My Testimony

This is the testimony I wrote for the Worship and Intercessory school I want to go to next year.

The purpose of me posting this is because I hope that in reading it, you guys (and girls) might be encouraged, gain a little hope or faith, or that God would be able to speak to you through what he has done for me, and to bring glory to God for how he does not stop his relentless pursuit of our hearts until he has every part of us immersed in himself.
This is part of why I am so thankful to him.
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I grew up in a Christian home and my parents are both pastors, so my testimony is not one like Saul being knocked off of his horse by the power of God and hearing his voice ask me why I am living the way I am. My testimony is a testimony of pursuit, of grace, of confirmation, restoration, promise, and conviction.

God has been involved in and fighting for my life ever since it started. I am not supposed to be alive today, but I am because of God’s grace. I was born five weeks premature, and immediately there were complications that threatened my life. I had massive internal bleeding in my brain and the doctors did not think I had any chance to live. I was taken away from my parents straight away, and put in intensive care for the next ten days. My parents’ church was notified and began praying and interceding for my life before the Father, and Father heard their prayers and acted. The next day my parents were told that I had a chance of living, but that if I did I would be a complete vegetable.

The church kept on praying for me throughout this whole time, and day-by-day for the next ten days, my condition improved. From near death, to a definite vegetable, to mentally retarded, all the way to the point where the doctors sent me home saying that I will live but develop slower than the rest of the children my age.
They were wrong again; God completely healed me.

I grew up in the church being taught about Jesus and having a relationship with God. As the pastor’s son I did my best to live up to the expectations that often seem to come along with that position. However, my life as I was living it was the very essence of a lukewarm love for, and relationship with Christ.
My personal times with God were nonexistent. I knew of my God, but I didn’t actually know him. I knew all the answers to the Bible questions and was looked at as a role model for the rest of the youth around me, but the position of my heart before my Father did not reflect what I tried to display.

I ended up falling deeply into addictions with pornography, which I struggled with for a long time. My heart was rotting inside as I was attempting to keep up a good image. I fell deeper until I thought there was no escape for my addictions. No matter how hard I tried, I would always fall time and time again. I began hearing the voice of Satan in my life saying that I would never live up to being a man of God, that I wasn’t worthy, and that I would never be free so therefore I should stop trying. I believed him. A great spirit of self-condemnation came over me and controlled my thoughts for many years. I started believing that it was God telling me these things, and as a result I became incredibly depressed and fell away from the Lord.

I went day to day knowing that God was the person I needed, but feeling that he was disappointed in me. I heard all these things from other people about how God is merciful, loving, full of grace and compassion, and that he is a helper who loves me and keeps no record of my wrongs; yet I had built up an image of God being a God who would not meet, encounter, or basically have anything to do with me unless I first fixed 1, 2, and 3.
I knew who my God was supposed to be, he just wasn’t.

God never let me go, though. Even when I was living my life not thinking about him and just going through the Christian motions, he was moving in my life. Time after time, God set me up and kept beckoning me towards him. God took me through the wilderness where I had to rely on God more than I had ever done before. I had to rely on him for the life of my parents, for my house, my ability to stay in school, even for food. God forced me to rely on him and to begin to ask him for things, and he spoke to me. God presented me with situations just so that he could show how he was faithful. I was getting a glimpse of the God I’ve heard about. When my life was out of control I cried out to the Lord and asked him to take care of me, and he did. God showed me that he was not the accuser in my mind, and that I had put boxes around who he was. I asked him to break them down at any cost, and I felt like I heard him ask, “Are you sure?” As soon as I replied yes, God started breaking down my walls.

God showed me who he was by cancelling every wrong thought I had about him one at a time. When I would think that he was disappointed in me, he would send someone with a prophetic word or a bible verse saying how he is pleased in me. That he is happy with me. That he delights in me every day.

When I asked him to speak to me something new, he took that invitation and ran with it: I did not trust myself with hearing God any more, because of how I would always get his voice confused with the accuser’s voice and my own. When I asked God to take that away and speak to me again, he sent people to pray over me for prophecy and the ability to discern voices in my head. Suddenly I could hear the Father’s voice and feel his heart like I never could before! It was refreshment like I had never breathed before in my whole entire life. When I asked him for the gift of tongues out of the desire to grow closer to him, he released my self-conscious voice to speak and sing in the spirit. I asked him to use me, and situations started arising left and right with opportunities to share the love of God, pray with, or prophecy over people.

One thing at a time, God started revealing to me his real personality. As I fell more in love with God, God demanded more of me. He floored me, saying that he desires to have ALL of me, every day, all the time. I did not know how that was possible, because for the first time I understood what that meant. As I asked him for direction, God introduced me to the Forerunner and Nazarite calling, along with the Numbers 6 passage. God moved me from a place of in sin, with a lukewarm passion at best, not even knowing the God I was worshiping, and feeling like God could never use me, to a place of being enthralled and in love with a God that I have a personal relationship with. A God who loves me and has caused me to fall over my head in love with him. One who is demanding my whole life and heart. All my affection.

I have learned that I live under the Romans 7 and 8 doctrine; that I am a sinner, but I am a sinner living under God's grace, instead of the law. My earthly life and eternal life have both been literally saved by the Father's love for me, and now I live in a spirit of thankfulness to him for it. I am a prodigal son who now lives with a single eye to glorify his redeemer, and striving to introduce people to him.

God bless,
~Jeshua David Frederick