The Best Is Certainly Yet To Come...

hello. It's been a while. As my college career comes to an end, I feel it's an appropriate time for me to post my testimony in order to remind myself and you that everything in life hinges upon the glory of God, and the first and foremost way of bringing God glory is to become saved by repenting of your sins and submitting to the lordship of Jesus Christ (I briefly described how I came to that point in the paragraph below). In terms of how to glorify God for the rest of our lives and with the rest of our lives in Christ, He did not leave us without instruction. God's will for every aspect of your life is not hidden, so we don't have to seek too hard: Read the Bible and obey what you DO know that God requires of you. If one can have a truly biblical mindset, then his will becomes the Lord's will, his desires becomes the Lord's desires.

Let's run hard together.

"Delight yourself in the Lord;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him, and He will do it."
- Psalm 37:4,5

Since the very moment of my sinful birth, my family sought to counteract my ungodly nature with a strongly biblical upbringing. Besides intuitively calling out “mommy,” “daddy,” and “yummy,” “hallelujah” garnished my infant vocabulary. As soon as I was old enough to intellectually comprehend the words of the Bible at around the 3^rd grade, my father, in his care, initiated a 7-year-long, father-and-son daily devotion time. In addition to being equipped with scriptural knowledge at a young age, weekly church attendance was mandatory and greater obedience to elders was almost expected, to say the least, of a missionary’s child. From a human perspective, nothing in my seemingly impeccable Christian upbringing could have possibly caused any sort of rebellion in my heart against the holy God whom I have never overtly denied. Even into my early teenage years, I took refuge in my Christianized background, believing that merely acquiescing to the gospel and not verbally denying Christ as Lord would somehow rescue me from my sin and my punishment for sin, God’s wrath. I did not deny Christ as Lord, yet I neither trusted Him as Lord. Beyond the surveying eyes of my spiritual leaders, I defied God by fiddling with the lust of my eyes, the lust my flesh, and the pride of my life as much as a Christianized 14-year-old could without being completely given over to the depravity of the world. In retrospect, God’s grace to me in life through godly parenting and strong biblical influence was like a chain, as it were, binding me close to God Himself, who mercifully restrained me from breaking free in my own will and run full speed into the gates of hell. I cannot recall the exact date or even any strong sentiments surrounding the time of my salvation, but until now God has faithfully revealed to me through a more mature understanding of His Word that He saved me not based of my Christianized upbringing or the good deeds I have done, but because of His great grace that caused me to recognize my sinfulness and my need for a Savior AND Lord. Along with God’s promise to save anyone who repents and believes in His Son, taking hold of God’s promise to sanctify those who have trusted in Jesus Christ has also been a growing lesson in my Christian life. In particular, experiencing growth throughout college by means of the ministries at Grace Community Church was like witnessing myself mature through the process of moving from being nourished by little sips of milk to actually tasting and seeing the sweetness of more solid spiritual food. Praise God for His goodness!

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be!

Let thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here's my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for thy courts above!