My (Stephen) Testimony

I was working on this for something else and thought I would share it here. It is my evangelistic testimony. If anyone has any questions, I would love to answer them.

Even at a young age I realized I did wrong things. I realized there was a standard, I don’t know if I could fully express what that standard was, but I knew, somehow I just knew there was a standard and that I didn’t always meet it.

I can remember one day in elementary school chapel listening to someone talk about God and his standard and how he made a way for people who couldn’t meet his standard to be alright. I was suspicious at first, but it really started to make sense to me. I’m not claiming I understood the whole thing, I guess you could say I believed some of it on faith. But I do know I clearly fell short of the standard. I asked my teacher about it and she told me I could never meet the standard and actually, no one could. She told me the only way to be right with God was through some action of God, not through some action on my own, because no action I could do would ever get me right with God and his standard. It was quite a relief actually.

This action God did was to send his son Jesus to die for us, even though we were people who did wrong things. You see, Jesus actually did live up to the standard; he lived a perfect life, on earth. And he laid down that perfect life for my behalf and died, so I would be able to be right before God. The incredible thing is that because he is God, he didn’t stay dead, but came back to life three days later. This was part of his plan for taking care of the punishment of not meeting the standard, death, and not just physical death, but eternal punishment as well. So Jesus lived a perfect life and also death couldn’t hold him. However, there is one thing Jesus requires of us for his meeting of the standard to be applied to us. We have to accept it and accept that Jesus is God. This isn’t just something casual, it is a free gift, but truly understanding this must change your life.

I wish I could say that I’ve lived a perfect life ever since learning about this. I haven’t, I’ve done wrong things. However, I know that I no longer have the fear of trying to live up to the standard and failing, because Jesus has done that for me. Also, since I believe Jesus is God, I can look to the Bible and understand what life is about. This makes a huge difference in my life as things make sense and it gives me a purpose for living, the glory of God.