Salvation Testimony

So this is the first proper attempt at a salvation testimony.

First off, I’m a wicked sinner and do not deserve in any way, shape or form to be saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. I was raised as a Roman Catholic in my family; my Mum would take me and my siblings to church every Sunday. I did enjoy certain stories told of the bible in some of the masses, but truth be told, I found going there pretty lifeless and dull. Boring in other words. I actually felt quite lethargic there and depressed most of the time coming and going. I think there’s an obvious spiritual reason for that. But I won’t digress into that.

I think I did believe back then, or was open to believing. But I was mostly of the world in the secular mindset of looking at Christianity as just another religion. I considered myself agnostic in high school or said I was at least. Anyway there were several factors to waking me up that I think was God calling me.

• The first was experiencing a paranormal event in my bedroom while conscious which freaked me out.
• The second (as I at least like to consider it) was seeing the true nature of unidentified flying objects. That turns your whole world around.
• And the third was actually seeing various Hell testimonies on the internet.

The three aforementioned served to wake me up and realise you can’t just go through life carelessly and aimlessly with no real purpose or understanding of the world and existence.

So of course, as the year went on from seeing the hell testimonies I did pray and call out to the Lord and made a start of ceasing certain sins towards the last quarter of that year. To be honest I would think the more positive message of who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what he is truly about was obviously a more powerful message then simply seeing Hell testimonies and other dark stuff.

For one the testimonies seen of ex-Satanists and many other wicked people and how the Lord saved them really shows the incredible depth of His love and forgiveness. Seeing the love God has for wicked people and all the sins He paid for us on the Cross.

So I was watching some dark stuff of the world put on the internet and struggling with some problems at home that night. Earlier in the day I had felt like I was close to madness. So I decided to go to bed much earlier then my standards then usual to escape it all.

I had prayed repeatedly beforehand, but I think the Lord Jesus Christ properly came into my life that night when I went to bed. I felt relieved and at peace with His presence settling me down from the disturbed day I had gone through. I think it’s more or less true that if you believe in God, and His Son your saved from that point on. But I’m not certain on that myself. I do think you have to pray, and repent and give your life in addition. I feel like there could of been times where I was called beforehand, but it doesn’t matter now I guess.

Anyway I’ve had some serious problems the Lord has freed me from. I would have a serious sexual problem with masturbation. A lot of the time I’d want to do it. A good half or more of the time it held me in bondage. It just wouldn’t stop. And I did want to stop it for good. But it controlled me. I could not control it-the problem.

It got worse and worse, and worse through my early teen years to the point that it was close to chronic masturbation. I would try and stop it years prior through my own will permanently. I’d go weeks without doing it at best. I think I even managed a month or two in one year, but no more then that.

Anyway, Praise the Lord. It stopped this year. After 21 years (add or take away) of masturbation that got worse, and worse and worse, the Lord Jesus Christ has saved me from it. And I’m happy to say I no longer masturbate. At all. It actually stopped the night of my birthday/Saturday morning this year. So that was the icing on the cake there.

I had actually messed up the end of the day on the Friday night. And the failure complex was coming back to hurt me. But God shows he’s stronger than failure and doesn’t give up on someone. I had seen other people’s testimonies on how they were ex-masturbators and I recall them saying it isn’t easy to stop. I just thought at the time it seems impossible to achieve that status. Well, it is. If you’re relying on yourself to stop it. Because once again with God all things are possible.

So if anyone here is struggling with masturbation themselves and feels they can never stop it and are held captive by it: call on the Lord to help you and He will. I’m proof that anyone suffering with it can be delivered from it. I was that bad with it.

Areas of unforgiveness I had and still have from time to time, the Lord has given me wisdom and understanding and a forgiving heart. I think Part of forgiving someone or a group is just forgetting what the person has done to you and letting go of the hate. In addition to Forgetting the actual memory and moving on and no longer thinking about it. Plus then not holding on to hate for that person. And in many cases, I’ve been shown how stupid it is to cling on to hate and unforgiveness for pointless irrational reasons.

In addition, as I’ve said in past posts the Lord has helped and is continuing to help me against fear and anxiety problems. I’ve managed take a train by myself out of town to go into a populated healing retreat building, to walk into a crowded church by myself, go into supermarket stores, into crowded places in town, and actually talk with people.

And ALL the Praise and Glory with me being able to do these things goes of course to the Lord. Because He has been with me through all of them and has made it much easier for me to do them the more often, I do them. I also had big issues in the past of being overly offended and bitter with someone if they insulted me over the internet and even real life situations.

Now for the most part, I barely even care if people over the internet say some nasty stuff or even in real life. And if I do it’s not for long. Which isn’t how I used to be-believe me. It’s amazing. Praise the Lord Jesus Christ for not only what he has done for me on the Cross, but for my changed life. When I look back at my sin like masturbation, I’m sickened with it, and also can’t believe the stuff I was doing. But also amazed looking back at it from where I am now from it. Glory be to the Lord Jesus Christ for a changed life.

Part 2

“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

The above is the Bible verse that comes into my head when I think of the night, I felt the Lord save me from the anguish I was in.

I actually remember thinking the same night or the nights before that seeing Jesus – being saved would be the best sight and experience in my entire life. Which of course it is.

I want to add something that during the last few months of last year I went through a trial of sorts before I felt God save me. I was deep in sexual sin and had just decided to come off the anti-psychotic drugs I was on for 9 years. When I did this, full-on insomnia took hold of me. For weeks, and weeks, and weeks, and weeks, and weeks, I couldn’t get normal sleep. It was excruciating.

Earlier in the year (2015) I made the decision to pick up a King James Version Bible from Amazon. I started reading it from Genesis but I didn’t really make that much progress with it to be honest. I put it off and read some other stuff I was then still into.

I would pray often in the autumn-winter nights sometimes begging out-right in torment and insanity for the Lord Jesus Christ to save me sitting at my computer desk. I would write down the sinners prayer and the Lordship prayer, then go somewhere private and pray them aloud. I was so mad I would do it over and over sometimes even perhaps after I’d been saved in the first place.

I would watch quite a good number of real YouTube videos with real footage caught in the world of evidence of God, the Angelic phenomenon, etc. when I came across a video were there was a real live action visual image of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself on the cross showing his death. Quite a famous bit of supernatural footage well known on YouTube. The emotion just got to me. It’s like I could feel the Lord Yeshua’s love with what I was seeing, and the music just drove the point home.

The YouTube uploader had a great companion music theme to the video in the background. And, in all honestly, I think it was perfect. Because I just burst out into tears while watching it. I had been driven completely insane by either my own illness or the demonic enemy that I wasn’t sure if I ‘really’ believed in Jesus Christ or not for months and months and months.

But the visual image this person caught combined with the music he or she had in the background just made all that insanity all the more completely irrelevant. And that to me shows that God, and Love is infinitely more powerful than any insanity or fear. I completely agree with people and know exactly what they mean when they say that God is love. Because I can testify that that’s been all I’ve felt through my many pitfalls into tempting God too often then is physically healthy. That His mercy and forgiveness is the best trait and example of His Love. I mean some of the stuff The Lord has put up with from me alone speaks VOLUMES of His Excellent, Supreme, Holiness. I’m sure many/all Christians here can personally attest to what I’m referring to as well.

So I would quite regularly break into to tears with seeing these videos to do with Jesus. Or seeing a photograph of Jesus crying over how destroyed and broken the world is. But that video really did it for me. And I found when that night came where I felt the Lord Jesus Christ saved me from complete insanity taking over me that the deadlock I had with my insomnia which wasn’t pretty, evaporated. I think the sleeping problem was a trial in as much as it may have been (on a smaller scale) coming off the drugs.

I would rage and say why would a Loving God put someone through this torment? Tests are there I think not so the Heavenly Father can be cruel with someone, but to make that person better and develop them. Perhaps so He can assess the person to see who the person really is and what is they’re threshold and true character. Because when you know Him, you know He’s not cruel at all. But extremely loving, gentle and kind. And long-suffering. Our God truly is a Good God.  People just don’t know that He’s a person with real feelings and feels hurt just like any one else.

Like when people will say all manner of nonsense saying He is a cruel and vindictive God based from an Old Testament misunderstanding. He’s cruel if you cross Him. Because I myself was in that category not understanding the old testament context. Thinking such things that now, I realise, I’m ashamed to have once harboured such horrible, misguided thoughts.

Praise the Lord for how good He truly is. It’s a mystery why He would be so Loving to those who hate him and the compassion He has on wicked sinners like myself. I would vouch the opinion that it’s to show that His Love and forgiveness (and love in general) from the Heavenly Father and Yeshua is stronger then evil no matter from where it rules in someone in they’re life.

I remember one of the first times I felt the Lord’s Love was following myself having a domestic problem in my house and I had to get away and I sort of stormed out and went outside and it was of a belated realization that the Lord knew what had happened in my house and comforted me when I went outside. And I thought to myself I wish I had appreciated that and realized and understood it for what it was as soon as it happened. And yet, I feel I appreciated it more in retrospect looking back, in not realizing and identifying what happened as the Lord showing His Love for me.

Life can be hard and it is a test. But God is always there no matter how hard it gets. If the test is big, take the opportunity to please God by passing the test no matter how difficult your circumstances may be. God will never allow you to be tempted beyond what you can handle:

“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” 1st Corinthians 10:13

Sometimes it may not feel like that (myself included) but it’s true. And the testament to that is the conscience where in the aftermath where you messed up you realise you could of resisted responding badly no matter how bad the situation you were in seemed. Obviously, none of us will ever come close to repaying the Greatest Sacrifice in the History of the World The Lord Yeshua did for us. But maybe along with serving the Lord in life as best as we can, that’s the best we can do.

Also-and not wanting to get into a theological debate with this-(but for me at least) I found that before I got into a relationship with the Lord God, I actually made a decision to say inwardly and even I remember outwardly:

“Yeah it’s not worth it. I’m ceasing this”

and repent from certain sin ruling my heart and intentions.

In that I realized that fixating on revenge and harbouring dark feelings for people who treat you badly is not worth the wages of such sin all sin, that is Hell when someone dies. In fact, maybe that’s what Jesus Himself is talking about when he says in Mark 1:15 : “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” That although all someone needs in order to have eternal life is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that repenting is in itself a part of the belief requirement.

Demonstrating the heart of a person wanting to change themselves and turn from sin. Which is impossible and something only the Lord Jesus Christ can do for that person. But the person you could argue states his or her decision in their heart in whether they will continue to stay in their old life of sin or want a new one.

And hence they declare in making an attempt to repent they want they’re old sinful, dominated-life at an end. But of course they/we can’t end our sin anymore then we can grow a third arm.  And that’s of course when that person after praying to Jesus is saved. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. “Saved by grace not works.”

And I think someone is kidding themselves saying they stopped sinning overnight. It’s obviously not done overnight. Not much of a comment there. But yeah, that’s the Salvation Testimony part 2. I will add any more aspects to I’ve left out if/when I remember any God willing. Thank you to all for taking the time to read it.

*Fear excerpt of next blog post: The Lord is stronger then any fear. It’s more or less completely gone in public situations. Gone. History. It’s so great it’s unreal to me that this for most people is the norm. Being in a busy town, tons of people, this was unfeasible just a few months back. But it’s great.*