centeroftheflame's Video Channel

MY TESTIMONY:<br /> I was born in a non-religious home but I can faintly remember Jehovah's Witnesses visiting our home and that my mom had books about witchcraft. My older sister invited me at the age of 7 or 8 to church and so I went to the small pentecostal church with her. I remember the first evening I went they had children's church and when it was over I stood on the front porch peaking in the door because I didn't know that I was allowed where the adults were, someone noticed me and came and got me. I so enjoyed being there but never once heard the minister give an altar call. It was around the same year that we visited my aunt and we went to the Baptist church she attended and at the close of the sermon the minister gave an altar call and I desperately wanted to go up but didn't know if I would get in trouble so I waited until it was all over and while people lingered and talked I knocked on the minister's office and went in and told him I wanted Jesus. He told me to pray but did not lead me in a sinners prayer. I do not remember what I prayed and he didn't pronounce me saved but I hoped Jesus heard me and that He saved me. Looking back now, I can see that it wasn't right. My whole life (some 30 years) I claimed to be a Christian but there was no evidence of conversion. I lived so wickedly and there was no power over sin in my life, I felt condemnation all the time. From the age of 12 years old I was smoking and drinking and using marijuana and all sorts of vile things. I always questioned my salvation. Every time I did go to a church or watched a preacher on television I would say the sinners prayer when they did the altar call because I just wanted to be absolutely sure that I was saved. I thought that maybe if I say it this way or maybe I was sincere this time but it was a lie. If I read the Bible it was only when a preacher would give some spine tingling sermon on prosperity or healing or power. I just became more confused and more insensitive to truth. It was all about faith to move mountains and if you didn't have that or believe that then you were so wrong and without the Holy Spirit's power. I continued on like this still having no peace. I was pregnant and married at the age of 16 to a 17 year old boy who wasn't the least bit interested in God. That marriage ended in divorce and I eventually married my 2nd husband in 1993. He was somewhat interested in God as he was raised in a Lutheran family. We went to church for ten years moving several times due to his job obligations. He made a lot of money and so I became very self-righteous and such a hypocrite, believing myself to be more righteous than anyone else around me. I made sure people in church sitting around me saw me writing $4,000 tithe checks every month and how super spiritual I must be to be giving so much. I remember reading a book called &Atilde;&Atilde;&Atilde;&Acirc;&cent;The Fear of the Lord&Atilde;&Atilde;&Atilde;&Acirc;&cent; by John Bevere and I remember thinking that is what my life should be like but it wasn't, I dismissed it and I would just suppress the truth and blame it on the devil for trying to deceive me. I would get up around 4 every morning and pray for about 3 hours in my closet and I asked God to purify me. I didn't realize that God would answer that prayer with such reality. I had everything, 3 homes, money and my husband was buying two car dealerships in Texas. Somewhere between 1999 and 2000, my life began to fall apart. I see now it was the hand of God tearing it to pieces, but at the time I wasn't the least bit aware that it was God. I was soaked in the message of the prosperity gospel that I couldn't fathom God doing this to me. My husband, after losing two car dealerships and facing up to 99 years in prison for fraud in excess of $3 million, began using drugs and seeing other women. He would regularly threaten to have me and my daughter killed. I was so afraid for my life that I started sleeping with a bat. After three years of watching him use cocaine and leaving me at home to see other women, I gave into using drugs with him to keep him home or so I thought. I was so consumed by my problems that I felt as if God surely hated me and if I was saved I had lost my salvation but I couldn't blame Him for these terrible things happening to me it was just my lack of faith or faithfulness to Him. Eventually they took my husband to prison and I was left at his parents house. Later I moved into my daughter's house in Higginsville, MO which is where I met Joe. I divorced my 2nd husband and Joe and I moved to Kansas City and got an apartment together and eventually got married. Joe and I really began to search for God in our apartment. We were both feeling as if we were picking up with God where we had left off. We found a church in Grandview, but left because church didn't feel the same. It didn't do the same thing for me that it did before. It felt fake. I started praying for God to remove everything that I was taught that wasn't truth because I started to see a lot of the things that I knew, weren't truth. I read the bible, listened to worship music, prayed and listened to messages on the Internet. I ran into Paul Washer's shocking youth message which began in myself a deep questioning of my salvation. It was so convicting that I wanted to ignore it. I truly was scared, but continued to listen to Paul Washer. I listened to his message entitled &Atilde;&Atilde;&Atilde;&Acirc;&cent;Examine Yourself&Atilde;&Atilde;&Atilde;&Acirc;&cent; where he went through the book of 1 John and by the end of that message I was in such turmoil on the inside because I knew I was a wretch and that I had sinned against a Holy God and I was not saved and it scared me, I was desperate. I knew then only God had the power to save me and not some little religious prayer. I had prayed that prayer a million times at several altars in churches all across the country and none of them had saved me. I needed God and I made it known to Him with a deep repentance that I never had before. I continued to cry out to Him everyday to do a true work, a complete work, a finished work in me that only He can do. I can not tell you the hour or the day but I know beyond a doubt that my God began that precious work in me and I see myself through a different set of eyes today. I am broken and humbled before God. I don't understand why He bothered with such a mess like myself but I am forever grateful that He loved me and I am looking unto Christ who is the author and finisher of my faith. I have no need to say that sinners prayer again ever because God has done a supernatural work of regeneration in my heart.