My Testimony
To start out, I was born in Pennsylvania. Growing up I have had both my parents, both alive, not divorced, two older brothers, one younger sister, and a lot of aunts, uncles, and cousins. I was raised Catholic, but not really. My family called themselves Catholic but I wasn't really raised that way at home, I went to a Catholic church and a Catholic school for a lot of my childhood. I very quickly stepped away from Catholicism, I was still going to the school, but I saw too many issues with it. There were so many contradictions and problems with the religion that I just couldn't believe it, but even if that wasn't the case, my family didn't live as Catholics, anyway, they were basically atheists by action and belief while Catholic by name only, with the only real exception being my grandmother.
I never had a good relationship with my family. I was pretty much depressed my entire life because almost everything about who I am, meaning my interests, hobbies, my friends, the things I liked and disliked, was seen as a bad thing. They would rather I ditch all of them and be someone I wasn't. That's basically what my life was, and me being who I am, I was a very rebellious person and stayed how I was, which in a lot of ways is good for me now as my family could be pretty atrocious from an influence standpoint, pushing me towards sin. My mother wanted me to lie my way out of things while my father wanted me to punch my way out. My oldest brother wanted me to smoke and drink, and my other brother encouraged things better left unsaid. I didn't have any friends that were pointing me in the right direction, if anything I was the most moral one of my group and that's bad, trust me. I was not actually very moral, I was just self-righteous. I thought I was doing things right, but it was living by my own flawed moral standard. It didn't seem like an issue to me since I was surrounded by friends who were, from my understanding at the time, in a lot worse stuff than I was.
I struggled mainly with pornography, cursing, taking God's name in vain, and anger.
About a month before my twentieth birthday, July 2014, I met Hannah. I met her through an old friend who had very bad intentions towards her. He was already dating two different girls at once and actually wanted to date Hannah, too. I didn't really know Hannah at the time, and I had already tried to talk him out of it and he wasn't having it, so I did the only thing I could and went to warn her. So I started a conversation with Hannah over Skype, warned her, and we started talking a lot after that. I very quickly fell for her and, oddly enough, the only flaw that I saw in her was the fact that she was a Christian because that was my mentality back then. I was agnostic with very heavy atheist leanings. I basically laughed at anyone that was religious, I always considered them to be complete idiots. I was very, very harsh with how I thought of anyone with any kind of faith because it was just such nonsense to me, having been raised Catholic around people who said that they believed in God and lived by these standards, but were no different from anyone else around me. I was never given a Bible or pushed to read one. Everything was taught to me through outside sources like religious textbooks.
Back on track, Hannah's only flaw in my opinion was that she was a Christian. Other than that, Hannah was absolutely perfect for me, and the reason that matters is my interest in Hannah is part of the reason I was willing to listen to her. She told me very clearly that she would never be willing to date or marry someone that did not believe in God and was not saved, so a big part of what I was doing that month I had met her was trying to convince her that there was no issue at all with me not being a Christian, and to ditch that philosophy of hers. As if there would be no issues whatsoever (yeah, there would be a LOT of issues, you do not want to date or marry a nonbeliever if you are a Christian, you want to be equally yoked.)
So, there I was, trying to do my thing, meanwhile she was teaching me about genuine Christianity, people who believe straight from the Bible. She was the first protestant I'd ever really known, and we were talking constantly for that whole month and I was being as stubborn as you can expect. I was fighting every step of the way, I had no interest in actually accepting God, but I was interested in her so I continued to listen. By mid July, I started to have actual interest in God because so many things about me and what I believed had been proven to be wrong. All the issues I had with Catholicism weren't relevant to how actual Christians believed or how God was, so I was losing the issues I had with religion and I didn't really know how to handle it, but Hannah stayed honest and nice the whole way through. She stayed firm, which was very helpful for me from a salvation standpoint, but I got plenty angry during that time and it was not a fun time for Hannah, she actually only continued talking with me because she felt God leading her to do so.
I'm glad she stuck with what God was asking of her because near the end of July, she shared a Creation verses Evolution seminar with me over Skype which absolutely crushed the atheist beliefs I had while removing my doubt in God. It annihilated everything I had been taught in school, and Kent Hovind, the man in the creation seminar, was far more blunt spoken about things than Hannah, and between everything she had taught me and everything he had to say, I couldn't deny it anymore, and I came to God, to Jesus Christ.
In a very short amount of time, I changed drastically. One immediate change in me was that I had claimed as an agnostic that even if she did somehow convince me to become a Christian, I would never share this. I knew what people like me would think, and so when I said I'd never share, I meant it at the time. Then I confessed Jesus as Lord, and I told her I couldn't keep quiet about it. Another thing that changed, I quit stealing. Before I would occasionally download music and things without paying, but immediately after I became a Christian I stopped, and later I went through my things and deleted anything I stole. There was a lot that had been accumulated over time, but I cleared them out, then I went and purchased them as I should have originally.
Hannah got me my first Bible, a King James Bible, she was discipling me, and on the 31st of July, my birthday, Hannah told me she loved me, and we began a long distance relationship. We made a nine month plan for me to save up and move to Illinois.
Now, as much as my family was against how I was before, multiply that by twenty. They all turned against me hard when I became a Christian. So did my friends. When I became a Christian I told my family what I now believe, that I believed in God, that I didn't believe in evolution but rather adaptation, and that I was going to live my life by God's standards, my brother legitimately said that I should be put into an insane asylum, and he didn't say this jokingly. Not a single one of my family members disagreed with him, they were all saying similar things, just with a little more tact than my brother.
I pretty much came out of it with no one from my old circles. By the time I moved to Illinois I had one friend left, and even that was awkward, but we drifted further apart, then he got into some stuff, I confronted him about it, and we haven't talked since!
Back to the transformation God had on me in my life, as I stated before there were sins I was struggling with, and it wasn't long before that changed. Cursing? I barely slipped up, and now I don't at all. I ditched pornography within two or three months, which is still not fast enough, it's such an absurdly evil thing and it shouldn't exist, but I'm just glad I've done it. I stopped taking God's name in vain, and I've continued to change for the better because one thing I did take a long time with was my anger, but with each year for four years I had more control over it before I no longer struggled with it. It took me two years from the time I came to Christ to read the Bible from front to back (and actually, I read the new testament in two weeks! Way easier to read than the old!) and soon after I felt God leading me to preach. In what way? I didn't know at the time, but now it's clear.
I never had a good relationship with my family. I was pretty much depressed my entire life because almost everything about who I am, meaning my interests, hobbies, my friends, the things I liked and disliked, was seen as a bad thing. They would rather I ditch all of them and be someone I wasn't. That's basically what my life was, and me being who I am, I was a very rebellious person and stayed how I was, which in a lot of ways is good for me now as my family could be pretty atrocious from an influence standpoint, pushing me towards sin. My mother wanted me to lie my way out of things while my father wanted me to punch my way out. My oldest brother wanted me to smoke and drink, and my other brother encouraged things better left unsaid. I didn't have any friends that were pointing me in the right direction, if anything I was the most moral one of my group and that's bad, trust me. I was not actually very moral, I was just self-righteous. I thought I was doing things right, but it was living by my own flawed moral standard. It didn't seem like an issue to me since I was surrounded by friends who were, from my understanding at the time, in a lot worse stuff than I was.
I struggled mainly with pornography, cursing, taking God's name in vain, and anger.
About a month before my twentieth birthday, July 2014, I met Hannah. I met her through an old friend who had very bad intentions towards her. He was already dating two different girls at once and actually wanted to date Hannah, too. I didn't really know Hannah at the time, and I had already tried to talk him out of it and he wasn't having it, so I did the only thing I could and went to warn her. So I started a conversation with Hannah over Skype, warned her, and we started talking a lot after that. I very quickly fell for her and, oddly enough, the only flaw that I saw in her was the fact that she was a Christian because that was my mentality back then. I was agnostic with very heavy atheist leanings. I basically laughed at anyone that was religious, I always considered them to be complete idiots. I was very, very harsh with how I thought of anyone with any kind of faith because it was just such nonsense to me, having been raised Catholic around people who said that they believed in God and lived by these standards, but were no different from anyone else around me. I was never given a Bible or pushed to read one. Everything was taught to me through outside sources like religious textbooks.
Back on track, Hannah's only flaw in my opinion was that she was a Christian. Other than that, Hannah was absolutely perfect for me, and the reason that matters is my interest in Hannah is part of the reason I was willing to listen to her. She told me very clearly that she would never be willing to date or marry someone that did not believe in God and was not saved, so a big part of what I was doing that month I had met her was trying to convince her that there was no issue at all with me not being a Christian, and to ditch that philosophy of hers. As if there would be no issues whatsoever (yeah, there would be a LOT of issues, you do not want to date or marry a nonbeliever if you are a Christian, you want to be equally yoked.)
So, there I was, trying to do my thing, meanwhile she was teaching me about genuine Christianity, people who believe straight from the Bible. She was the first protestant I'd ever really known, and we were talking constantly for that whole month and I was being as stubborn as you can expect. I was fighting every step of the way, I had no interest in actually accepting God, but I was interested in her so I continued to listen. By mid July, I started to have actual interest in God because so many things about me and what I believed had been proven to be wrong. All the issues I had with Catholicism weren't relevant to how actual Christians believed or how God was, so I was losing the issues I had with religion and I didn't really know how to handle it, but Hannah stayed honest and nice the whole way through. She stayed firm, which was very helpful for me from a salvation standpoint, but I got plenty angry during that time and it was not a fun time for Hannah, she actually only continued talking with me because she felt God leading her to do so.
I'm glad she stuck with what God was asking of her because near the end of July, she shared a Creation verses Evolution seminar with me over Skype which absolutely crushed the atheist beliefs I had while removing my doubt in God. It annihilated everything I had been taught in school, and Kent Hovind, the man in the creation seminar, was far more blunt spoken about things than Hannah, and between everything she had taught me and everything he had to say, I couldn't deny it anymore, and I came to God, to Jesus Christ.
In a very short amount of time, I changed drastically. One immediate change in me was that I had claimed as an agnostic that even if she did somehow convince me to become a Christian, I would never share this. I knew what people like me would think, and so when I said I'd never share, I meant it at the time. Then I confessed Jesus as Lord, and I told her I couldn't keep quiet about it. Another thing that changed, I quit stealing. Before I would occasionally download music and things without paying, but immediately after I became a Christian I stopped, and later I went through my things and deleted anything I stole. There was a lot that had been accumulated over time, but I cleared them out, then I went and purchased them as I should have originally.
Hannah got me my first Bible, a King James Bible, she was discipling me, and on the 31st of July, my birthday, Hannah told me she loved me, and we began a long distance relationship. We made a nine month plan for me to save up and move to Illinois.
Now, as much as my family was against how I was before, multiply that by twenty. They all turned against me hard when I became a Christian. So did my friends. When I became a Christian I told my family what I now believe, that I believed in God, that I didn't believe in evolution but rather adaptation, and that I was going to live my life by God's standards, my brother legitimately said that I should be put into an insane asylum, and he didn't say this jokingly. Not a single one of my family members disagreed with him, they were all saying similar things, just with a little more tact than my brother.
I pretty much came out of it with no one from my old circles. By the time I moved to Illinois I had one friend left, and even that was awkward, but we drifted further apart, then he got into some stuff, I confronted him about it, and we haven't talked since!
Back to the transformation God had on me in my life, as I stated before there were sins I was struggling with, and it wasn't long before that changed. Cursing? I barely slipped up, and now I don't at all. I ditched pornography within two or three months, which is still not fast enough, it's such an absurdly evil thing and it shouldn't exist, but I'm just glad I've done it. I stopped taking God's name in vain, and I've continued to change for the better because one thing I did take a long time with was my anger, but with each year for four years I had more control over it before I no longer struggled with it. It took me two years from the time I came to Christ to read the Bible from front to back (and actually, I read the new testament in two weeks! Way easier to read than the old!) and soon after I felt God leading me to preach. In what way? I didn't know at the time, but now it's clear.