Hi! I'm Josh. I introduced myself on the new member forum, and Mike thought it would be a good idea if I post my testimony on this one. So here goes.....up until a little over a year ago, I was an agnostic. Very skeptical of Christianity, and not at all happy with organized religion in general, I was just a light shove away from atheism. Then a lot of things happened in 2010 that fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Intellectually, the more honest investigating I did, the more the case for a God in general, and the Christian arguments in particular, seemed to start making more sense to me. I thought that IF there's a God, then Jesus would probably fill those shoes better than Allah, Vishnu, Lord Xenu, etc. While I still wasn't ready to take that leap of faith just yet, for the time being I saw Jesus as merely a wise teacher and good role model.
Then I noticed a lot of things happening in my life that seemed very difficult to write off as just a bunch of coincidences; it started to look to me as if maybe there was some sort of divine intervention taking care of me and my family. But then I thought….why me? I felt like it was pretty self-absorbed of me to think that God would go out of his way to take care of ME and MY family, when billions of other people are starving to death. What makes ME so special? Still, I wondered if maybe God (whichever one he might be) was trying to get my attention, and had a specific plan for me to serve him somehow…...IF there was a God, that is. Or maybe I was just luckier than other people. Who knows?
And then we hit a financially stressful time in our lives, and I started to actually HOPE that everything I had studied was true, that the Christian arguments were more than just “compellingâ€, and that those “coincidences†in my life were more than just that. So I took a shot in the dark, and prayed the “God, if you’re there….†prayer, basically saying that IF he exists, then I promised to start living for him.....to find out what he wants me to do to serve him.....if he promised to continue taking care of the needs of my family. After this, I felt an unexplainable sense of peace, as if something had just been lifted off my back! I didn’t have all the answers at that time, but I decided to just dive in, and give God and his son a chance, and IF later on in my research I turned out to be wrong about Jesus, then I could just change my mind back. What did I have to lose?
Well, in the last year and three months since accepting Jesus as my Lord, Savior, best friend, and big brother…..I feel like scales have been removed from my eyes! The more I investigate, the more compelling evidence I find that Jesus IS who he claimed to be. And the arguments from atheists, and from other religions, are looking more and more weak. My wife and I have a much stronger and happier marriage than before, because we’re both standing on the same rock-solid foundation (she's re-dedicated her life to Jesus), and my 16-year-old stepson also accepted Jesus just three months ago. We’re involved with a local non-denominational church, and studying the Bible together at home. We're doing our best to mentor our teenage "baby Christian" in his walk with Jesus, and to spark an interest in our girls (also teenagers), so that they can be saved as well. We’re still in the process of figuring out specifically how God wants us to serve him, but until then, we consider ourselves in training. I suspect that God may have me reach people through apologetics, but I’m still not completely sure if that’s gonna be his plan for me or not.
One other thing….I don’t think it’s any “coincidence†that God just happened to become real to me in my quest for the truth…..when my grandparents, who are very strong Christians and prayer warriors, had been praying for me for YEARS that God would remove the scales from my eyes. I’m very glad they did, and that God heard them!
Then I noticed a lot of things happening in my life that seemed very difficult to write off as just a bunch of coincidences; it started to look to me as if maybe there was some sort of divine intervention taking care of me and my family. But then I thought….why me? I felt like it was pretty self-absorbed of me to think that God would go out of his way to take care of ME and MY family, when billions of other people are starving to death. What makes ME so special? Still, I wondered if maybe God (whichever one he might be) was trying to get my attention, and had a specific plan for me to serve him somehow…...IF there was a God, that is. Or maybe I was just luckier than other people. Who knows?
And then we hit a financially stressful time in our lives, and I started to actually HOPE that everything I had studied was true, that the Christian arguments were more than just “compellingâ€, and that those “coincidences†in my life were more than just that. So I took a shot in the dark, and prayed the “God, if you’re there….†prayer, basically saying that IF he exists, then I promised to start living for him.....to find out what he wants me to do to serve him.....if he promised to continue taking care of the needs of my family. After this, I felt an unexplainable sense of peace, as if something had just been lifted off my back! I didn’t have all the answers at that time, but I decided to just dive in, and give God and his son a chance, and IF later on in my research I turned out to be wrong about Jesus, then I could just change my mind back. What did I have to lose?
Well, in the last year and three months since accepting Jesus as my Lord, Savior, best friend, and big brother…..I feel like scales have been removed from my eyes! The more I investigate, the more compelling evidence I find that Jesus IS who he claimed to be. And the arguments from atheists, and from other religions, are looking more and more weak. My wife and I have a much stronger and happier marriage than before, because we’re both standing on the same rock-solid foundation (she's re-dedicated her life to Jesus), and my 16-year-old stepson also accepted Jesus just three months ago. We’re involved with a local non-denominational church, and studying the Bible together at home. We're doing our best to mentor our teenage "baby Christian" in his walk with Jesus, and to spark an interest in our girls (also teenagers), so that they can be saved as well. We’re still in the process of figuring out specifically how God wants us to serve him, but until then, we consider ourselves in training. I suspect that God may have me reach people through apologetics, but I’m still not completely sure if that’s gonna be his plan for me or not.
One other thing….I don’t think it’s any “coincidence†that God just happened to become real to me in my quest for the truth…..when my grandparents, who are very strong Christians and prayer warriors, had been praying for me for YEARS that God would remove the scales from my eyes. I’m very glad they did, and that God heard them!
