My Testimony

Prepared for Gideons' Pastor Appreciation Banquet, Milford, IN, August 1991:


TESTIMONY

My first exposure to the Bible was as a nine-year-old raised in a Catholic home. One day I took out the Catholic family Bible which was kept in a box on the bookshelf. No one ever read it. It was purchased, I think, in a fund-raising drive by our parish to build a parochial school. I opened it up, and the first thing I read was that a 300-day indulgence would be granted to those who opened this Bible up to read it. I asked my mom what an indulgence was and she said that it was time off a person’s sentence in Purgatory (which was some sort of nebulous holding cell between Heaven and Hell.) The next few pages contained Catholic prayers, each with an assigned “indulgence”—some of the longer ones were worth 1000 days. My grandfather had died and I was told he was in Purgatory suffering, so I began to take this Bible out every day and read these prayers, hoping to read him out of Purgatory. After a week or so I got discouraged, thinking I’d be reading these prayers for years and he’d still be in Purgatory. It was easier to light candles at church. I never got as far as the actual text of the Bible itself.

I was a good Catholic girl, attending Mass regularly until I was 16 or 17 when I started to rebel. By the time I was 18 I was drinking and using drugs and had forsaken my Catholic religion. I was part of the hippie scene for several years, and along with experimenting with amphetamines and LSD, I experimented with a few new religions. The Jehovah’s Witnesses left Watchtowers at my apartment. I read those. I listened to Herbert W. Armstrong on the radio. Somebody gave me some Rosicrucian literature. I heard that Baha-Ullah was a great prophet, equal to Jesus, and read his writings, which were the basis of the Bahai religion. I read humanistic philosophers such as Spinoza. During these two years of spiritual searching and hunger I don’t remember anyone ever handing me a tract or inviting me to church. By the time I was 20 I was married with a child and so spiritually confused that I gave up religion altogether and settled down to a family life void of God. My children grew up without Bible stories, Sunday school, or any Christian influence whatsoever.

As the years went on, my only relationship with God was an occasional “Oh God help me” prayer. But who was God? I had difficulty believing in a personal, loving God who answered prayer. My philosophical searchings had left me with a vague notion of God as a force, an energy to tap into. I became an agnostic, and eventually I became so anti-Christian that I was repulsed to even hear the name of Jesus Christ. I had heard John 3:16 but I didn’t know what it meant. I blasphemously paraphrased it to say:

For God was so sadistic that He allowed His own son to die a hideous, horrible death on a cross, that whosoever believes this preposterous fable (the Gospel) shall no longer have any fun in life but shall become a holier-than-thou, goody-two-shoes hypocrite, and beyond the grave will sit on a park bench listening to harp music forever and ever.

How could a reprobate like me ever be saved? Only by the sovereign grace of a merciful God.

In 1981 my 12-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter were invited to a Wesleyan church by a friend at school. The boy’s father, who was the Sunday school superintendent, would faithfully pick up my children for church when they wanted to go. My husband and I thought it was great to get the kids out of the house for a few hours while we enjoyed our favorite pastime of drinking beer. We tried to fill the spiritual emptiness in our lives with an alcohol-induced euphoria, and by this time we were drinking three cases of beer a week.

My conscience began to bother me as I’d watch my kids go off to church while I opened another beer. I started to think about God and religion for the first time in many years. I began to watch the television preachers on Sunday mornings, trying to understand their “Protestant” religion so I could counteract any religious influence the Wesleyan church might be having on my children. I didn’t mind them going to church, but I didn’t want them brainwashed. I would turn on the TV, open another beer, and argue with the preachers from my supposed superior, enlightened mind. But after a few weeks I found myself thinking, “Some of this is beginning to make sense.” As I listened to one evangelist preach, I began to come under conviction. I heard the plan of salvation, and that one must accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. I still had great difficulty with that. I was not ready to acknowledge the Deity of Christ.

In April of 1982 I watched a Phil Donahue program featuring born-again Christian celebrities. The testimony of Dean Jones stirred me. The peace and joy that radiated from his face was something I yearned for in my life. He was so happy. I was so miserable. He was an intelligent and articulate man, yet this born-again Christianity satisfied him.

One night, three weeks later, I sat at my dining room table drinking beer, alone and depressed. I was trying to get high, to attain that euphoric state of transient happiness which was the only kind of happiness I could find. Yet this night, after eight beers, I was still sober. I thought, “What is left. I can’t even get high anymore. How can I ever be happy? Is there anything that can fill this emptiness within me?” I thought about my kids and my husband and what a terrible wife and mother I had become. How had I grown so mean and selfish? I looked in the mirror and the face I saw was evil and vacant of life.

I went to bed in tears and found myself crying out, saying “God, I’m sick of being bad. I want to be good. I give up. Please help me.” I wasn’t sure I even believed in a God that heard and answered prayer. But I guess we all instinctively cry out to “the unknown God” when we’re desperate.

I had a very dramatic conversion experience that night. I found myself acknowledging and confessing my sins as one by one they seemed to flash before me. I saw my childhood sins, all the heartache I had caused my parents as a rebellious teenager, all the neglect I’d given my husband and children, and the borderline alcoholic I had become at 32 years of age. And then I was shown my greatest sin—pride and unbelief—thinking that I could live without God, that I could manage my life on my own. I became acutely aware that I had offended God very deeply. I wept with remorse. A great burden lifted as God forgave me of my sin. I felt clean.

I thought about surrendering my life to God. A battle for my soul took place as the Devil tried to deceive me and show me that surrendering to God and serving Him would be very unpleasant. He put absurd thoughts in my mind and almost had me believing that I would have to leave my family and become a nun and live in a cold, isolated convent in the mountains of Eastern Europe.

But the Holy Spirit fought for me, reminding me that God is good. I thought, “Yes, God is good. Good can’t be bad. Whatever God does with me will be good.” It seemed like hours passed during which this struggle took place. I counted the cost of full surrender and commitment and began to pray. “Oh God, I surrender to You.” ....And then.....I heard God speak to me, saying, “Go on.” It was like the voice of many waters as the Bible describes. I was awestruck! My doubts vanished as I realized there really was a God who was hearing my prayer and communicating with me. God wasn’t a “force.” He was a personal Being who speaks! I trembled in His presence.

Suddenly I had a vision of myself on a cliff. Someone whose face I couldn’t see stood across a gulf on the other side reaching out to me, ready to catch me. I was fearful to jump yet fearful to stay where I was. I saw in the vision the letters J U M P. I heard God speak to me again in the depths of my soul, “Go on,” impressing upon me what I needed to do. I struggled within myself several minutes. Why was it so difficult for me to do this? I thought, “I don’t understand why I need to do this.” God spoke again saying, “You will in time. Let this be your first act of obedience.” It was so hard to say the words God was prompting me to say. With halting speech I began: “I....accept....Jesus....Christ...as my Lord....and....Savior.”

Immediately the gulf was bridged. I had jumped from the Kingdom of Darkness to the Kingdom of Light. All of a sudden every trace of tension and torment vanished. I was filled with a deep, comforting peace. I felt like a newborn infant. I drifted off to sleep in the strong and gentle arms of my Heavenly Father. In the early morning hours of April 27, 1982, three months and three days before my 33rd birthday, I was born again.

For several days afterwards I was filled with an indescribable joy and peace. The whole world seemed brand new. Everything was more intense. The grass was greener. The sky was bluer. I was acutely aware of the birds singing and the warmth of the sun. It was as if I had just come alive, as if a pilot light had been ignited in the furnace of my soul. I was empowered by Love. I loved my family. I loved washing the dishes. I loved working in the garden. I loved the potatoes I was planting and asked the Lord to bless each one as I put them in the ground. That was the best crop of potatoes we ever had. I walked with God in intimate fellowship in “heavenly places” and then, gradually, I came “down to Earth.” I did not tell anyone what happened to me, not even my husband. The experience was too precious to be mocked. I did not know of anyone who would understand it.

Soon after this, I hungered to know more about Him whom I had met. What exactly had happened to me? What was the significance of accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior? How should I live now? Has God ever spoken to anyone else? Has anyone else ever had an experience like mine? I had so many questions and no one to ask.

Just then my fifth-grade daughter came home and said, “Look what we got at school today.” She was holding a little red book, a Gideon’s New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs. I said, “Let me see that.” It became the most precious book in the world to me. I began to read it, and three or four days later I had read it cover to cover. I immediately identified with Paul and his Damascus Road conversion. He knew the same God I knew! I had no doubt that this King James Bible was the Word of God.

I had a compass now. I had a Bible that gave me guidance, instruction in righteousness, and comfort. I read words that confirmed my faith:

I love the LORD, because He hath heard my voice and my supplications. Because He hath inclined His ear unto me, therefore will I call upon Him as long as I live. –Psalms 116:1,2

One thing I noticed as I read this Gideon’s New Testament the first time through was that something seemed to be missing—namely masses, purgatory, devotion to Mary, praying for and to the dead, rosary beads, novenas, indulgences, etc. I assumed all that must be in the Old Testament. Nine months later I began to read the Old Testament. After reading the Bible from cover to cover I discovered none of that was there. In fact, many Scriptures refuted and contradicted Catholic doctrine. Eventually I totally renounced Roman Catholicism and was set free from that religious bondage.

Where would I be without this Book? As the months went on, God did not speak to me in audible words, but through the pages of Scripture. It would be a year and a half before my husband would trust Jesus for salvation and we would begin attending church and fellowshipping with other Christians. These Scriptures nourished and sustained me during that vulnerable time.

My love and appreciation for the Bible has not diminished over the years. The Word of God has become my sword as I earnestly contend for the precious faith delivered to me. My husband and I have recently put together a monthly newsletter for this very purpose of contending for THE faith amidst so much error in the Church today. We also have a ministry of distributing Bibles and Bible Pathways each month. I believe that my love and reverence for the Word of God, which has impacted my life so greatly, is a direct result of receiving that KJV Gideon’s New Testament in the earliest weeks of my conversion. Today my husband, mother, father, sister, uncle, son, and daughter have all come to the knowledge of salvation, and their lives are impacting others. One “little red Bible” has gone a long way in changing lives.

During the past two years I have experienced some of the most difficult times in my life with the death of my father, my mom’s serious health problems, my daughter’s rebellion, and other sorrows. Yet the Word of God has sustained me, given me comfort, hope, and direction. What can separate us from the love of God? Certainly not the difficulties of this life if we are trusting in Him. I have seen amazing answers to prayer, and I’ve learned many spiritual lessons and grown through what has happened. Jesus Christ truly is all I need, for I have found Him to be a very present help in trouble, whose presence brings joy even in the midst of sorrow. I love Him with all my heart and I give Him all my obedience for He has caused me to delight in doing His will. The LORD is so good.

I would like to thank the Gideons once again for their faithfulness in placing the Bible that changed my life.



August 16, 1991