Grace

This is part of my personal testimony. Our pastor told myself and Jeromy to write about our spiritual lives so that he would know a little about us before starting pre-marital counseling with us. I think every blog I write includes more details of my spiritual journey. Although I was saved as a child, I am forever still in the growing stages! But the account below is more of the "nutshell" version.

*****

I was born into a Christian family and attended church regularly throughout my childhood. I had learned about salvation in Sunday school and from my parents, and it was my father who led me to the Lord after church one Sunday when I was five years old (November 17, 1985 to be exact). My profession of faith was made public by immersion two years later. Church membership followed my baptism, and I continued to actively participate in all services as well as children's programs.

Despite faithfulness to the local church, there was little evidence of maturity in my sanctification until my teenage years, when I truly began to understand and submit to Christ's lordship in my life. That is to say, for many of my growing up years I had the appearance of the "ideal" Christian girl, but I had yet to grow into an understanding of a personal relationship with God.

The summer prior to my last year of high school I experienced the accidental death of one of my youth group peers. The tragedy was one of my first encounters with this level of grief. At the same time, my church was going through a split, and both losses deeply affected me and broke me spiritually. I began to depend on the Lord and started to come to him voluntarily through prayer. From that point in time until now, I have seen God's hand teach me volumes about Himself and His plan for my life through life's experiences: changes, challenges, blessings, chastening, desires, joys, trials, people, ministries, etc.

After high school I went on to attend a Bible college, where I gained, most of all, a yearning to know my God even more intimately. My Bible professors taught me how to study the Bible, challenging me to base my convictions on what I have personally read of His Word instead of blindly accepting the convictions of man at face value in the same vein as did the church of Berea. After college graduation up until the present, I have sought to remain a student of the Bible. College laid for me a tremendous foundation for my Christian life, but there is still so much more of God to explore and probe and seek and glorify.

Lately, the Lord has been impressing upon my heart concepts such as grace and love and evangelism and freedom in Christ. I am especially and increasingly grateful for and awestruck by His grace in my own life. As a 5-year-old Sunday school kid I received grace that has eternally wrapped me in a blanket of Christ's righteousness, but it is the grace of His that I encounter every day that, in my opinion, is the most profound grace of all. And even when I receive it, I cannot keep it for myself. I live in a world that is in desperate need of grace, and I have both a duty and a passion to see that my life rightly represents what God's grace is all about.

"For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required" (Luke 12:48b).