Can hardly blame you for starting a new testimony thread ;) (there are actually a few more older threads).
My Testimony
Growing up was like something out of a story book. I’ll get to times of suffering, but for the most part life was good. I was raised on a ranch with a wonderful, loving mother and father, a sister and two brothers, and friends. Although we had lots of chores and worked really hard compared to other kids, it was a good, healthy, and memorable time. After high school, as the nursery rhyme goes: “first came love, then came marriage, and kids in the baby carriage.” I worked a couple of tough jobs for about a decade and then went into business for myself. It was all very much the typical American dream.
Then, my business got broken into—three consecutive times!
The financial hardship caused the breakup of my marriage. I was separated from my children. Then, after dividing everything into two unequal halves in divorce, my half went down like a sinking ship. I ended up filing for bankruptcy, and lost it all.
Then came insult to injury. I had suffered no physically harm, it’s just that I was at the top of my game while all this was happening. I had even invented a few things. At a new job after the bankruptcy, I even won awards for things that had not been attempted before in the company's entire 30-year history. That year I increased sales in my territory from 600,000 to a $1,000,000, and received the president of the company’s top annual sales award. And yet, by a series of unfortunate events—that rug too was pulled out from under me. My best was good—very good, but it didn't seem to matter.
One night, after a long downward spiral, at the end of myself, I decided to have a little talk with God—that is, if there was a God. At the time, I wasn't sure. But I started talking to him anyway, and said, "This is the place where a person takes their own life—but I'm not going to do it! I'm not playing this game anymore! If you want my life God—take it, you can have it! Otherwise, I need some answers. I need to know what life is all about, and what my part in it is. If it all just ends in failure upon failure--what's it all for? What’s the use? Otherwise, I’ve only got one thing left that hasn’t failed me: I'm going to go live in the woods...."
To my complete and utter surprise—He answered!
After having every other door slammed in my face, I finally knocked on the right door!
Lying there in bed, I instantly found myself in the air above the very spot (in the woods) where I had threatened to go, apparently, in the spirit. This sort of religious experience is not so easily defined. But for the sake of argument, let’s just say, the "me" that is usually at home in my body—had left the building!
Next, I found myself with my back up against a huge frozen wall covered with ice. Before me were masses of people as far as I could see, wave after wave, like looking out over the ocean, and they began to stir. In desperation I turned and began beating on the wall of ice with my fists. Chunks of ice came falling down and an enormous door opened up. Through the door I saw a narrow stairway going up into the clouds. At the top--was my father. Now, that may sound like the result of some kind of father issue, but we had no issues. Nothing like that.
Next, I found myself through the door on the narrow stairway, and in through the doorway came babies--infants, wrapped in little white blankets. I reached out and took the first one and passed it up the stairway to my father’s open arms. I turned back and took another and did the same, again, and again, and again.
Sometime thereafter, I suddenly found myself back in the physical, back in my body. Startled, I shot straight up, not stopping until I was seated at the foot of my bed. Eventually I laid back down in awe and bewilderment and went to sleep.
The next morning I awoke refreshed, full of peace and joy. I couldn't stop thinking about my experience, and kept repeating it over and over again in my mind:
"A door was opened to me, and I helped deliver children to my father in the sky..."
"A door was opened to me, and I helped deliver children to my father in the sky!"
What could it all mean?
Suddenly, everything in my life changed. I had to change. I was changed...
My job had already changed, my relationship ended, and I moved.
I then went to live with my younger brother and his family temporarily and made plans for a career change. In the spare room where they put me up, I found a bible. I was drawn to it. I started reading and didn't stop. I went through it like a novel, cover to cover. As I did, I came to realize that whoever was behind this book--was also behind my experience. The author of the bible and the One who answered me, were one and the same. My experience confirmed the bible to be true, and the bible confirmed my experience to be from God. Although there were many points of confirmation, when I got to the part in the gospels about "our Father in heaven", I knew that just as I had seen in my experience—this was my father in the sky!
Since then I have heard many things said about the bible. But, what I found the bible to be after my own very real experience, is a written record of witnesses not unlike myself down through all of history, who have come to know there is a God. There is a God—that is my testimony.
And that...was just the beginning.
