A testimony of a transformed life
Editor’s note – This is part of a letter from Lori, a new believer, to her pastor, Ben Feldott. She struggled with faith a long time, and this letter picks up at the point just after she was saved.
Once I made the decision to accept Christ, I thought I should do it with someone else present. Then I thought, “If I ask Pastor Ben to join me in this prayer, I’m going to stumble over my words. I always do when I speak out loud. So, I’ll rehearse.”
So, late at night, sitting there, planning just the right words to say, I realized it was absolutely ridiculous. How could I be sitting here practicing what to say to God, while worrying about how it might sound to Pastor Ben? God doesn’t want me to perform. He wants the full sincerity of my heart focused on Him, confessing my sin, asking his forgiveness, gratefully accepting the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as the only means of my salvation. There are many things I don’t understand fully, but these things I DO understand — I need to ask God’s forgiveness for my sin, and to confess to him my belief that I can be saved only through faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and to ask Him to take over my life to help me to follow His will, His way, and His plan for His glory — I sure don’t need to have an appointment or a buddy to do that. So, I quit rehearsing and just did it.
I could not possibly have imagined or been prepared for how this would make me feel. I’m sure different people have different experiences, but I’m blown away. Does this happen to everybody? Seriously? I totally wasn’t expecting something so drastic and sudden. I thought, hoped, that I would begin to slowly and gradually feel changed, to begin to understand more about God and His plan, how He works in my life, how I can better serve Him. I’m sure that gradual change will come, but I didn’t in any way expect to feel so different so quickly. It’s absolutely fantastic, unspeakably wondrous, and a little scary to have just a taste of such inconceivable, extraordinary power — in me. I don’t even feel like me. Let me give you a couple of examples.
Mired in the same set of obstacles that I was just days before, I now clearly see pathways through them. God hasn’t removed them; He just removed their dominance over my life, and my husband’s asking why I’m peaceful and calm.
Blame and stress have been a problem for me. I didn’t realize how much, and how angry I was, whether I expressed it or not. It consumed me at times. I had tried the “don’t-sweat-the-small-stuff” approach, a little yoga, some positive affirmations — all that lasts like two hours. But now, it’s like a light switch turned it all off. It just seems so pointless and damaging to me now to point fingers and be angry when things don’t work out as planned.
Oh, and then this … I want to lose weight. Three weeks ago I prayed for willpower to stick with my diet. Now, though, it’s a different prayer. Now I pray that God will let that happen while simultaneously strengthening me against my own vanity.
See, it’s okay to feel happier and healthier — it’s not okay to get full of myself or to start relying on the opinions of other people, wanting to be witnessed by other people and not being satisfied with God as my witness. But there’s also another level — something I’ve been very guilty of in the past: feeding my vanity by inviting the lust of others. Sounds heavy-duty when it’s phrased that way, but that’s pretty much what it comes down to, isn’t it? I wanted to know I’ve still “got it” by making sure I can still turn the head of an old boyfriend. And this is doubly sinful, because I’m sinning myself, and also enticing another to sin along with me, even if it’s just in thought.
It’s really hard for me to believe that this is me saying all this stuff. I have lived most of my 43 years as such a godless skeptic, and if there were any way to explain this as something other than God acting directly in my life, I’d be the first one to jump all over it. But I can’t deny my own experience.
I am deeply humbled by the vastness of what I don’t know or understand. I’m certain that our family’s daily stresses will not stop — they’ll just change — and that more serious trials, temptations, and tests of faith are sure to come, but for now I’m really soaking up a new joy I’ve never experienced before. Wanting to live in a way that glorifies Him and follows His will is really what I need to start listening to and asking for right now.
I can see that God has clearly been at work in my life, but he’s used Ben Feldott and Cape Cod Church as part of his plan to lead me to the greatest choice I have ever and will ever make in my life. I’m deeply, deeply grateful for that and really want you to know.
See you Sunday!