I feel as if God is leading me to tell you my testimony. And since this blog is new, I think it is a good way to sort of, get introduced. Now, I will be beginning when I was in 7th grade. (I am now going into 9th) I was homeschooled during this year, and it was for a specific reason that will become evident. I will begin by telling you of my first really big encounter with God Himself.
This time was a very hard time in my life. I was being lied to by the devil. He was telling me that I had no hope, that I had gone too far. That I was unforgivable. I believed him a little bit. I was afraid. Very afraid. I thought God had left me. Gone. Just like that. People may feel hopeless because they were rejected by a human, but try feeling hopeless because you thought you were rejected by God. It was very scary, and very painful. But, I didn't give up all hope. I still pleaded with God, not to leave me, and to forgive me. (At the time, I was having a difficult time believing and being assured that He did not leave me. God never left me during this time, I just thought that He did) Gradually, I came to know and believe that I still had a chance. But, I was still in very much pain. I didn't feel as if God was with me. I didn't feel that He loved me. I soon started to feel like I needed to convince God not to leave me. And I became obsessed with doing things right. I would freak out if I made a mistake, even if it was only a small one. It even got to the point that I thought I had a mental disorder. You could definitely say I needed reassurance. I had never really felt what God's love was before.
You see, I grew up in church. I accepted Christ when I was 3 years old. I remember it. I had heard my best friend's Dad talk about Jesus in my class at children's church. I heard him talk about what Jesus did. And I remember deciding "I want that. I want Jesus." So later in the week, I went with my Dad to get his haircut. I remember we were driving down the freeway, when, at three years old, I felt the Holy Spirit urging me to say something about Jesus to my Dad. And I did. Of course he was happy, and I accepted Jesus Christ at that young age. I always had this love for God in a commitment sort of way, but I had never really had a big emotional attachment to God. I knew my scripture, I knew my God. But, I didn't know how much He loved me. I didn't comprehend it at all. That is one of the reasons I was having such a hard time with myself.
As I gradually became to believe that God still loved me, I talked to Him a lot. One day, (I think it was a Monday) I got up the courage, and I told God, I said something like, "You know what Lord? I'm just not feeling it. I don't feel like I can go on any longer. Please reveal your love to me in a greater way. I want to know just how much you love me." I said that, and I trusted that He would go through with it.
Well, at that time youth group was on Wednesday nights. Let us say, that my life completely changed on that Wednesday. It was during praise and worship. And I am very glad that my youth pastor is willing to let the Spirit move, and to let God speak through him. I was standing there doing my best to worship God, but not being very successful at it. My youth pastor, who also leads worship, stopped singing and I still remember, he said something along the lines of, "There's some of you here, and there's something keeping you from really worshiping God. And the Holy Spirit's callin' you out. He's saying, 'COME BACK!'"
At that point, I don't really know what happened. I sit front row, and as soon as those two words left his mouth, something just leaped on the inside of me. Before I knew it, I was standing right in front of the stage. And all of a sudden, a wave, literally a wave of love just washed over me. Imagine as if you were sitting on the beach and a 50 foot wave just washed over you and swept you away. That is exactly what happened to me. It was so strong, I just fell to my knees. I couldn't stand up. I could barely sing or talk. I just started crying. [This happened over a year ago, and I'm still getting teary eyed writing it.] Bawling. I remember the song they were playing was called "With Everything". [I'm not sure who the original artist is] I must have spent at least 30 min on the ground just literally being washed by God's love. And during that 30 min or more, I remember God telling me three specific things.
"Everything you've ever done. It's all forgiven. It's forgotten. You're clean. Once and for all."
I was enjoying myself so much, when I realized that this is what we will be doing in heaven. Just worshiping God and basking in His presence. So, I said, "Lord, I can't wait we do this in eternity!"
And God said, "I can't wait either."
And there was another thing that He told me. When I remember this, I remember Jesus. I remember Him just bringing to my rememberence, bringing up in my heart something kinda like this. "Anastasia, imagine all of the stars in the universe. How they can't be counted. There are so many of them. What you are feeling right now, compared to my real love for you, is only like one star out of the whole, entire universe."
Ladies and Gentlemen, what I was feeling at that moment left me completely powerless. I could not stand up, I couldn't even stop crying if I wanted to! And God said that was only the equivalent of one star out of the whole universe! That was the love that Christ had in mind when He suffered for us on the cross. That is the love Paul talks about in Ephesians 3:18.
Ephesians 3:17-19 ESV so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith-- that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
That night, we didn't even get to a sermon. We spent the whole service just singing that song. It let me heal a lot. It gave me new life. After that night, I was on fire. I knew God! I knew exactly who He was! When it was all over, I felt so clean and light on the inside! I felt as if I had personally met God. Like He personally washed me... and He did. It was then I decided I wasn't going to make the same mistakes I did before. I completely gave myself up to God. But, I never told anybody about what happened. In fact, this is my first time. I couldn't tell anyone. Whenever I tried, I wasn't able to get past the first sentence without going into tears. It's only over a year [probably about a year and a half] later that I can write about it, and even now I get teary eyed.
