Archive for The Gathering Place "The Gathering Place" is a web community where people can gather and make new friends, share ideas, enjoy a few laughs and learn about many interesting things together. It is a safe place where friends can correspond with each other about what they love.
Please share with us your testimony. I will start it off.
II Peter3: 9. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
As I look back upon my life I can see how this verse is true. When I was growing up, I attended church once in a while and I always believed in God and assumed that so did everyone else. As I got older I realized that that wasn't the case. By the age of 11, I had started drinking, smoking pot and looking at pornography. It started out with a couple of sips from my uncle's drink when my mother wasn't around, which gave me the taste for it. Then I started sneaking sips from bottles that where in the cupboard, stealing a beer here and there. I even broke into someone's car and stole a case when I was 12. By the age of 17 I was drinking, smoking pot and looking at pornographic movies and magazines almost every day. Often I would go to school drunk. Don't ask me how I was never caught. For the next 5 years that was my life. I started babysitting for my sister and stayed drunk pretty much for that time period.
Now, through all this time I believed in God and Jesus and unfortunately like most people I thought that this was enough to get me into heaven.. I mean, I wasn't bad. I had never killed anyone or anything so I thought I was good, so why would God send me to hell? But the Bible says in Proverbs 16:2, "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits", and again in Proverbs 21:2., "Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the Lord pondereth the hearts."
I said the sinners prayer when I was 17 but nothing changed. Fortunatley I attended a good Bible believing church once in a while and occasionally read my Bible, although most of the time I was drunk. But the Word of God eventually started to penetrate into my heart. When I was 22 I finally realized that it it was more that believing in God and Jesus that got you to heaven. The Bible says in James 2:19, "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.", and I also realized that it wasn't trying to live a good life that got you to heaven. The BIble says in Is 64:6, "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." I sincerely repented and asked Jesus to help me change the way I was living and Praise God he did.
God's Warrior
Thank you for sharing your testimony with us. Praise God for your salvation and for all that you now do for Him here on this earth. Hopefully others who might suffer from similar problems will read your post and be inspired by it. You have sown seeds in your testimony that may be harvested by others. Keep witnessing for Him, dear brother in Christ.
