My Testimony

My childhood:

I grew up in a pentecostal family.  I went to church every Sunday from birth. It was boring and fairly meaningless to me. I wanted to be "good" and love God and Jesus but I didn't understand even the little bit that I was taught about loving God.  The bible was incredibly boring to me and I had no idea how to read it.  When I tried, I got bored very quickly due to the frustration of not understanding what i was reading.  All I was ever taught in Sunday School and church was very shallow versions of the stories which probably anyone who had every heard them (non-christians) in passing would know.  I constantly heard the same morals from the same 10 or 15 bible stories.  None of them seemed remotely relevant to me and they were just fantasy as far as I could tell.  I believed in God only because I didn't know it was even an option to not believe in God.

Teen Years:

I spent 17 years being forced to go to church.  Sometimes I liked it but that was rare.  I was a quiet, introverted, fat girl who wasn't the same age as any of the other girls in my church.  I barely ever said a peep and I felt like I was not welcome in a place where, ideally, people should always feel welcome.  I tried to fit in but did not ever really feel welcome there.  Therefore, church was always accompanied by this uneasy feeling of being ignored or talked about behind my back.  I was also invisible at school or mocked for being Christian, fat, ugly and poor.
At the age of 17, I got a full time summer job at Canada's Wonderland.  Part of the job was, of course, being required to work on Sundays.  I felt that at last, I was free from being forced to go to church.  I was still expected to go to church the weeks that I wasn't working but it was at least less torture for me.  I had no problem missing it. 

Young Adult Years:

Throughout the next few years, I had found more acceptance from non-christians than from girls who I had known most of my life.   I still "liked" God but I, because of my very weak foundation in knowledge about anything Godly, was very easily led away from all of the morals I was taught growing up.

When I was 20, crisis hit my family.  My parents, who were christian, started fighting and proceeded to get separated (but still lived in the same house, and for the first few months even stayed in the same bed).  It was insanely tense most of the time. You could cut the tension with a knife, as the phrase goes.  I didn't realize how much it had affected my psyche until years later.  I had been very sheltered as I was growing up and now everything was changing.  I became a very angry person before very long and without realizing why.

I started to spend more time with non-christian friends and was even more easily pressured to drink, smoke weed, party all weekend, dabble in recreational drugs (magic mushrooms, hashish). It wasn't as horrible as it could have been but I was still very far away from God.  I would get drunk and stoned every Friday and Saturday night, and then go to work the following day and work in my clothes from the previous day while hungover.   I got to the point where I couldn't imagine life without getting drunk and stoned on the weekends.  Then smoking weed started to bleed into my daily life. 

I remember one night, sleeping at my friend, Jessie's place after a party, overhearing Jessie say to a couple of friends "Isn't Amanda so cool! And she's a christian!".  I remember feeling ashamed to even be called a Christian at that point.  I certainly did not act like a christian and I wanted to have nothing to do with, what I perceived to be, those oppressive, judgmental, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bigots anyway.

Part of me did want to but I didn't' understand God  in the slightest other than my perception that God was a big scary, mean buzz kill.  I had outwardly christian-like behaviours. I was kind, polite, quiet and a strong work-ethic.  But inside my mind and heart, I was confused, angry and rebellious. My heart was as black as soot.

Info "Addiction" Beginnings: 

I had gone through my "party" phase of life but I had grown tired of it fairly quickly (age 21 to 24). But by this time, i had all but forgotten God.  An online friend had told me, casually, one night when he was logging off "oh, look up the Illuminati".

I googled it and I was shocked.  I had a hard time believing what i read. but the more terms i searched or cross-referenced, the more real it became to me.  In the past (2000-2001) I worked a midnight shift at a gas station so I'd pass the time listening to Coast to Coast A.M.  A few things I'd heard on there started to make sense.

Confused, prodigal phase:

I went through a brief phase where i wanted to go to church.  I started attending church again, reading the bible again trying to learn how to pray.  But I got NOTHING from it.  I was crushed and depressed and just gave up for a long time.


I started to get very involved in learning as much as I could about the Illuminati and related topics.  I was starving for information. This hunger for knowledge  also applied to learning history, astronomy, physics, quantum mechanics, music, arts and crafts, and many other subjects which i can't think of at the moment.

But that led me to searching for "truth" about life.  I had all of these mixed up philosophies about life. i even vaguely believed evolution (maybe in conjunction with creation), reincarnation, etc. I still sort of believed in God but not as a conscious entity.  More of the new-age view of God as "the universal higher power", whatever that even means.

Self Justification:

All it meant to me was that I could continue to waste my life doing things that I wanted.  buying what I wanted, watching what I wanted, associating with who I wanted.
Who wants to have to obey a bunch of rules, right?  That's for kids. I was an adult and a very smart adult, at that.  I knew it all. Except that I was still completely lost, confused and mislead.  The more I felt like I "knew", the more lost and hopeless I was.  I became consumed with learning. I was searching for information constantly.  I'd spend my few breaks at work watching videos on my phone and spending all my free time at home reading the internet or watching videos.

I was so sure that I knew what I was doing and that I knew more than everyone else.

Signals:

I had always had weird dreams. Always wandering around in  some sort of gigantic dark building.  It was always very ominous and confusing.  This became normal to me and I started to not even care.  But one night, last summer, I had a dream that really bugged me.  I dreamed that I was getting into an elevator.  The elevator was going to take me either to Heaven or to Hell. I was confident which way it would go.  but then .. it went down.   I was shocked. In the dream and when I woke up.  I started to think.   I told my sister about it later on and she suggested that maybe it was what I needed to start questioning my direction in life. That maybe God was trying to get my attention.

A week later, I met my boyfriend. Online. I was still confused about theology and had been starting to think of myself as an Agnostic.  But he started showing me some videos about Creation v. Evolution by Dr Walter Veith. I rolled my eyes when I saw that he was trying to prove creation as how the bible describes it.  Everyone knows that's ridiculous, right?  Well, as I started to watch more and more videos, I started to understand. It started to become logical to me.  I started watching all of his videos.  I found his explanations engrossing and completely convincing.  My obsession for learning translated into an obsession for learning about God, history (including biblical history), prophecy and the end times theories.


 

Letting God break down my walls:

 
I  spent the next 6 months learning about these things and looking for sermons online.  I was learning that God was, in fact, NOT a big, mean, wrathful grump.  That He was love. And learning how much He loved the people he created.  I spent this time randomly breaking down into tears. Sometimes it was because I was overwhelmed with Joy. Other times, I was overwhelmed with sadness for how people were taught to view God. How God loved us and we just treated him like a reject.  Sometimes it was both mixed together.  The whole process was very emotional.   In April 2012, I found a video testimony about Emmanuel Amos Eni who was formally a witch doctor who was verily heavily involved in the demonic spiritual world.  Through his testimony video (which was actually a reading of his book), I learned that in this world, you can not be a casual Christian. You have to be completely committed.  If you are not strongly committed to the Lord, Satan and his angels will come along and attack you, after they lead you away from Him - if he needs to do that much.   
That was what I needed to hear to decide that I was all or nothing. There is no middle ground on this issue. I spent the next few weeks completely engrossed in sermons on YouTube from various pastors and as it was revealed to me the absolute loving nature of God, I gave up any resistance to the Holy Spirit.   I spent the next week constantly learning about everything I could, praying, crying, praying and crying at the same time, singing/playing praise songs or hymns on piano.   I repented from my sins and asked the Holy Spirit to help me keep all of His commandments.  
Now, literally all I cared about was learning about, talking about, thinking about, hearing about God.  But no one in my life had any interest in talking about it, except an online friend who usually had to leave before talking to me very long and sometimes, my sister. 
 I had been telling one of my piano students' mom (Sophia) how I was learning about the Seventh-Day Adventist view of life and she invited me to go to church with her.  April 28, 2012  I was supposed to go to church but I guess I wasn't ready to go yet.  But the following Saturday, I decided that I wanted to go. I called Sophia and asked to go with her to church that morning.  Well, she gladly picked me up and when we got to church, she introduced me around to everyone.
 I felt so welcome, it was heartwarming.  I felt like I was home.  My soul was at absolute peace being there.  By the next Saturday, I was already playing the piano for service and getting to know a ton of people.  I was fully immersed in the church family. I even had a passion, immediately, for teaching others about the Lord and trying to help them understand God's unadulterated love.

 I am now so filled with complete peace, joy, love that sometimes I can't stand it. 

Update - May 29 2013

 It has been a year since I started attending church.  It is great. My life and heart have changed in so many ways, I could not even explain.   Not only does the world make complete sense now (yes, I'm serious), but I have learned to let go of anger/fear/hatred/unforgiveness/discrimination/judgement of others/etc.

I also have a new family.  My church is my family now (even though I still do love my biological family).  It just shows me that love is ever-expanding. We can always have room to love more people.  It's not a finite commodity.  And Jesus is the one who has taught me all this.

Sometimes I think back to the hopelessness that was choking the life out of me before, and I almost feel like I'm falling.  If Jesus hadn't made notable and noticable (maybe not at the time, but in hindsight) impressions on me over the past couple of years, who knows where I'd be now.  I am so thankful for His love and mercy.

I just hope that you, reading this, have found this, or have the desire to find this happiness. It is not a conditional happiness or fleeting happiness. It is true internal joy which no situation can take away.

Selah.