Chelsea

I have been in and out of church since I was born. I grew up going to mostly baptist churches with my parents and at some point, as a very young child, I prayed and asked Jesus to come into my heart. I was now counted as a saved person. As I got older, there was definitely no evidence of salvation in my life, I did not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. My parents would go through phases of being committed to going to church and then having long periods of time where we would not go to church. When I was 13 or 14 I attended public school for the first time, we also were not going to church during this time. I became a very rebellious young teenage girl, very quickly! I started having boyfriends for the first time and started going to parties. I would sneak out of the house at night, skip school, and drink and smoke at 14 years old. I met a guy at 16 years old and fell in love with him and moved out of my parents house and in with him and his parents that same year. I dropped out of school at the beginning of the next year and married him at 17 years old. (I can now see how richly God blessed me as an unsaved young woman marrying an unsaved young man. He was still working in my life at that time and making sure I had the right man to go through this life with.) I was doing drugs and taking pills on a regular basis at this point in my life and then I got pregnant with our child. I stopped partying and doing all those things and started caring for the new life inside my womb. Towards the later end of my pregnancy, my husband and I started going to church and trying to live right. I can remember multiple times while being in church services, during this time and later on in my life, when I would pray to God in my head, "Dear Jesus, I know that once a saved person is saved, they can't lose their salvation. But, JUST IN CASE I'm not saved, can you please come into my heart and save me?" I needed to pray that "just in case back up prayer" multiple times in my life because I never had an actual relationship with Christ. I never at any time in my life was truly seeking God, I never truly repented, and I never truly believed unto salvation. I was 18 years old when I gave birth to our son and we continued to go to church for a little while but it wasn't long before we quit. I started smoking marihuana on a daily basis and started to drink alcohol again about 6 months later. Eventually, I got to the point where I was abusing pills regularly and drinking every day. I did this for another 2 or 3 years before the depression got absolutely crushing and we moved away for a "fresh start." Nothing changed for several months in our new home, still doing pills and drinking. We decided to try out this baptist church I heard of from the pastor who shopped at the Goodwill where I was working. I stopped drinking alcohol again and we were attending church regularly for almost a year. I remember thinking maybe we had finally found that thing to make this one real and it would "stick this time." After almost a year, I started drinking again and slowly stopped attending the services. It wasn't long before we completely stopped going to church and resumed our lifestyle of drugs and alcohol. We moved again, back to where we had moved from and dove head first into our old partying ways. Each time I got back into it, it was worse than the time before. I would spend the next 3 YEARS drunk every night and sinking further into depression and further and further from God. My son had been attending Black Creek Baptist Church with my parents here and there for about 2 years or so and had been praying for us that whole time and asking us to come to church. We kept saying "some day." Finally, we broke down and went to church one morning during youth week, still hungover from the night before. I was completely captivated while the preacher was preaching. I was completely silent and couldn't look away. I could feel God stirring up all those things I had pushed way deep down. We ended up getting a motel room and staying overnight so we could go again the next day. (We lived about an hour and a half away from the church at the time.) The next day was the same, I was awestruck by the way the word of God was being preached, like I had never heard before. After the service that day, a man stood up and declared that there was a spirit of rebellion in the service and that God was saying that THIS WAS THEIR LAST CHANCE or he was gonna blow out that candle forever! THAT TERRIFIED ME, like I have never been terrified before. My whole body got hot from the inside out and I thought I was going to throw up right then and there! I stopped drinking on the spot and we started traveling the hour and a half one way, every Sunday for church. After only about 2 months or so, we quit our jobs and moved to Cuba NY, so we could be close to church and attend every service. God was working in so many amazing ways!! A few months later, during the October meeting, God showed me something. I was seeking salvation and praying after the last night of the meeting and "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" came into my mind clear as day. I knew immediately I was guilty of that and had been doing that for as long back as I could remember. (James 2:10 says, For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.") I became guilty before God. Fast forward to Sunday morning, God had shown pastor Asquith that pastor (emeritus) Hain was to preach that morning, although he didn't know why at the time. In pastor Hain's message he read these 2 verses which God used to open my eyes further and continue working away on my heart. John 14:15- If ye love me, keep my commandments. John 14:21- He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. That really got my attention! I can see now that God was starting to connect the dots for me. Fast forward again to Thursday night at a conference meeting at Grace Bible Baptist in Shinglehouse PA. I could absolutely feel the power and presence of God during the preaching, BUT Thursday night, I left and went back home feeling just as lost and hopeless and confused as ever. You see, I had been trying really hard to get myself saved and it was getting discouraging. The next night, Friday October 23rd, I heard something I've heard 100 times. It's common knowledge for someone who grew up going to church. "MY FATHER CAN FORGIVE ANYONE!" The preacher declared this during his message. I could feel those words thundering in my heart and realized just then that I didn't believe that. I know that for a fact because I had no problem believing the testimonies for other saved persons in our church, then why wasn't I saved?? Because I did not believe that God could forgive me too. After the service ended, I couldn't leave. I looked at my husband and told him my heart was so heavy and began to cry. The ache in my heart and loneliness for Jesus at that moment was as heavy as I have ever felt and I didn't know what to do with it! Pastor Hain came over and asked if he could do anything to help. I felt helpless and like there was no point but I also felt like I had nothing to lose. So I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders, and through sobs I said, "I don't know what to do, I just don't know how to get saved." Pastor Hain told me not to compare myself to others' experiences with salvation. I thought, how does he know? That's exactly what I had been doing! I was waiting to feel what other saved people have testified of and thinking "if I could just get to the point where they were at before they got saved, then I could get saved." I also believed there had to be a "time-line" such as a few years, or "x" amount of time before I could possibly get saved because I knew people who spent years searching before they got saved. I wanted to believe that God could save me any time, anywhere, but I knew that I just didn't. So in the pew at Grace Bible Baptist, I finally gave up my way of thinking and gave up "my way of trying to get saved." I prayed to God and told him that I was choosing to believe that he could save me right that minute, and that I was going to believe the promises in his word. I decided to stop "waiting for something to happen" and just surrendered it all to God instead. I had been waiting for some BIG EXPLOSIVE experience, but what happened was, everything got real simple real quick! God was telling me he could forgive me if I would just believe him. What happened was my heart didn't feel heavy anymore and I was okay getting up and leaving that pew to go home. I got saved! For the first time in my life, I was able to read my bible and relate to it! On Sunday, while singing the hymns, I had joy in my heart that I had never experienced before while singing those hymns. They now applied to me and had a whole new meaning to me personally! Revelation 22:17 says, And the Spirit and the bride say, come. And let him that heareth say, come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. I just had to believe him and take the water freely, and I was saved! God is amazing and did an absolute miracle in my life!!