Hello! My name is Jason and I want to share my testimony. This is the account of my salvation and of God’s working in my life through the years.
I grew up in Fairmont, Minnesota, where my family attended Immanuel Lutheran Church. As a child, the services seemed long and boring to me, but I participated in the religious rituals because that was what I knew. This was my earliest significant exposure to anything concerning God.
Eventually, I began paying attention to something the pastor said during the services. He would pronounce the congregation forgiven of their sins by the authority vested in him by Christ Jesus. What caught my attention was that he did this every week.
That began to bother me.
I wondered what would happen if I died during the week, between those declarations of forgiveness.
Eventually, those concerns faded into the background of childhood, and as I grew older I had little interest in spiritual matters. I remember once cycling through radio stations and hearing a preacher. That seemed strange to me because, in my young mind, that Bible stuff belonged inside churches. I did not understand much of what he was saying, and my interest soon disappeared again.
As a teenager, I spent considerable time at the local library reading science fiction. One day I found the Left Behind book series in the science-fiction section. From the description, it seemed like another science-fiction story, so I began reading it.
For the first time, I encountered stories about a God who actively intervened in people’s lives and about people who genuinely loved God. I do not believe that the gospel was clearly presented to me through those books, but they awakened a renewed interest in spiritual things.
Looking back, I believe God was drawing me and giving me additional light as I responded to what I had already received.
I began hungering for spiritual truth. I read nearly everything I could find at the local Christian bookstore and listened frequently to Christian radio, which was really New Evangelical Radio, promoting a God who is all love but not concerned with sin and holiness.
I would not recommend that method of spiritual education today. The Left Behind books contain theology and ecumenical ideas that I now believe are unbiblical, and the same problems existed in what I encountered through Christian bookstores and radio. Some useful material was present, but much discernment was needed that I simply did not have.
As a young adult, I attended a technical college in another town. I was a lazy student, and my introverted nature contributed to isolating myself. I skipped classes and spent time in the library or sat in my car when the weather was warm.
During this period, I still had some interest in spiritual things. One day, while skipping class, I sat listening to Christian radio and reading Luther’s Small Catechism. I repeated certain words form that Catechism to myself over and over until I likely placed myself into something resembling a trance. I no longer remember exactly what I was reading. Combined with the music playing on the radio, however, I experienced a brief religious euphoria.
I remember suddenly proclaiming aloud, although nobody was there to hear me, “It’s real!”
At the time, I thought I was talking about God. Looking back, what I had experienced was primarily a mystical sensation that convinced me there was a supernatural world. It was not salvation.
Before this happened, while I was still in high school, I had met a young woman who would later become my wife. She attended a Baptist church, and I originally went with her because I wanted to spend time with her.
When I arrived, the pastor was teaching from the book of Revelation. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. He was preaching about events I had encountered in the Left Behind books, and he actually believed these things were taught in Scripture.
I began returning to the church whenever I could. I believed much of what was being preached, but I had not repented of my sin or trusted Christ for salvation. I understood that Christians expected me to live as a good person, but I did not understand what it meant to depend fully upon Christ to save me.
My attention was eventually drawn away from spiritual matters again by worldly pursuits. The young woman became my girlfriend, and she became pregnant with our first son.
During this period, I made a false profession of faith. After moving out of my parents’ home, I joined Fairmont Baptist Church. My girlfriend and I eventually married, and we continued attending church.
A few years later, an evangelist named Joe Mark came to the area through Calvary Baptist Church in nearby Granada, Minnesota. We attended those evangelistic meetings.
During one of the meetings, he preached from Acts 26:27–28 concerning the difference between possessing knowledge about God and personally knowing Him.
Paul said:
“King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest.
“Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”
The evangelist explained that a person may possess considerable knowledge about someone without personally knowing that individual.
As I listened, I realized that this described me.
I knew things about God. I believed many things about the Bible. I attended church. I had undergone infant baptism. I had experienced religious emotions. I had made a profession of faith.
None of those things could save me.
I finally repented of my sin and trusted Jesus Christ to save me. I stopped depending upon my infant baptism, my religious experiences, and any belief that I was good enough or worthy of Heaven. My confidence rested upon what Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, had already done for me through His death on the cross.
He had paid for my sin, once and for all, forever!
From that point forward, my wife and I had two more children, and we eventually moved our church membership to Calvary Baptist Church. I continued learning about God and growing in my understanding of Scripture.
A few years later, I believed God was calling me to preach. I moved my family to North Carolina so that I could attend Ambassador Baptist College in Lattimore. For the next couple of years, we struggled forward while I attended classes and worked full-time.
Then, during the summer of 2013, everything changed.
One morning I woke up crying, curled into a ball and overwhelmed with grief. This behavior was completely foreign to me. I told my family that I could not go to work and called in sick.
Soon afterward, I began suffering panic attacks. My limbs felt as though they were weighed down, and at times I could barely find enough energy to walk across the living room.
We contacted our family doctor back in Minnesota, who said my symptoms sounded consistent with Lyme disease. We began researching the possibility and became convinced that he was correct. It was later discovered that I had a form of Lyme disease along with Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
At the time, however, several doctors in North Carolina dismissed what I was experiencing and suggested psychiatric treatment.
Fear began controlling my decisions. We eventually decided to move back to Minnesota so that I could seek treatment.
This is an area in which I believe I failed God. I had moved my family to North Carolina because I believed God had called me to train for the ministry, and I allowed fear to gain a foothold in my life. I abandoned that training and returned to Minnesota.
After we returned, my wife began working because I was physically unable to do so at the time.
For the sake of privacy, both hers and mine, I will not recount everything that happened in our marriage. Eventually, she abandoned and divorced me. I did not want the divorce.
In a short period, nearly everything that had been central to my life disappeared. I had no home of my own. I had almost no financial resources. I was living with my parents again. My access to my children was controlled through the legal system.
I reached the lowest period of my life.
Twice I attempted to end my life. This eventually resulted in therapy and a 72-hour hospital hold.
When I left the hospital, I remember being consumed with guilt over the realization that I had nearly taken my children’s father away from them, thereby leaving them to the “mercies” of a lost and dying world.
During this period, I was also receiving treatment for my physical illness. My health gradually improved enough for me to begin looking for work. Eventually, by God’s grace, I found a job and secured an apartment.
I continued struggling with anxiety and depression. Therapy did not seem to be helping, and I turned toward several unhealthy ways of dealing with loneliness.
Eventually, the divorce proceedings were completed. My former wife and I received equal legal and physical custody of our children, which meant that I could have them with me for a full week every other week.
One day, after my children had returned to their mother’s house, I was alone in my apartment eating a simple microwave meal. I was sad and depressed at their departure, and was on the verge of another bout of self-pity.
I still didn’t have access to my own children like I used to, because of someone else’s decision. All of the finances I had saved over the last decade were gone and I was in debt due to bills and legal fees that I did not ask for.
Here I was having to start over at what should have been a very settled and relatively peaceful time in my life.
As I looked around the apartment, Romans 2:4 came forcefully to my mind:
“Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”
As I sat there looking at that little meal, I began recognizing how faithful God had remained through everything that had happened.
I had experienced loss, sickness, fear, divorce, financial ruin, depression, and despair. Yet God had preserved my life. I had my children again. I had employment. I had a place to live. I had food in front of me.
The goodness of God led me to repentance.
That moment became a major turning point in my life.
I have continued to struggle at times since then, and I have not lived perfectly. I have learned, however, that God never left me or forsook me.
I have now worked steadily for many years. My former wife and I now have minimal contact following her remarriage, which allows me not to have to experience the flashbacks to the abandonment nearly as often. I have a very close relationship with my children, who now live with me full time, and I have had the privilege of personally leading them to Christ. Each of them has now trusted Christ for salvation.
Through all of this, I have learned something about the goodness, patience, and faithfulness of God.
My hope is not founded upon my performance. It rests upon Jesus Christ and the sacrifice He made on my behalf.
I can therefore say with the hymn writer:
“My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!”
My purpose in sharing this testimony is to point people toward Christ, toward His Word, and toward the local church. Whatever usefulness my experiences may have comes from what God has done through them and from the truth found in Scripture.