the penalty for all of our sins. And when I realized that, I understood what it meant to truly be free.

Praying for the first time; being surrounded by people singing praise songs and joining in with all sincerity and joy . . . it was something really sweet. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” And indeed I was a new creation; the mind-numbing pain and despair I’d known in high school didn’t seem insurmountable anymore. I still had struggles, of course, but I didn’t have to face them alone. Being able to ask someone to pray for you . . . it can be easy to forget, sometimes, just how amazing that is, that your brothers and sisters will go before the Lord on your behalf.

Jesus tells his disciples, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20). I’ve seen that, and I’ve experienced that firsthand. I’ve seen and even felt how God is glorified by the faithful gathering to praise His name. And not just during church services or large-group fellowship meetings, but on an individual basis too. “A new command I give you,” the Lord said. “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).

I praise God that He brought me here to Dartmouth and I praise Him that He led me to this wonderful church, because through the faithful witness of the saints He brought me to His Son."