MY TESTIMONY
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It’s odd, sometimes, how an off-hand comment made by someone can make you think. And eventually change your life!
Many years ago on a geology field trip, a friend made a strange comment to me when we were sitting near the top of the Mule Ear Diatreme in San Juan County, Utah.
My friend’s kind comment got me started on a quest that eventually led to an investigation of topics and issues that I had previously dismissed as being of no concern of mine.
I was a small town gal from Eastern Ontario. My companion was a graduate of Oxford University who at that time was writing his doctoral thesis at the University of Ottawa where I was working as a lab technician.
Sitting close to the top of that spectacular fin, my friend discerned that I appeared to be somewhat troubled. He asked me what was on my mind. I told him that I was thinking about my engagement and upcoming wedding. I told my companion that although I loved my fiancé, I knew in my heart I could not marry him, and that was what was troubling me.
I knew I could not marry him because of our religious differences. However, I hadn’t figured out a way to tell him. Our wedding date had been set and plans were already underway.
The problem was, my fiancé was a devout Roman Catholic. I was devoutly nothing.
Although I had been raised in a church-going family and had attended Sunday School and church as a child; as a young adult I professed no belief in any religious system or thought.
However, in those days, in order to marry a Catholic I was required to sign a paper promising to raise any children born into that marriage in the Catholic church. I would not do that. I would have refused to sign anything that had the authority or potential to restrict the freedom of choice for myself or for any child born into that marriage.
That paper was given to me two days before I was to leave on the field trip. I had no previous knowledge of this requirement. Nor did I have a chance to discuss it with my finance, the United Church minister or the Priest.
My friend was sensitive to my dilemma and he said to me as gently as possible: “I will pray for you, Val.”
That was the odd, unexpected comment that shook me to the depths of my being.
It shook me because to the best of my knowledge at that time of life, if someone offered to pray for you, you assumed that they were praying to God, or some higher power than themselves.
I thought it rather odd that an Oxford Scholar would believe in God, and more so, that he believed his prayer would be answered.
That Oxford Scholar DID believe in God. And one day God DID answer his prayer.
That kind, gentle comment changed my life. The change was not instantaneous. Or easy.
Within hours after returning to Ottawa from the field trip I found the courage to call my fiancé and tell him, as gently as possible, that I could not go through with our wedding. What a difficult time that was for both of us and for our families and friends!
Despite the pain my decision caused for all concerned, I would not be coaxed or cajoled into changing my mind. Even though I was told it was only a formality, I simply could not sign that paper. I was twenty five years old when I broke my engagement, which was well past the marrying age for my generation. I felt totally alone and scared.
Starting life over at twenty five years of age was not an easy task for either of us. Especially since most of our friends were married, building new homes, having cuddly babies and settling nicely into careers and domestic life.
Both of these experiences eventually blossomed into a quest to learn more about the Bible.
I started with the New Testament and was doing quite nicely until I got to the part about being born again. I had no idea what being born again meant.
I started to ask questions and very quickly discovered that being “born again” is a contentious topic. It is a topic that divides those who believe the Bible teaches that man must be born again from those who do not.
However, the Bible clearly states that Jesus said: Except a man be born again he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.
When I first encountered those words I became angry. Very angry!
I was angry because I knew that I was certainly NOT born again. Nor did I want to be. Nor did I think I had to be. Nor did I even know how to be!
As a child, I loved going to Sunday School and Vacation Bible School where my parents so graciously arranged for me to attend. That is where I learned about Jesus. However, I really had no idea of who Jesus was or why I was learning about him. Or why he wore such funny clothes. : )
So my first reaction to hearing that Jesus was the one who said that you had to be born again was to say: The nerve! Who does this Jesus guy think he is and what gives him the right to tell me that I need to be born again? At this point, I only knew about Jesus as a teacher; not as Saviour or Lord!
As a child who regularly attended Sunday School and church, I don’t remember ever having been told that I had to be born again. As an adult, this news really got me riled!
The concept of being born again seemed ridiculous.
To me, having to be born again reeked of a narrow-minded, fundamentalist view of God. If the God of the Bible was a God of love and mercy, why would he keep me out of heaven when I died unless I was was born again?
Since this “born again” business had me riled and would not leave me alone, I knew that I had to come to terms with Jesus’s strange and unsettling dictum.
If you had asked me who I thought Jesus was, I would have said that I believed he was a religious leader from way-back times; a Jewish priest who did a lot of good and who lived and died so long ago that what he said or did was of no concern to me or for the world today.
I did not believe the Bible was the word of God, and I certainly did not believe that Jesus was God incarnate. Neither did I believe everything Jesus said; not that I knew much of anything that he actually did or did not say.
I believed that all religions led to God and that I was at liberty to pick and choose whatever I wanted to believe, or not believe, from any of them.
I most certainly believed that if God was a loving, caring God, he would never punish anyone, and especially not me. After all, I didn’t sin; I just made mistakes. (Or so I told myself!)
However, I remained puzzled, and oddly enough, concerned about this ‘born-again’ business. I was determined to find out more, mainly because I wanted to put this nonsense to rest once and for all.
Because I can only answer for myself, I’m sharing this story of how I came to an understanding and personal experience of who Jesus is and what it means to be born again.
I started with the statement that had upset me.
That statement was made by Jesus when he answered Nicodemus in reply to the question Nicodemus had just asked him, which was:
How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?
Jesus answered Nicodemus by saying:
Truthfully I say to you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
Jesus completed his answer to Nicodemus by saying: That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
I had thus far in my 25 years of living managed to conclude that I had indeed been born of the flesh.
But born of the spirit?
Aren’t we born of the spirit at the same time we are born in the flesh? What did it mean to be ‘born of the spirit’ anyway?
Before I ever started thinking about believing in Jesus or being born of the Spirit, I realized that I had to come to grips with what the Bible said about Jesus, his death and his resurrection.
In fact, I had to come to grips with the Bible itself, a book I had designated as simply an archaic, boring and bloody book of which I definitely wanted no part.
The first thing I discovered was that the Bible is not one book. It is a compilation of sixty six books covering 2000+ years of history, law, poetry, songs, letters, prophesy and more.
I then discovered that the Bible (and other historical books from that era) had documented almost identical stories about the life, crucifixion, death and purported resurrection of Jesus. That discovery made it difficult to discredit the Biblical account of this event!
If this story and the historical records are true, then the resurrection of Jesus is what gives him the authority to state that one must be born again in order to see the Kingdom of God.
Surprisingly, I discovered that the Bible states that if Jesus were not raised from the dead then Christians believe a lie and are of all people to be most pitied.
I am referring to an excerpt from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians where he says:
“If Jesus is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Jesus is not risen. If Jesus is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. We are found to be false witnesses of God because we have testified of God that He raised up Jesus, whom He did not raise up, if in fact, the dead do not rise.”
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus is the pivotal point of the Christian faith.
If Jesus did not rise from the dead, Christianity and the teachings of the Bible are false. If He did, the consequences are eternal.
Each of us has the privilege of examining this assertion for ourself. My hope for you, if you are not a believer and are reading this, is that you will find something in my testimony that will encourage you to examine the teachings of the Bible for yourself.
Until I came to know Jesus, I did not know that there is joy in heaven when a person repents of their sin.
I can hardly take it in, even today, almost 50 years later from when I came to Jesus for forgiveness and cleansing.
The Bible states quite clearly that the wages of sin is death. (Wages: A fitting return; a recompense.)
Before I came to Jesus I wondered how a loving and kind God could condemn anyone to death who didn’t profess faith in Jesus? I didn’t think I or any of my family or friends ever sinned. I assumed that we simply made mistakes.
Then I discovered that God doesn’t condemn me to death.
Sin does.
The Bible clearly states: The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Finding out that I deserved the death penalty for what I thought of as petty offences was not exactly a joyful experience. In fact, I was downright angry! Very, very angry at God for being so harsh. Where’s the love, the kindness, the forgiveness in all of this?
At this point I still had quite a limited concept of God—the God of the Bible whom I was earnestly seeking to understand.
Or to completely discredit!
I had no concept of God’s holiness, (or even what holiness was) his perfection, his justice, his mercy or even his love. Neither could I conceive of his wrath.
Scripture has a lot to say about the wrath of God, which I found quite surprising.
God abhors all things evil, ugly, unrighteous and dishonourable. In other words, sin.
He hates sin because sin is what separates us from Him.
It is sin (and the perpetrators of sin) against which God’s wrath is directed.
God hates sin because of the consequences it inflicts on others.
Sin is the opposite of righteousness.
I was beginning to understand. I was beginning to comprehend that God is a just God.
Justice demands retribution.
A just, loving God must punish sin. It would not be fair to the victims who are wronged by sin if he did not.
The God of the Bible, as I was finding out, is also merciful. He does not want any precious person he created to be separated from Him because of the contamination of sin.
That is why Jesus, God the Son, could pay for mankind’s sin because he alone was sinless.
That is the first part of God’s provision for us.
The second part is that God raised Jesus from the dead.
The Resurrection; The Heart of Christianity
The third part is that Jesus intends to return.
God’s dwelling place will then be on earth along with all those who received salvation through the atoning work Jesus. Believers will be His people and He will be our God forever and ever. How this can be is above comprehension. But then, so is human existence.
Each of us has the privilege to search for God; to respond to God’s call and to choose to obey him and come to Him on His terms, or to do what we want on Our terms.
Man, who is made in the image of God, is not free unless he has the freedom of choice. As the old saying goes: A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still!
God gave our first parents that freedom of choice. The consequences of the choices they made has been passed on to every single person who has ever been born. Scriptures tell us that Eve was deceived, but Adam was not. Adam willingly and knowingly chose to do what Eve asked of him rather than to listen to and obey what God had told to both of them.
Every person has the privilege to choose to obey or disobey God. We have been given the freedom of choice. If we couldn’t choose, we wouldn’t be free.
God put just one restriction on Adam and Eve: “You may eat freely from every tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat it, you will surely die.”
After God gave the commandment to Adam and Eve, Satan paid Eve a visit and asked her what God had told her.
Eve replied by telling Satan that God had said they could eat the fruit of the trees in the garden, which one exception, that being the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Satan contradicted what God had said to Eve by telling her that she would not die if she ate that fruit. Rather, she would be like God, knowing good and evil.
The temptation to taste that tantalizing fruit overwhelmed Eve. The other tasty fruits no longer mattered. THAT fruit was the one she wanted. So she shared her desire with Adam.
Alas, Eve accepted Satan’s logic rather than God’s word. Adam chose to yield to Eve’s desire. God chose to honour His word!
Since then, we are all born into the legacy left to us by our first parents, which is sin tainted blood. Blood that eventually leads to death.
That is why we have to be born again into Jesus sinless blood. “God paid a ransom” to save us from our old empty way of life. “And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.” (1 Peter 1:18–19).
The only person who ever lived and who had sinless blood was Jesus.
Those who repent of their sins and come to Jesus for mercy receive HIS legacy. Which is eternal life.
What a joy and privilege that is!
We must never forget that ‘life is in the blood.’
At some point in our lives, we are all given the freedom to choose whose legacy we receive.
Here’s the story of Adam and Eve from Genesis:
“Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: Has God said: You shall Not eat of every tree of the garden?
The woman said to the serpent: We may eat the fruit from the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said: You shall not eat it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. (Note: God did not say to Eve that they could not touch the fruit. Eve added that condition when she responded to Satan’s question ‘Has God Said.’)
The serpent said to the woman: You shall not surely die. God knows that in the day you eat it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food; that it was pleasant to the eyes and that is was to be desired to make her wise, she took the fruit and ate it. She gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it.
Here is a link to an excellent explanatory note on this passage that gives a fuller description of how Eve was deceived by Satan: How Temptation Works
God was honest. He for-warned both Adam and Eve of consequence of eating the fruit of the tree of life.
Instead of choosing to listen to and obey God, our first parents chose to listen to and give in to the temptation of Satan.
They both ate the forbidden fruit despite having been warned by God of the the consequences for so doing.
Satan had told a partial truth to Eve in that she (and Adam) did not die immediately after eating the fruit. However, at that point, death entered their body and remains in the body of every person born since then. Satan knows the full extent of God’s word. He was the highest arch angel in heaven before he sinned against God by saying ‘I will be like the most high God’. Satan also knows the power of partial truths. We must all be careful not to misquote or partially quote God’s word.
Is it not amazing that God so loved the world that He created that He came in the flesh to redeem (buy back) mankind from death and the wages of our sin?
Jesus, who was himself without sin, covered our sin with his sinless blood that he shed for us on the cross.
One day I made the choice to believe and receive God’s word into my heart, the very core of my being.
I was ashamed of my sin, I repented of my sin and I asked God to forgive my sin and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness.
Although I didn’t deserve to be forgiven, God was faithful and just and He forgave my sin and cleansed me from all unrighteousness.
That didn’t mean that I was, or am perfect. I am (and will remain so) a sinner as long as I walk this earth. I still need to daily humble myself before God (which is not easy for me as I am not a humble person by nature), repent of and confess my sin to the Lord.
God is faithful and just to forgive my sin and cleanse me of unrighteousness, not because of anything I can do, but because of what Jesus did for me when he paid the price for my sin by taking it upon himself and nailing it to the cross. That is not to say that there are no consequences of my sin. There are. In His gracious love, the Lord uses those consequences to teach me and to draw me closer to Him.
Here’s how I came to know, believe and receive Jesus into my heart:
One day my diatreme friend asked me if I wanted to go to church with him. The church he was attending at that time was the French Baptist Church on King Edward Avenue near the University of Ottawa.
I very cautiously accepted. I was being cautious because I was not about to let myself get converted or get ‘dipped in water’ by any Baptist preacher!
Through prayer, patience, teaching and the gentle, but firm guidance of a caring friend and a Godly Pastor, that is exactly what I did when I came to know and receive Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.
I had been baptized as a baby. However, as an adult that event meant nothing to me as I could not remember it. I appreciate vey much that it did mean a lot to my parents. I am thankful they dedicated me to the Lord as an infant even though I did not remember or understand the significance of that event or even the meaning it had for them.
However, as an adult, once I finally understood that Jesus, who was himself without sin, had paid the price for my sin, I openly confessed my sin, asked his forgiveness and invited him to come into my heart as my Lord and Saviour. Once I did, I was very eager follow Jesus example by being baptized by immersion. I thankfully did so and was baptized with a small group of other believers. What a joyful experience that was! We were all so blessed! To this day I am so thankful for that wonderful privilege and blessing!
My friend and a gentle, but firm pastor, guided me through my long journey from skepticism to understanding; from understanding to belief and from belief to faith. The day my body dies I will move from faith to eternity. What a joyful day that will be!
One day while visiting with the Pastor, at his invitation and leading, I answered Jesus’ gentle but persistent knock on the door of my heart. I acknowledged that I was indeed, a sinner. I humbly asked for forgiveness and invited Jesus to come in to my heart as my Lord and Saviour.
As he promised he would, Jesus came into my heart. Not only that, He sealed my heart with his Holy Spirit for the coming day of redemption and for all eternity.
That is how I was born again.
My quest to discover the ‘something’ that my friend had turned out to be a ‘someone.’
That someone is Jesus!
Being born again was, and ever will be, the most joyful experience of my life!
All these many years later I am still learning the implications of what all of this means! The process is called ‘sanctification.’ That process will never end as long as I walk this earth.
It will end when Jesus has put all enemies under his feet.
The last enemy is Death!
When the last unbeliever is saved, then comes the new heaven and the new earth, which believers will share with God in their midst.
When Adam and Eve sinned, God gave glimpses of this promise as He meted out judgment on sin and promised the Messiah (Genesis 3).
The prophet Isaiah declares that salvation is found in God alone and that He will certainly judge sin, and he also prophesies that there will be new heavens and a new earth:
“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered” (Isaiah 65:17). This sinful, depraved world is not God’s ultimate destiny for those who trust in Him, and we, like Paul, long for the time when God will “bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ” (Ephesians 1:10).
Amen! So let it be.
END NOTE
I was baptized by immersion with a group of friends at the French Baptist Church on King Edward Avenue in Lower Town, Ottawa in 1976. Rev. Denis Pape was our Pastor.
I’m the one on the far right. My diatreme friend is on the far left. All of us looked quite apprehensive. Pastor Dennis was the only one smiling confidently! You should have seen us afterwards. What a joyful celebration we had!
The much shorter follow up to my testimony to mid 2022 is here:
Thanks for taking time to read this long testimony. It covers a long journey.
I hope the Lord will bless you and touch your heart no matter where you are in this amazing journey we call life.