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sweet-jasmine-feathers · 8 months ago

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my testimony 🌊☆⋆｡🪼 (of how i returned to God and truly came to know Jesus for the first time after being a distant believer turned atheist) . . 𓆉︎ ࿔*

Romans 8:38-39 — For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

like many, not all, Christians, i was raised in an american Christian church, knowing who Jesus was my whole life.

from the youngest i can remember, i was attending some sort of church, usually with my nana on my dad's side and then for a bit, with my parents at a different church in town. i attended VBS most summers, went to sports camp at a different Christian church, got to a point where i served the coffee station in my nana's non-denominational church, went to 3 services a week with my other grandma, and as a child, i genuinely loved praying and had a deep understanding of the gravity of what Jesus did for us; i remember as a child feeling genuine sadness thinking of how Jesus died for our sins while being innocent. i loved God.

yet still, once i got to around 6th & 7th grade, i could no longer find myself believing in God. i wanted to believe in something; i attended many sweat lodges with my kaka (grandpa), called myself an "omnist" at one point (someone who believed all religions had an equal possibility of being correct and therefore all religions deserved equal respect). but, very quickly, i started identifying myself as an atheist.

there were many reasons for this; when i was a child, my dad went to prison. i saw drugs all around me, both my dad and my aunt being addicted, as well as other distant family members who i didn't meet, to the point that my dad went to prison for 8ish years and i wasn't allowed to see my aunt anymore for several months. because of my dad's addiction, my mom worked hard, multiple jobs, and i was usually with my dad, and as a young child, felt responsible for my two younger siblings at the time. whether i was with my aunt or dad, i felt responsible for keeping my younger cousin and my two younger siblings at that time safe. there was an unnecessary pressure on me, now that i think back i had a lot go anxiety even as a child, and i know these things added up, because by the time i was 8-9 years old (when my dad went away), i became severely depressed. the first time i physically self-harmed was in 3rd or 4th grade, and i had deep suicidal ideations. i was exposed to things as a child that i shouldn't have been (it's hard to comment on this, because i know i had weird behavior and severe guilt as a young child that was definitely influenced by trauma, except i believe some things happened to me that i repressed because i can't remember). i developed a p*rn & m*sterb*tion addiction still in 3rd or 4th grade, and long before that, sexualised myself as a child. leading up to 6th or 7th grade, my addictions got worse, i was still suicidal and depressed, taking very poor care of myself, and i could no longer feel that there was any God watching over me. so, i became an atheist; i then despised being at church with my nana, i didn't want to stand during the worship music even though, before, i would sing with my whole chest, and i just remember wanting to cry and run out one time because i absolutely did not want to be there and did not want to be standing. one morning, i stayed home from church and my nana got upset with me and told me i could not come to her house unless i came to church with her, and when i told my mom i no longer believed in God, she said i had no feelings or empathy. i say all of this, not because it's easy or to be glorified or because i want my family members to feel any guilt over things they said in 2018; i have fully and completely forgiven both my mom and nana, and my relationship with both of them has drastically improved as well as my relationship with God because of their own faith. however, these things are important to be raw about. the hurt i was already experiencing being added onto made me a stronger atheist, and i know that many people feel the same thing or have been through the same thing, and i want to offer them empathy and hope in Jesus. i don't glorify my trauma or sins, i acknowledge them and how severe they were, but i use this as a testimony to glorify GOD and how far HE has brought me and how much HE has healed me, forgiven me, and saved me from.

from the time i was in 5th grade, i identified as bisexual & pansexual, and from 9th grade to the beginning of my junior year, i identified as non-binary, trans, and every queer label under the sun. i was bisexual, i was lesbian, i was a gay man, i was aromantic, i was hypersexual, i was every "mogai" label that i came across on the internet, i was radically queer and this journey as well influenced my view and idea of God. i was a radical queer inclusionist, i was a radfem/terf, i was pro-choice, i used God's Name in vain and viewed myself worthy to be referred to as a "god," i believed in astrology signs and "vibrations," and the "divine feminine," i talked badly about Christianity while calling myself a Christian, all of these things.

and while some of these sins are at different points in this timeline, before or after i became a Christian, all of this throughout my walk added up to who i am, how i view God and what my relationship with God is like here and now, today.

in the summer of 2019, i moved to california from kentucky with my family after being raised in ky my whole life. i was 13, i was battling extreme intrusive thoughts which caused, yet again, more anxiety and suicidal ideation, and i still did not believe in God.

my family & i lived in hotels for the first month or so that we got out here, where i isolated myself as much as possible, battled my own thoughts, and spent way too much time in my head.

when we finally found and moved into a house, where we still live today, my mom, siblings, & i found a church that is a 5 minute walk from our house. i started going with my family, asked for a Bible i believe the first Christmas we had here, and back then, shortly before and after covid first hit, i took a lot of walks. i would pray. i would ask God for silly signs to prove Himself real to me. i got to this point, and this was now in my 8th grade year (where i dropped out of school due to severe anxiety and developed a horrible reversed sleep schedule...whole other story), where i started believing in God again, but now i felt fear because i believed God was real, but i couldn't really believe. and if i did, i didn't want to follow Him, which made me feel even more guilt; i didn't and still don't know why i felt this way.

i do know, that my relationship with my family was getting worse & more toxic, there was still deep sexual sin in my life, and i was still struggling mentally. i was becoming a worse person to myself, to my family, and to all other people around me. i felt isolated, i felt unreal, i felt anxious, and i felt guilt.

i got a point where i was so delusional and mentally detached that i thought i wasn't even human.

i remember that when things kind of built up, and fights with my mom got worse, and i said or did something i know i shouldn't have, i would just pray; crying & sobbing for hours on end, praying, asking God for forgiveness and help. i think the first time i really repented in prayer was during these times. i knew, and i told God this, that there was something within me that was causing these attitudes, behaviors, and sins, and that i couldn't do it on my own. i wanted so desperately to just act different, be different, be better as a person, and i told God that i just did not know why i couldn't just change myself, knowing that everything in my life was wrong. i just couldn't.

one of the last times i prayed one of these long, desperate prayers, i remember distinctly telling God that i felt like i was too far gone for Him to save me or help me. i don't know if this was a saturday night or a few days before the next Sunday, but i know that the next time there was church, "something" (which i now know was the Holy Spirit), compelled me to go. this was still during covid, church was in different area of the building than the main services used to be, everyone was 6 ft. apart with masks, it was bizarre. but the message that day that stuck with me was "nobody is too far gone for God's love."

that was the exact thing i prayed. and all this time i was asking God for a sign, He spoke to me in the most direct, beautiful way.

as a kid, even with my extreme love for Jesus, i always felt that in order to pray "that prayer," or to even be baptised, i had to get my life together. i had to be kinder, be a better sister and daughter, stop sinning, at least for long enough that i could finally be worthy enough to approach Jesus and tell Him i wanted Him as my Savior.

but for the first time, that lie was undone. i left that service early because i didn't want anyone to see me crying, i cried all the way home trying to hold back the tears, and as soon as i got to my room, i fell down with my head bowed on my Bible and i repented; i admitted everything i had done that had been weighing me down for years, and i finally said the words "Jesus, i accept you as my Lord and Savior."

i finally admitted Who Jesus was, that i believed what He did for me, that i needed God's forgiveness, and that i wanted God's guidance for my life.

now, this was january of 2021 (it's actually funny because for a long time, i thought i was saved shortly after my 15th birthday, but it was actually a month-ish before that birthday, so i literally got my salvation date wrong LOL).

i have to admit, that after praying that prayer, although i felt the peace and presence of the Lord in a way i never had before, i started going to church but i didn't start living for God for a very long time. and even with going to my church, i eventually stopped because my stepdad and i got into a fight where he basically said "why are you even going to church if you're gay?" and while that didn't stop my belief in God, i felt ashamed to pass my stepdad walking out the door on Sunday mornings.

a lot of sin in my life actually got worse after i came to Christ; i was still gay and trans, still sexually sinning with my addictions, still not being the best family member, still being a very toxic person, and still using the Lord's Name in vain and using God's Name in fights to defend things that aren't even biblical.

it wasn't until august of 2022, the beginning of my junior year, that i made the step to start going to church again, to get baptised, which i had put off for so long, and to start taking God seriously. i started going through the verse of the day in the youversion Bible app every morning, i started praying every day and more consistently throughout my day, i started trying to learn more about who God actually is, and i started serving in the kids' ministry at my church. eventually i started attending and then serving in the highschool ministry, i started serving in the choir and greeting team, and for the first time, i really sat down and examined my sins & behaviors; even after beginning to take Jesus seriously, many sins, even sinful thoughts as well as behaviors, continued, and it took a lot of help from the Holy Spirit, a lot of self-control, a lot of mindset & heart attitude change, and a lot of repentance, to get to a point where i knew exactly how God wanted me to live and started putting it into practice.

in the very beginning of building my relationship with God, i felt peace and joy like never before, and thought "why on earth did i never follow Jesus before?" but as with every believer, the enemy started attacking and i had, and still do currently, have to navigate through spiritual attacks; i have slipped and sinned and messed up seemingly "way too far" into my Christian walk, knowingly, knowing what is sin and what isn't. it took me absolutely forever to finally and honestly surrender my false identity of homosexuality & gender identity over to God (and His love, comfort, and patience was so present with me through that long process), it took forever to unlearn things i had been taught by the world or that i had somehow believed (and that unlearning process is still continuing sometimes as i read the Word of God and get closer to Him), it took forever to finally manage my thoughts and temptations, and even recently those thoughts & temptations have caused me to either slip or fall into anxiety.

my testimony is still being written every day, but all of this is a testament of God's EXTREME goodness, faithfulness, and grace.

i have been under severe spiritual attack for the entirety of 2024. there are days when my thoughts seem beyond control, where my ocd presides over genuine interaction with God, where i don't feel God's presence almost at all. i have fallen into a deep depression, anxiety, ocd, and a lot of my passion to live out my life as it is right now has diminished, and that's hard.

but God has been faithfully speaking to me through His Word, through my family, through my Christian friends and mentors. He has been teaching me how to relearn prayer and interaction with Him, His presence and protection have brought peace and encouragement like never before, even when i'm in a dark season where it seems like i should be feeling everything but peace or encouragement.

but God is building me up and preparing me for whatever seasons are going to come next, and all of this is to say, God is real.

God is patient, God's grace never runs out; the message that led me to salvation was "nobody is too far gone for God's love," no matter what you have said or done, how broken you are, Jesus is victorious over every single part of the battle. that message is still true.

God loves you, God is near to you, God's grace & patience are extended to you and me time and time again, and God has a plan for you. He created you to know Him and He will meet you right where you are.

one of my favorite verses (and chapters, really), is the one quoted at the very top of this post, but i will reiterate it time & time again for as long as i live . . .

I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

🫧 ⋆｡˚꩜ : creds . .

dividers: roseraris

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