Living in the Joy of Christ

Today our testimony is courtesy of Mike Daly, Mike is a brother-in-law of a friend and he is a great encourager to me and he really has a heart for Jesus.

Testimony

I was raised in a Christian Home, we went to church on Sunday, and I was always aware of God in our lives. I was baptized as a baby and confirmed in the Catholic faith when I was in Grade 9. Ever since I can remember I have always had, what I considered, a relationship with God. I remember always praying and talking to God and believing in everything about him. I went throughout my teenage years pretty much doing whatever I wanted. I knew what was right and what was wrong. But all in all I was, by my estimation and by most others, a “good” person.

I never really drank until my graduation night, I never dated, I went to church and even played guitar and sang at church. After high school I went straight into working full time. I had fun, my friends were mostly still in town and we hung out all the time. One of my best friends lived with me and we liked to throw parties. We had our own fridge in our basement full of booze and life was fun. I got a girlfriend for the first time and everything was new and exciting. God was still a part of my life, but He was in the background.

I worked hard and played hard. Okay I might have played a little harder than I worked. Life was all about enjoyment. I did what felt good and even though a lot of it, I knew that God was not happy with, my desire for pleasure and enjoyment and making sure others had fun around me too, overshadowed that still small voice in my head. Two years after I graduated from high school I married Kellie. Shortly after that we had Emily. We were busy with life again. I still liked to have fun, we still hung out with our friends but that area slowed down a little.

The drinking slowed down but didn’t stop by any means. Eventually, because we were the first to marry and have kids of our friends, the hanging out and going out with friends pretty much stopped. Kellie and I had a family and we were concentrating on that. I was growing up. Since the time we married we had gone to church regularly. It is really important to go to a bible believing/preaching church. We started going a small group Bible study. Most of my friends that I had when I was younger were “Christian” just like me but this group was different.

Image by Brandon Peters

These people were real Christians who tried to do God’s will in every part of their Lives. It was encouraging and inspiring. I got involved in organizations on the Internet and was really trying to study more of God’s word instead of just reading it. I don’t remember the exact date or even the year anymore but while looking at and exploring other ministries I came upon some tough questions and answers that I had never really thought about before. I had to do some self-examination. As I said I always thought of myself as a “good” person, even then after all the mistakes I had made. But now I realized that it was not by my standard but by God’s that determined my fate.

I realized (admitted) that I had lied before just like most people, I definitely looked with lust (which Jesus says is Adultery), I had broken most if not all of the 10 commandments. I used to think that these were just things in my past but I now realize that if I had even only told One lie (of course, I have told a lot more) I was a liar, if I had taken One thing that didn’t belong to me I was a thief. The Bible says that NO liar will enter the Kingdom of God. The same with thieves, fornicators etc. I came to the realization that if I died right then God would have no choice but to send me to Hell! Because God is so Righteous and Just He could not let me enter into Heaven to be with Him. I did not want that to happen.

Then like a fog in my head had cleared, all the things that I had learned/heard about God and Jesus made sense to me and was now personal. Jesus Christ took the penalty for my sins and died on the cross for me. For me personally, no longer was it just something that was said at church. It wasn’t All have sinned, it was I have sinned. I was responsible for the sin in my life and I could do nothing on my own to make that right. I had to fall at the feet of Christ and confess that I personally have sinned. I was in desperate need of a Savior and I could do nothing on my own to fix this broken relationship with God the Father.

Without Jesus I had condemned myself to eternity in hell. So I prayed. I admitted to God (and myself) that I was not a “good” person, I was terrible and rightly deserved to go to Hell. I knew then that there was nothing that I could do to pay for those sins, nothing I could do to erase the past. I accepted that Jesus paid my debt when He died on the cross for me and asked Him to be in charge of my life from that day forward. I repented, that is turned away from the way I was living, and put my trust and life in Jesus’ hands.

Since that time I have had my ups and downs. I will go through times when I am reading my Bible all the time and really studying, having a really thoughtful prayer life. But then I will still have times when I am not close to God at all. Sure I still go to church all the time but I only read the Bible a little if at all, I barely pray except for maybe a quick “thank you” prayer while I am falling asleep. It is still a struggle between living for myself and living for God. By myself I am still a terrible person and it is only through accepting Jesus Christ’s free gift of Salvation that I am seen as right before God.

Last August was probably the hardest month of my life. A lot of thinking was done on my part, a lot of emotions came out to do with the past and the future. After not drinking a drop of alcohol in over six years I was strongly tempted for over a week to start drinking again. I was praying a lot, trying to come to grips with what I was feeling. God let me struggle through for the sake of resolving some of those issues, but He also kept me protected from myself. Without my faith and relationship with Him I don’t know how I would have handled this time.

Now I am reading my Bible again and praying for myself and those that I care about. I am trying to give all my worries to Him and let Him control my life once again. He has shown me that I need to concentrate on relationships and be more concerned with others than I am with myself.

I encourage you to search your own heart and determine if you are living in God’s will. It is good for all of us to search ourselves to determine if we have truly taken that step of faith and are truly a follower of Christ. I went through most of my life thinking I was but then discovered that I had only fooled myself.

“But let all those rejoice who put their trust in You; Let them ever shout for joy, because You defend them; Let those also who love Your name Be joyful in You. For You, O LORD, will bless the righteous; With favor You will surround him as with a shield.” -Psalm 5:11-12