Ian's Testimony

So, I grew up in a Christian household and basically that means that while I was growing up, my faith in Christ was entirely dependent on what my parents were doing with their faith. That being said, I always thought my testimony wasn’t worth being told, I was never addicted to drugs or anything, I always had some source of scripture and truth. I knew the scriptures, I knew what they said and what they meant and how to study them. This is good and all but my faith was not my own, I did not have a relationship with Jesus.

When I was 16 I went on a church beach retreat over the summer that changed everything. I was this scrawny kid who thought he was a good enough Christian, I was also bullied a lot during this time. So the night we arrived at the beach hotel, me and 2 other guys sat down with the youth pastor to talk about what we struggled with, I told everyone “honestly, I don’t know what I struggle with”, the youth pastor looks at me and says “Ian, I’m gonna be honest man, you struggle with wanting people’s approval”. After he said that I thought to myself “that makes sense, it’s kind of why I keep trying to prove myself to people who don’t care about me when I’m already approved of by my creator, that’s cool”. And after that I didn’t think much of it until the next morning.

The very next morning at 8am, all the students gathered for the first session of the day. The speaker walked up on stage, turns to all of us and says “Alright y’all, this morning I want to talk to all of you about approval”. The second he said that, I broke down because I knew that the message was literally meant for me. That’s when my faith in Jesus really became my own because I realized in that moment how intentional God is with each of us individually, and how intricately he plans for each one of us to experience him. It might sound small, but to me that revelation changed everything. So yea, that’s how me and my homie Jesus really became friends