My testimony is my story, how much and how far God's been helping me grow. I've come a long way from being an atheist in seventh grade, to... where ever I am with God now. The spirit seems to work with people in strange and unique ways, I won't say mysterious because everything God does is clear and true. That much has been evident in my life.

As I said, I started to get a clue in seventh grade. Being fully into evolution and the big-bang, I had for a year decided that these concepts didn't allow much room for God, and being logically-minded, disregarded the idea of The Creator. Instead I chose the idea more accepted by this world, the one that didn't convict me, or break me, or love me.

My life was pretty empty then, I don't know how I stumbled through, but I know there wasn't anything worth remembering or being joyful over. There was the "gaping void" in my heart that everyone talks about, which makes it easier, now, for me to relate to others in that situation. Nothing filled it, not getting great grades, not my art, and not even church. My friends that took me to church though, had the something that I saw could fill the void. They had a joy in thier hearts that was Jesus. As much as I saw it in thier lives though, it didn't mean I would get it by hanging around them enough.

I was stupid then, so I tried it anyway. For a year I thought, "If I could just immerse myself in this church, I'll be as happy as they are. That's all it takes." The only thing I absorbed in a year was the knowledge that what they had was Jesus, and I couldn't get to him. So in the summer of 1996, I learned how it was done. You get on your knees, you give yourself up in confession, and accept Jesus, accept him for all that he's worth. Youth camp the next month showed me all those things, too:

Jesus is love, he's a gift that I don't deserve, he's taking away the punishment that I do desreve, he's the way, the truth, and the life.

For the next two years, I grew a little, but not enough to be the guy I needed to be. High school had introduced the possibilities, and pressures to have a girlfriend, and I became preoccupide with finding "the right one." In the summer of 1998 though, I thought I did, hoped I did, because for the first time, a pretty girl was interested me. She was a strong disciple, or had me thinking so (as I imagine I had her thinking), and had an absolutely adorable character. For a while I kept the idea that I didn't really need a girlfriend if I was going to pursue God with all my heart, but I'd also seen all of my friends get girlfriends; so we started dating...

For a few months we had a "healthy" relationship, and I really believed I loved her. I can look back now, however, and see that most boyfriends and girlfriends in high school aren't about love, but that's just one thing Satan has fooled us about. I was so caught up in being the perfect Christian that I couldn't imagine me falling into temptation. If I'd loved her, if I'd loved myself, I would not have put us both on a path straight into all the temptations teenagers have proven they can't handle.

Anyway, she broke up with me five months after we started going out without an explanation (by the way, never do that to somebody!). We had ended up giving into alot of temptations, nothing to the point of sex, but there's just simple things that I wish I'd saved for my future wife, like my first kiss. Months afterward I was pretty useless to God. I was so deeply hurt, and full of self-pity, that I was too busy trying to fix my own problems to stop and give it up to God. I thank God so much that He let the loneliness be so rough when I wouldn't let him into it... I needed to be broken, I needed to stop fooling around so I could be God's.

The summer of 1999, I let God be as awesome in my life as he always could have been. God put so much in my life to help me seek him further, when I made the space for it. Jesus forgave me of all the stupid things I did, after I confessed them, and I was able to get on with life. I abandoned trying to find a way to make God's will fit my life, and found a way for my life to fit God's will. I stopped being an audience in the worship service, and for the first time, truly made God my audience as I sang praises to his name!

So get on your knees and get broken.

Worship God. He's awesome.

--Kevin