This is my testimony this is my life

Today I awoke and went to open the door as I do every day to check the outside temperature before taking my daily walk.

Pushing the storm door open just a crack caused a blast of 20 degree air to hit me in the face sending its cold winter chills throughout my body.

Pulling the door shut quickly I realized that my walk was going to be delayed until the beautiful sun rays beaming down peeping at me from behind a mostly clouded sky could do their job of raising the temperature a bit more.

What would I do with my day? My usual pattern for starting my day was broken.

As I stood there pondering this in my mind I began to think this is a perfect day to take a trip. But where would I go?

Then it hit me why not travel back down Memory Lane?

My thoughts began to wander back to that place in time that as a small child of about six years old I lay on my back on my grandpa’s front yard covered by the green blades of grass, the weeds and beautiful flowers that surrounded me, looking up into the vastness of a bright sunny sky having a background of light blue dotted with fluffy white clouds.

My eyes fixed on the heavens I tried to get a glimpse of the God of the Bible that my grandmother read from the Holy Scriptures and told me about.

If this God was that big and looking down at me surely I could see Him.

Although I spent hours at a time my little eyes staring searching the heavens I wanted desperately to see God.

I wondered if God could see me a tiny little speck of dust in this vast world that surrounds me. Why couldn’t I see Him?

I grew into a teenager then an adult still I could not see God neither could I hear His voice.

I began my journey into adult life stained with sin and suffering the consequences of my decisions to sin, in spite of my grandmother’s warnings and urging me to follow the teachings of the Bible.

At the age of 17 years I met and married my wife and by the time I reached 21 years old we together was starting our family. Our first son was born and still I was an unfit husband and father. I knew that I had to make some tremendous changes in my life if I were to keep my family together.

But I didn’t know how to do it neither did I have the strength or desire in myself to do what was necessary to keep my wife and child from leaving me, because of the way I treated them.

I had searched all these years and looked to see God I wanted to hear His voice and see answers to my prayers, “yes sinners do pray but fail to get answers because of how they pray”.

Prayer without faith will accomplish nothing and get no answers.

The Bible says, Hebrews 11:6 (KJV)

 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Then one Saturday night while sitting on the back pew of a small street mission church listening to a tall dark curly haired burly man standing behind the pulpit talking about God’s great love for us and how He sent Jesus to die for our sins, he said as though he was speaking directly to me, that Jesus would change my life if only I would accept His sacrifice for all my sins and come and follow Him.

That night was the turning point in my life, because that night I heard the voice of God speaking to me for the first time through that man of God’s mouth, I saw the love of God radiating from the faces of every person in that little congregation.

And I knew without a shadow of doubt that God was real and that my life would never be the same from that point on.

As God spoke to my heart that night He told me the reason that I had never seen Him during those years.

It was because I had been looking for Him through my eyes of sinful flesh.

I had been searching for Him in all the wrong places I could never have found God through looking for Him in the religions of the world because He is not found in them.

God is Spirit and He is complete love, John 4:24 (KJV)

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

1 John 4:8  (NIV)

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Jeremiah 29:13  (NIV)

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

That Saturday night so long ago I truly found God for the first time in all my life because I searched for Him with all my heart.

I saw Him as He really is for the first time because I looked for Him through my spiritual eyes instead of human eyes.

I heard His voice for the very first time because I surrendered myself to Him that wonderful night through faith in His only begotten Son Jesus Christ who forgives all my sins and cleanses through His holy word my heart from all desire to commit sins.

From that glorious night forward I have through His power and the strength that He gives me lived my life totally opposite of what I started out to do.

And because God gave me a new heart that night I have and am living a very blessed life the old wicked heart that I once had that brought curse and torment to me for so many years was transformed by God’s Holy Spirit the very moment that I allowed Jesus to come in.

God is no longer hidden from me way up there behind the clouds of heaven.

From that glorious night until this present day I have and can see God in all His glory in all His marvelous creation.

I can hear His voice as He instructs me in what I should do and leads me where I should go in order to manifest and make known in this sin darkened wicked world His love, power, mercy, grace and His light of salvation that shines through me as He does in the lives of many others who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus.

Hebrews 2:3  (NIV)

 how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.

This is my testimony this is my life

C.E.Lee 1242014