Testimony

While on college mission I gave my testimony at a country dinner.  In was in a tiny town, half an hour’s drive out of Gunnedah.  There were about 20 people there and I shared with them what God has done in my life. 

I don’t remember when I first heard about God.  When I was young I started going to church with my family.  There I learnt about how God loved me and cared about me and was interested in me.  Somewhere along the line I learnt that God had forgiven my sins, but I didn’t understand why Jesus had to die for my forgiveness.  So I wanted to learn more about God, get to know him better.  I decided to start reading the Bible because I knew I could find out more about God there.  I started from the beginning but I got a bit stuck in the Old Testament.  I didn’t understand what all the short stories said about God or how they were relevant to me. 

It wasn’t until I got to university and joined a Christian group there, that I understood how the whole Bible fits together into one big story of God working through history, and that it was all leading up to the coming of Jesus.  I understood in a deeper way the reality of my sinfulness and how serious sin was.  I thought that sin was just things like lying, stealing or murder.  But I realised that these are symptoms of a deeper problem, a rebellion against God and the way he says is the best way to live our lives.  So it wasn’t just borrowing my sister’s clothes without asking that was a sin, but my unkind thoughts and my selfishness and my desire to live my life my own way and not God’s way.

I learnt that this rebellion against God is so offensive to him that it deserves punishment: death.  But I also learnt even more how great God’s love is, that Jesus died to take this punishment instead of me.  This is why Jesus had to die for me to be forgiven.  There’s a verse in the Bible that describes this well. 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him shall not die but have eternal life.  (John 3:16)

Because of this I know that my life is not my own, I should be living it in service to God. Jesus died when I should have died, so I now live my life for him.  Part of this is why I’m studying at college to learn more about God and how to share this good news with others.