I was fortunate to grow up in a home with Christian values and precepts that impacted my life from a young age. Growing up for the most part in a single parent home ensured I had the additional love of my other relatives including my mother. My mother had a very demanding job so I had to be with my two aunts and my grandmother for most of the week.

“I Thought I Was Like Them”….The Church Delusion

It was amazing to me the strength of these women despite all that was against them, that there was always an assurance, a peace that enabled them with somewhat superhuman strength to tackle things other people couldn’t handle. I admired this. I thought I was like them: I went to church with them, I sat through the very sermons they did, but it didn’t do for me what it was doing for them. One evening, at the age of 10, everything that was said to me before just kept coming back to me. God was convicting me that despite what I thought, I really did not have it all together, that I needed to invite Him into my life, turn from my sins (the attitudes and actions that conflict with God’s standard) and allow Him to rule in my life. So I did.

The evidence of God operating in my life was instantaneous; I had that unshakeable confidence that when I die I will go to live with Jesus Christ in heaven. At school I would ‘curse like a sailor’, but now for me to utter a curse word would be unbearable. Above all, I felt that I was truly in line with what God really desired for my life. So much so that after doing poorly in my Common Entrance Exams, I prayed to God and told Him that ‘I honestly tried, the exam was not that good for me, please help me.’ When the results came out I was in awe because I knew it could only have been God who helped me to pass for the choice of my four schools.

After I saw God’s work in my Common Entrance Exams, it cemented my faith in Him. However the peer pressure of an all male school found me going against his what I knew God wants for Christians, such that I got suspended for disrespecting my principal. That, among other things, had me really questioning my Christianity. Am I really in God’s will ?(doing what He desires?). This among other things clouded my spiritual growth for some years even after I had received water baptism.

It was not until at my church’s summer camp in 2000 that I had a special encounter with Jesus. God (the Holy Spirit) actaully came inside me to live and showed me His love. God’s love was so great, He went up on a Cross and died for my sins so that if I accept it I die with Him, and as He rose on the third day I rise with Him in new life without the stain of sin on it. His love just blew me away and I felt compelled just to life for His will, to serve Him, to love and to worship Him in my life.

I wished I could have just live the rest of my life at that camp but God still wanted to do more with me. I was now active at my youth group serving God but for me when I heard testimonies like this very one you are reading it always seemed that God brought people out of a life of sin into a life of light. I felt I needed to not just go to parties but engage in lewd dancing, probably drink a lot but not go have sex and I can still live an abundant life: wherever there was sin, God could forgiven me. I am sad to say four times I have done this and it has caused such a rift my relationship with God every time. It was not until the last time that I really decided that I cannot live my life this way. Just because God’s grace abounds should sin even more abound? No! My relationship with Jesus is not something I should intentionally hurt but something one should develop and try to improve.

God has given my life vision, purpose, hope, peace, love, joy, strength, wisdom and so much other things that I could say that it would not be redundant for me to say God has given my life, life. I would encourage anyone, that despite your circumstances and where you are with Him right now, God is able to meet you where you are at. We should never be satisfied with or current place with God, whether we think we know him intently or He is as far from us as one can think He is, He is ready and able to come in and start operating in our lives. The onus is on us just to invite him in.