and one night i was having sort of a discussion slash debate with one of these friends and we
got into it pretty good and then i really felt like i had the winner in this debate this point
i was gonna make i thought was just gonna be the best and it would it would end the debate
and so i said it and uh sure enough my friend kind of stopped talking and he said art i hear
what you're saying and that's a really good point but it's not in the bible the words that came out
of my mouth right after he said that they just came out i didn't even have to think about it
i said it must be in the bible because i know it's true and then my friend rubbed his chin some more
even after i said that something about it didn't sound quite right but my ch friend rubbed his chin
some more and he said art i really don't know if you're a christian i love hearing testimonies when
someone can point to a date and say on that day i changed forever i gave my life to jesus he became
my lord and savior and there was just a tremendous difference before and after kind of like paul on
the road to damascus but when i look at my life i don't really have a date like that i grew up
in the church as far back as i can remember i've believed in jesus as my lord and savior
my mother was a sunday school teacher i went to church every sunday i sang in the choir i went to
youth retreats and my life was always a christian life and i uh believed in jesus and so when i look
at my life i can't look back to a particular day and say there was a tremendous change before and
after but i can look back to various times in my life when there was a a time when i
something happened or something caused me to make a decision to follow jesus with more of my life
instead of it being a dramatic change on a particular day for me it was more it's more
like i took steps and it's been a progression over my life in terms of my following jesus and
him becoming more and more lord of my life yeah and so i'll share with you a couple of examples
of that uh something that i remember uh happening in college i think i was a sophomore and i had
joined the christian fellowship on campus i had a number of friends who were more mature in the
lord than i i was and one night i was having sort of a discussion slash debate with one of these
friends and we got into it pretty good and he was making his points and i was making my points
we were going back and forth and then i really felt like i had the winner in this debate this
point i was gonna make i thought was just gonna be uh the best and it would it would end the debate
and so i said it and uh sure enough my friend kind of stopped talking kind of leaned back
kind of did this with his chin of course i thought it was override one and he said
art i hear what you're saying and that's a really good point but it's not in the bible
and so the words that came out of my mouth right after he said that they just came out
i didn't even have to think about it i said it must be in the bible because i know it's
true and then my friend rubbed his chin some more even after i said that something about it
didn't sound quite right but my ch friend rubbed his chin some more and he said art
i really don't know if you're a christian wow and that really hit me it says in proverbs wounds from
a friend can be trusted and so i thought and thought and then something inside me was also
just confirming there was something that wasn't quite right wasn't quite the way it should be
so i got a yellow legal pad and for the next couple of months i read matthew mark luke john and
then i went back to the wisdom books in the old testament job psalms proverbs ecclesiastes song of
songs song of solomon and i read those books and i took notes i actually chose to read them in a
paraphrased bible the living bible just so i could make sure that i was seeing them in a new light
and lo and behold i found a number of other things that i knew were true that weren't in the bible
and so it became clear to me that i'd been treating the bible as advisory but
not authoritative yeah do you remember some of those things at all like that that you thought
was like oh this is very true i don't remember you know in detail this was a long time ago
but i don't even remember what we were discussing and debating that night the particular point
but i do remember this that i felt that jesus was asking me would you make the bible more than
advisory would you make it authoritative two words that begin with a but there's a big difference
between those two words and so i made the bible authoritative in my life and that was a step for
me i can look back and say that's when things changed and my walk with the lord became deeper
uh i i started to read the bible more i started to study the bible and the bible
took on a new role in my life and so that was one of the steps that happened in my life
uh i think another one that was also very important was when um this church started
at that time i was going to another church just at night because i was a programmer and worked a
lot at night and so i uh was not really involved that much in the church the night service was
kind of simpler to go to message was very good and i really appreciated the messages
but i wasn't really doing anything with the church and so the church i go to now started and i went
to one of the meetings they were just meeting in people's homes and they needed a worship leader
and so i don't know i just felt prompted to become offer my uh self as the worship leader then that
became started a season where god started to show me how he could use my gifts in a new way
in service and blessing other people i became the worship leader of this new church and was a
worship leader every sunday for a number of years and my relationship grew through that because
now i was a new dimension to my christian walk i was i was serving in the church and
in a new way and then pastor greg the current pastor of our church came to our church he was
came as the youth pastor slash associate pastor and so for a while i looked at his
life and i said you know there's someone living their christian life in a way
that i'm not to me that was a new dimension a new level and so i thought i'm just going to maybe
start to get to know him and so sorry sorry to cut you off but what were some of the things that you
were seeing in him that attracted you or that you were like man like i'm not seeing that in myself
well he had an intensity about his walk the way he talked about jesus and the way he applied it
and what he was doing i could just see here was a depth in his life that was attractive to me i
was really impressed with the way he applied uh what he believed to his call and to his ministry
there was just something about him that i thought to myself i could learn from him and i would like
some of these qualities in my own life so i started by taking him out to lunch every week
you can always do that almost no one will refuse that that's right and pretty soon he
he got interested in my life he started asking me to teach sunday school which i'd never done
and he uh asked me to go on a missions trip i'd never been on a missions trip leaders uh sometimes
in the church can see potential in people and he saw potential in me and so he went about sort of
cultivating that potential under the guidance of the holy spirit and so for the period of
about the next three or four years i can point to that as saying that was a time of mentoring
for me when he spoke things into my life and provided opportunities for my life that i wouldn't
have embraced or walked in otherwise and it came from just the holy spirit putting something in
my heart you can learn from this person you can grow uh get to know this person and so
it was a wonderful time at one point about three or four years after this he asked me to go to
india with him i went to india that was again another uh jump in my life so at this period
even though it was spaced over a period of three or four years this mentoring relationship made
an enormous difference in my life opened up whole new avenues of serving for the lord that i didn't
anticipate or even understand at the time and so when i look back on my christian life and my
testimony always looking back and seeing that i believed in jesus as lord i believe that it was
then a question for me of growing in that growing and and to the the fullness of what that meant
and uh it's interesting that the way that happened for me was through relationships and so
uh whenever i had relationships with other people people needed me i could i could serve them
joining this new church and forming relationships and getting involved with worship and so forth
forming a relationship with pastor greg and then having him pour into me and learning new things
it typically always happened in the context of some kind of relationship uh is how god
got a handle on my life to take me uh and to make me more into the image of his son jesus
how has jesus impacted your life if you could put it in a nutshell well you never know what's ahead
you never know what it will be like when there's a change so you have to trust
i think that's where the relationship with jesus comes in
um am i going to spend more of my time doing this am i going to give up some of my ideas and
and and and receive what the lord is telling me am i going to step out and obey and do these things
you never know but with god you can always trust that whatever it is it's going to be good yeah
and so uh i can't really tell anybody that it's all laid out for you it's not like getting a new
mortgage when you see all the paperwork and you know what the rate's going to be and you know
what the all the details are it's more like something stirs in your heart and you have to
you have to make a decision right without knowing all the details but with god
because he's your father because you know so many other people that it worked with the same way
i would say it's pretty much a sure bet you know
all right for anybody who's listening to your testimony actually we've had a lot of people who
have feel discouraged by hearing other people's testimonies and their encounters and and and
they've seen and experienced all of these things or they've defeated drug addiction all of these
things right and obviously you have a very special testimony where you grew up in the church but what
can you say to people who are listening to your testimony who are listening to other testimonies
and sometimes feel discouraged because they also grew up in the church what can you say to them
well i would say that everybody is different sometimes it's good to compare yourself with
other examples in the faith sometimes it's not if that causes you to think that you're lacking
in some way it does take a while to understand that sometimes there may have been times in my
life when i felt gosh why didn't this happen this way or something like that yeah but i can tell you
that the more you live your life the less and less you feel that way because god is so good
and so i think there's something in front of us at any time in our life where we can go deeper
and god can use us more as long as we're on this earth and so i would just say don't be discouraged
be careful how you compare sometimes it's good but sometimes it's not yeah
lastly are any any last words for anybody who's watching your testimony right now
if god is moving the same way in your life as he moved in mind they're going to be relationships
that come into your life and if if it's like me there are a number of times when i wanted to run
i had enough of this uh it gets too close to home and so forth but just keep those
relationships stick it through because uh even though there are times when you want to run and
you want to say something or you want to burn a bridge or something if you can just hold on
it's usually only a few days when it becomes so much clearer and things resolve but relationships
can be hard sometimes but uh trust trust god and trust the relationship amen thank you art