Chris's Testimony

A WITNESS FOR THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.
As a trial attorney, I prepare witnesses to testify. To be admissible in court as competent evidence, a witness’s testimony must be based on personal knowledge–what one personally saw or experienced (see, e.g., 1 John 1:1-4). My testimony from my personal experience is that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, is alive and is still saving sinners and miraculously transforming lives through the living written Word of God (1 Peter 1:23).

In John 9, the religious lawyers of the Sanhedrin subpoenaed a young man to testify about his personal encounter with Jesus. He had been born blind but Jesus had restored his sight. The lawyers asked him under oath his opinion about Jesus. The young man testified, “One thing I know: I was blind and now I see.” After being cast out of court, Jesus took the time to seek out and find the formerly blind young man. This time, Jesus revealed Himself to the young man as the promised Savior. This time, Jesus opened the young man's spiritual eyes to see and know the Truth.

The Lord warned through the Prophet Hosea, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6).” Like the blind young man, I was blind too–spiritually blind to the truth of God’s Word, lacking knowledge and perishing spiritually.

A FIFTH GENERATION MEMBER OF A FALSE RELIGION

I grew up a fifth generation member of a false religion that teaches salvation by works and good deeds. I was taught that our religion was the purest form of Christianity, the true church. While my parents and grandparents were very sincere and well-intentioned in their faith and in raising their children to be faithful (and though I am very grateful for the example of faithfulness they instilled in me), I lacked knowledge of essential, orthodox Christian truths, such as the doctrine of salvation by grace and faith alone. I didn’t know II Tim. 3:15, Eph. 2:8-9, Titus 3:5, Rom. 6:23, or 1 John 5:11-13. When I asked how to respond to friends sharing the Gospel with me, I was taught that I could not know for sure if I was going to heaven–I was shown verses out of context that emphasize the need to endure to the end. The problem, however, was that I wasn’t enduring very well. In fact, through high school and college I had become quite entangled in the world and was heading farther and farther from the Lord. The more I failed in my efforts to grow closer to the Lord and earn salvation through my futile, fleshly efforts, the farther and farther I felt from God. The more I resolved to try to get right with God through my own works, the worse my failures seemed and the more hopeless my condition felt until finally, in desperation, I decided that if God did exist, I couldn’t live the kind of life necessary to have a present or an eternal relationship with Him.

MY SALVATION IN THE SUMMER OF 1989
I graduated from college in 1989. I had been dating Shannon, now my wife, for a couple of years, and she came with me to West Texas to live with my family for the Summer, work for my dad, and explore where our relationship may be heading. Her parents came to visit. Shannon's dad was a lay minister in the same church but he had recently had a salvation experience with the Lord. My parents asked Shannon's dad to speak at church. He shared the Gospel, emphasizing that our worthiness for eternal life comes only from the Lord.

When his message of God’s grace watered the seeds of the Gospel that had been sown in my life by so many faithful high school friends, something life-changing happened. Isaiah 55:10-11 says, “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from the heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My Word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

Just as the Lord revealed Himself to the blind young man, the Word of God touched and opened my spiritually blind eyes to the truth of the Gospel. Peace and joy flooded my soul as the Lord revealed to me that he died for me even while I was still a sinner and far from Him and that a relationship with Him was not based on what I did, but on what Jesus had done on the Cross. It was as if I had been trying to carry a 1,000 lbs in life and the Lord instantly removed the weight of the guilt and shame of my sin.

Now my failures drive me to the Lord, not from Him, causing me to love and cherish His boundless grace even more. My testimony is summed up in I John 5:11-13, which are some of my favorite verses: “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life ....”

I know I have eternal life, not because of anything I have done or will do, but because of everything the Lord Jesus Christ has already done for me to pay the penalty for my sin (1 Peter 3:18). And because He died for me, it is now my greatest desire to live totally for Him and His Mission that others may come to know the life-giving, life-transforming power of the living, risen Savior as I have (2 Cor. 5:15).