My Christian Testimony
I come to you a humble sheep in the flock of our God and his son Jesus Christ. As your brother in Christ I come to share this witness of God’s glory and grace.
In Psalm 100 it reads
1 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
2 Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
I am a witness to how good our Lord is. He is my creator, our creator and I thank him for all he has done. God has given me his grace through his son Jesus who died for us all on the cross.
Growing up in the church I recognized how important our faith is. Through the generations of people that have come before me I know his love does endure forever.
It was my family that carried me to Signal Mountain Baptist church as a young person and it was there that I was baptized and became a new person in Christ. As a youth I learned how to run sound and be a audio visual wiz like my father and grandfather and through that training I do it today in our church. It was there I learned what it is to be a dreamer and a do’er for Christ, that all things are possible if we have a vision to do God’s work in His church.
God blessed me with great parents Gary and Shelia, my sister Shannon, grandparents Leon and Polly Webb and from a far my great grandmother Louise Anthony instilled in me the importance of a walk with Jesus and to be in His church. Family has always been important to me and its an example of how we the church should be together.
My experience in college taught me the importance of Christian learning and service. As a student at Hiwassee College I was blessed to be in a place where Christ was in everything the college did. There I became involved in Christian organization and even did the public address announcing for the Tiger basketball team. My time there also opened my eyes to the fact that there are many in this world who don’t know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
After graduating from college I found myself without a strong need for Church. Like most folks I too stayed home on Sundays. No Christian is perfect if we were we wouldn’t need Christ. I have had my ups and downs. As a younger adult I strayed from the church. I didn’t want to go, I ran around with friends I met on the Internet. However I can say God was with me even though I was not with him regularly.
Then it was 7 years ago when one of those friends I met on the Internet and I went to the singles program at First-Centenary and my life changed forever. I met Laura Ledbetter who was a member of the church there. God has a way of straightening out a guy by introducing a great woman into his life. She inspired me to get back into the church. Being in church with her is where God wanted to me to be. His faithfulness continued to change me. She helped bring this prodigal sheep back into the heaven’s pasture.
We married after a 10 month whirlwind courtship. Things were going good, I had moved in with her. In July of 1999 not quite 4 months after getting married we were burned out of our apartment. God was faithful by his helping us get back on our feet and helped us in making a comeback through our respective church families.
God is faithful but as you know He always has a plan. I was let go from a customer service job at Convergys. God was telling us to head west on I-24 to Murfreesboro, well Laura took some convincing and eventually we both came to agreement that it would be OK to leave our families and church here in Chattanooga to live our early married years in middle Tennessee. I had gone to MTSU and graduated from there with my bachelors degree and had thoughts of going back to school. I went to work at the newspaper there selling classified ads and the Lord provided a church Trinity United Methodist, where we could serve and grow in him. As a family we grew together and served the Lord in our jobs and in our church. We also experienced the wonder of Christ through The Walk to Emmaus put things into a spiritual perspective that for me that God’s mercy and grace sustains and changes you. We are called to be in communion with Christ.
Then in 2003 God started to work again. My mother had an operation to remove her gall bladder and my father had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma while we were home for Christmas holiday. My father’s cancer brought our family closer together and provided a reunion with my Cousin Steve and Uncle Dean who we hadn’t seen in years.
I was becoming increasingly unhappy at work and had thoughts of looking elsewhere. My dream job was to work at Hiwassee as an alumni affairs director if such a job would come open. But as we know God is always in control and he did have another plan for our lives. My great-grandmother passed away in January of 2004 and I was laid off from the job at the newspaper. God was revealing his plan for us. At that time it would have been easy to question God like Job during his trials but I chose to praise Him.
The thoughts of returning home were on our minds. Being closer to family weighed on our hearts. We are his sheep and he was calling us back to our earthly home pasture. When its time to move God opens tons of doors. We saw the miracle of a new job for me at Olan Mills Church Directories, Laura was able to transfer to the KinderCare Learning center here and we secured a place to live and our Christitan family in Murfreesboro provided us with resources to help in our move. Being close to home meant taking a step of faith we knew meant saying see you later to our life there. But a life in Christ is always a Great Adventure to quote Steven Curtis Chapman.
After a time of rest and sabbatical we felt the need to be back in a local congregation. We wrestled with this decision for a time and eventually we felt God’s gentle nudge through the twin tornadoes known as Steve and Sherry Parker to come and be in Christian fellowship and service with you all here at White Oak UMC today. I thank you for accepting Laura and I into this wonderful church family and giving us a place to serve and grow.
This is my Christian story, my song, I am praising my Savior all the day long. I have seen his miracles, his wonders, his love, his grace in action. Through the hands and heart of my family and those who I have worshiped with in my life I have seen the body of Christ here on Earth. Church family God’s love is the most real thing in the universe and He is still working in me and the lives of us all. God’s great pasture is open for everyone through His Son Jesus Christ. It is his love that endures forever, unchanging never wavering. He has been at work from the beginning and in every generation.
He has saved and is saving sinners like me through his love and grace. In 2nd Peter 1:2 it says Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. I know what God through His son has done in my life and I promise to be His disciple for the rest of my life.
In Psalms 40:9-11 it calls for us to proclaim his greatness in the great assembly and I can tell you his righteousness, faithfulness, and salvation are a true gift to us all for the taking. Church family I commit my life to telling the story of Jesus here in this parish and in our community.
And in closing from 2 Corinthians 13:14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit I celebrate with you our salvation, our risen Savior, our awesome God!