My Testimony

First off, thanks for taking the time to take a look at this testimony. As I mentioned on my homepage, it is probably pretty remarkable to anyone who has known me for a while to hear that I've become a Christian. After all, for years I've been a guy who loved to indulge in life. And in a lot of ways I still am. But I believe that everyone reaches a point in life where those indulgences  no longer satisfy. You reach a point where you feel like you must start to make sense of things in order to maintain a view on life that helps you understand your daily experiences. I had that moment a few years ago and realized that the only way I could ever attain satisfaction in life was to respond to God.

For most of my life, I have felt an undeniable desire to develop a spiritual aspect to my life. As a child, I didn't go to church much but just took it for granted that there was a God and that Jesus was his son, although I didn't have any understanding of what that meant. During high-school, I occasionally read the Bible and prayed sometimes but, as is typical with most teenagers, I mostly just focused on the here-and-now.  As I moved into college, I began to experiment with more and more indulgence, partying pretty hard and trying to have a good time. I attempted to find meaning in life through experiences that I "enhanced" through intoxication. Yet I never felt any fulfillment in any of it. Eventually I entered the real world, got a job, and finally settled down to have kids with my wife. Pretty early on I became more and more aligned with conservative values and wanted to make sure my children were raised with a strong moral foundation so, for that reason and others, my wife and I started going to church.

For a long time, going to church was a chore for me. I had to get up and get ready on Sunday morning when I could have been getting yard work out of the way to free up football watching time. When I was there, I felt isolated and uncomfortable. Additionally, I viewed many of the churchgoers as weak and in need of something to tell them that everything was going to work out okay in the end. I had spent years building a rationalization for my lifelong resistance to God.

Over time though, the message I was hearing started to resonate with me. I began to see that so much of what I had heard about Christianity was either wrong or misrepresented what the faith is all about. For me, the Christian faith, once I took the time to understand it, provided a very compelling framework with which to make sense of literally everything: pain and suffering, the meaning of life, what is right and wrong, etc. Additionally, and I stress this, once I took the time to start examining the faith, I realized that it is very reasonable to believe in and follow Jesus.

It is here that I would like to address those of you that may be reading this and snickering a bit. You are me for I was once you. I once thought that Christianity was just a psychological therapy for the weak minded or broken hearted. But it isn't. While it is solace for those who need that, it is also a comprehensive belief system that is based on the notion that there is a God, something that most of us believe. It contends that that God created us and wants to have a relationship with us, for we are his children. I see nothing odd about that...I have children and certainly want to have a relationship with them. It plainly acknowledges that we are creatures who allow our selfish desires to lead us to do things that are inconsistent with an ideal way of living. Surely you can agree that we often do things that we regret later because they either hurt someone else or offend our conscience. Furthermore, Christianity provides a way for us to make our peace with God, simply by accepting the gift of forgiveness. It acknowledges that we could never earn our way to Heaven but could only ever make it there via God's good graces. He provides a way through Jesus. All of this we learn from a book that, when honestly researched, turns out to be very credible and worthy of consideration.

For me, all this added up to a solution to my spiritual wandering that was too compelling to deny. And so, I chose to follow Jesus. Since that time, I have experienced a transformation in my life as I try continuously to improve myself for God's glory. Additionally, I have a real satisfaction with life as I now see its purpose clearly: to be in relationship with God and to love Him. If you've read this far, hopefully that indicates you have some interest in this topic. I would welcome an opportunity to discuss my relationship with Christ in more detail with you. Shoot me an email if you like, even if you disagree with me. I'm willing and eager to have an honest and fair discussion with anyone willing to have one with me, even if you you think I'm nuts.

So I guess that's it. Thanks for taking the time to read through all of this. May God bless you.

Chipper