RESURRECTION SUNDAY & MY TESTIMONY

It’s Resurrection Sunday, y’all! I am participating in an amazing blog party that is spreading the word of God’s Greatness! My friend, Julia, started this whole thing and I am super excited to not only be sharing today but also on Saturday, the 27th, so be sure to keep y’all’s eyes open for that! There also is a giveaway so go check out Julia’s post!! 😀

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Today is the day that our Lord and Savoir raised from the dead. I don’t know about you, but I love this day. This is the day that Christ conquered sin and death. Easter isn’t all about candy in eggs, the Easter bunny, or whatever else our world makes it out to be. Easter is the day that we celebrate Christ CONQUERING death.

Never before in the history of the world has someone conquered death. Sure Lazarus rose again, but Jesus was the one who did that. Sure Enoch and Elijah never died, but again it was God who brought them up to heaven.

Easter is the day that Jesus rose from the dead. He proved that He was God. He fulfilled every singe prophecy ever told about Him. God has been changing the world from that day on. I will be sharing my testimony about how God has worked in my life.

Testimonies are always an interesting topic in a Christian’s life. If you are like me, you grew up in a Christian home. You never have really doubted anything you have been taught, you became a believer at a young age and then realized your need for Christ later on in life. There are times that it may not seem like we have a real testimony to tell, but we do!

This is how I take testimonies: They can be anything that you struggled with in life, any suffering, or just really anything God has done in your life to strengthen your faith. I have a number of testimonies that I could tell you. My dad’s cancer, moving, personal struggles with sin, a youth pastor betraying our whole church, and so many more. I am going to try to cover as many as possible.

What most Christians don’t realize is that something in their life, a non-believer has gone through. What most Christians do is they stick to the pretty story of how they were saved a kids and that was it.

I myself fall short and am in the category. We would rather have people see us as the picture perfect Christians that never have done anything wrong, never doubted anything in scripture. Yet, that is untrue for ALL of us. We ALL struggle with something. So before I end up just talking about this let’s jump into the nitty grittyness of my testimony.

God has used many situation in my life to mold and shape me into the person I am today. He allowed my parents to homeschool me after two years of public school, He allowed me to lose my best friend to the world, I’ve had to watch her grow into this heart breaking teenage girl who vapes, swears, and who knows what else. I remember her as a young girl playing with american girl dolls. I remember her going to Awanas with my family, and five other kids in our one car. We would have to double buckle every time we went. I remember blasting Toby Mac and Mandisa in her room daily. Yet, God allowed our friendship to fade away into nothing.

I still pray for her salvation every day. I still pray that God will get that one person to share the light of Himself into her life and that all the verses she memorized in Awanas would resurface. I may not be that person but I just hope and pray that she will be in heaven with me one day.

God, a few years later, allowed my dad to have brain cancer. This was one of the hardest things I have ever had to go through. I watched my strong dad go through seizures. I watched him have to re-learn how to walk and talk. I had to watch him go through chemo and radiation all the time. I watched the father I love so much on the brink of death. The scary part is He could get his cancer back any day. For all we know, he could be dead next week.

The reassuring thing is God knows. He knows exactly when He is going to take my dad home. He knows whether my dad will be there when I graduate highschool and college. He knows if my dad will be there if I get married and have kids. Only He knows if I am going to out live my dad. Only He knows when all of us are going to die. I have learned to number my days and make every single one matter.

However, even though I have this mind set do I live up and live every day to the fullest? Absolutely not. I am not perfect. Heck, most days I end up being super lazy and do nothing with my day. There are days that I don’t read my Bible, there are days that I don’t really do anything and by the end I feel really down and depressed because I got NOTHING done.

Let me tell you about a walking miracle. As I mentioned above, my dad had to relearn how to talk and walk. After surgery, my dad was in the hospital only one week before he was moved to rehab. Being in the hospital for only one week after surgery is a miracle in and of itself. Once he was in rehab, he stayed there for around 2/3 months. (I can’t really remember). That again was a crazy fast time. He was home before any of us thought he would be.

Most people with his kind of cancer only live anywhere from 6 to 12 months. The ones who live further get their cancer back and have multiple surgeries before the cancer takes them. My dad is going on 4 strong years with nothing coming back. He is a walking miracle.

It is not because of any natural things, or treatment. It is not because he has crazy DNA. It is because God has His hand over him. It is because God has a plan for my dad and it has been evident the past 4 years.

After rehab, a few months later my dad told my mom that he felt God calling us to adopt from China. Now my parents had been wanting to adopt my entire life. They tried a few years before to foster and then adopt kids in our area but the door slammed right on their face. The state of Illinois told them that they had too many kids, there were 6 of us. So my mom gave up the dream to adopt, until my dad woke her up at 5 in the morning on that fateful morning.

We hosted my younger brother for a month the following Summer. My parents decided then and there that they would adopt him and another boy who came with him to the States, he stayed with a family in North Carolina.

Many people would find our family insane. My dad just had cancer and we already had 6 kids. Yet, God called us to adopt. We have had my brothers for 2 years now. Sure, it is very difficult. Each boy comes with his own struggles. One has many physical problems. He has a genetic disorder that causes him to have fatty tumors on his leg. My other brother has many mental problems that we can’t pin point down.

I had never had a strong desire to adopt or foster before getting my brothers. Now, I have a huge desire to foster kids when I’m older. I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of this kind of stuff. I have lived it. I want to impact a child’s life for the better.

After my brothers had been adopted about a half a year or so, we got a new youth pastor. It seemed to be going really well. It wasn’t until 9 months later that my mom saw something alarming on Facebook. She and I started digging to the bottom of it and discovered something very alarming. Our youth/associate pastor was a universalist. He believes that the cross never happened and was a metaphor. He does not believe in Hell. He believes in evolution and many, many other crazy things that our church did NOT stand for.

None of us saw this coming. He has study at the Master’s college in California. Now let me tell you, the Master College is one of the strongest most Biblical colleges out there. John MacArthur is the president (?) there. His father started it. If any of you have listened to any of MacArthur’s sermons, you know that he teaches only scripture. My old youth pastor also went to a baptist seminar.

It was a huge shocker to all of us. I was angry, unset, and felt betrayed. The more I look back, the more I realize all the red flags that I missed. I started blaming myself that I didn’t catch them in time. I blamed myself for not discovering it earlier. However, my parents reassured me that it was not my fault. None of us saw this coming, he played it off really well. He was a false teacher.

God used this experience to open my eyes to see how to look for false teachers. This opened my eyes to see that I have to judge everything people say based on what the Word of God says and not what man says.

I would continue to share experiences in my life, but I don’t want to keep y’all too long. I hope y’all have an amazing Easter and I hope that my testimony has touched someone. Every one of us goes through something different in life. Don’t be afraid to share the ugly in your life because you don’t know who is reading. You don’t know who is listening. Through your testimony, God could use it to open someone’s eyes. It could be the straw the breaks the camels back and it shows them their need for God.

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Joshua 1:9

“He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’”

Luke 24: 6-7