Why We Believe: Vol. 7

December 15, 2007, 10:00 am; posted by
Filed under Erin, Featured, Testimonies  | No Comments

This and following weekends, we will share the brief salvation testimony of each Bweinh!tributor. Read the previous six right here.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about crisis theology, and what I believe or do not believe about it. My testimony isn’t really one of dates and bright lights shining down from a cloud, but I tried to write it as a series of events, periods of time that sort of explain my coming to faith, and struggles within it.

One — It is a sticky June evening in 1996 and I am reading one of those ‘Keys for Kids’ devotionals that come in the mail for free from Northern Christian Radio. I can’t stand my mother’s Twila Paris music (and I never will), but there’s something in this little devotional story, long forgotten, that makes me look in the back at the ABCs of Salvation, and pray it, piece by piece.

Two — It is a chilly February evening, a Wednesday, during my middle school years. My Bible Bowl team is laughing over a commercial, somehow tying it into what we are studying. We debate personal standards about alcohol, and how God will treat us in heaven. We don’t even close in prayer, but I know God is pleased that we’ve been working out with quite a bit of fear and trembling.

Three — It is rally time in 2001 and I am at Whispering Pines camp in Manton, Michigan. Jeremy Kingsley is speaking in his funny Southern dialect, a down-to-earth retelling of how Jesus drove out Legion. I think, God, this is how your Word is supposed to come alive! That camp is where my first emotional experiences with God were: before I learned to trust or distrust emotion.

Four — I think to myself, some time near New Year’s in my sophomore year of high school, that I should probably be reading the Bible daily. I fall asleep in the middle of a chapter of 1 Corinthians that night, and wake up in the middle of the night to turn my bedside lamp off and take my contacts out.

Five — We have been at Dayton Center Wesleyan for four years, and I am graduating. My application for Houghton has been sent in with my personal testimony on it, but it is appropriately, honestly unfocused.

Six — I am talking to Chloe on the phone on a summer evening after our first year of college together. We get off the phone and I am kneeling by my bed, face buried in the too-soft comforter, asking, Why don’t I know what to do with my life? I hear a word, and perhaps it really was audible. Wait.

Seven — I don’t know whether or not I want to stay at this tiny church in Belfast. The people are wonderful and well-meaning, their faiths sincere, but is it the kind of Christianity that I profess? Am I just tying into a place for security? All of this goes through my head as I play the piano for worship that October morning — but in the middle of the second song, I think the Spirit witnesses to mine and I know I am where I should be.

Eight — I am sitting at my computer on a cold, rainy December day, thinking of how to turn a lifestyle into words. The songwriter’s version of Abraham’s story is pinned up on my bulletin board, and I think his summary is where I will leave my testimony. It may not be a doubtless faith, or a 700 Club-worthy one, but it is who I am.

So take me to the mountain
I will follow where You lead
There I’ll lay the body of the boy You gave to me
And even though You take him
Still I ever will obey
But Maker of this mountain, please —
Make another way.

Holy is the Lord, Holy is the Lord
And the Lord I will obey.
Lord, help me,
I don’t know the way.


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