My story...

by **[ISI]MrVH** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 4:42 pm

So I thought I would post my testimony. I’ve read through a lot of testimonies on the site here and they are amazing. Mine isn’t full of amazing miracles and incredibly harsh circumstances, like a lot here, but I thought I would share it nonetheless. It’s simplistic, but it’s where the Lord has taken me. So I guess it will be more of a history of MrVH than a testimony, but I thought I’d tell some of it (edit: wow, its long, sorry).

I was saved from a life of drugs, alcohol, gangs, poverty, etc… not because I was in them, but because God graciously saved me from going through anything like that. I was born and raised in a stable Christian home. I was saved very early in life, around age 5 or 6. I remember doing it after a Sunday School class. I was baptized when I was 9. There’s one (well more than one, but I’ll share this one) moment around 7 or 8 years old that really impacted me. It was something my mother and father did that taught me the importance of faith in my life, and more particularily, faith in God.

I had had an aunt who, with her kids, were “brainwashed/kidnapped/gone willingly” into a Moonie commune. I remember one Sunday night our mom and dad had got our family together and we prayed that He would release her from this cult somehow and that she would come to our home that night (they were about 2 hrs drive away). We were leaving for Sunday night church that night but my mom and dad (living out their faith in front of us) left a note on the door telling my aunt to just come in, have a snack, and that we’d be home soon. That spoke to me in such a huge way. The faith that they had that the Lord would hear their prayer. I’m not sure my parents even know to this day how much that example of faith impacted me.

Anyways, you’re probably expecting the story to continue on “and we come home and there she was!”. It won’t, because she wasn’t. But do you understand? It didn’t matter that she wasn’t there. The lesson I learned was not that “God always answers yes”, it was that it is MY responsibility to have the FAITH. He answered “No” that night, but He used that example to teach a little guy something supremely important. Am I going to live what I believe or am I just going to pretend I do.

So anyways, we moved away from Grande Prairie, Alberta to a little town in Saskatchewan called Kamsack in 1979 (I was 10). We had gone there on a vacation to visit some friends and my parents, as we were driving the 20 hours back home, had a very short conversation something like this:

Dad, “We should be moving there to help them out in their little church.”

Mom, “I know.”

That’s what we heard from the back seat.

Two months later we were on the move. My parents put their house up for sale and moved on in faith again (see how that keeps coming up?) to the little town of Kamsack. Our house wasn’t sold when we left, but Grande Prairie was in the midst of an oil boom and it should sell extremely quickly… but1979 happened and interest rates went through the roof (+20% for mortgages) and the house didn’t sell.

We lived in Kamsack from close to 2 years, the Grande Prairie house still not sold, and my parents felt that they were supposed to go into the pastorate. But first, they should go to Bible School. With 2 houses, draining all the resources they had, they stepped out in faith again and enrolled for Bible school in Nipawin, SK with three kids, two houses and no money. How is this all supposed to work? God had it all planned out. He sold both homes within two weeks, my parents bought a mobile home on the campus and away we went. (there’s another whole story here about another family who was going through some same circumstances themselves who became good friends of my parents at Bible college and now one of my best friends in my town, but I won’t go there)

Anyways, for 3 years my parents went to Bible school with a full family (1981-1984). We lived on about $400/mth then (living off the money from the house sales). Where was my heart in all this? A normal young christian boy growing up, not really serious about christianity, but not a big rebel either.

When my parents graduated there were two towns that were looking for pastors that my dad was looking into. My parents asked us where WE wanted to move to. One of the options was Lillooet … deep in the mountains of British Columbia. That was my immediate choice. I had always had this love of the mountains and thought that it must be so cool to be from a place like that, so I definitely wanted that option. I can’t remember what my two sisters had said, I’ve blocked that out I wanted Lillooet so bad

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That fall (1984), after being accepted as Pastor, we moved to Lillooet.

There was a small christian school in the church (15 kids) and as we moved my parents asked us what we wanted to do… go to the public high school or go to the small church school. Well, the experiences I had in junior high school in Nipawin… not popular because I was a “christian” and we were from that “weird bible thumper place just out of town”… played out in my head. Now that I was a “PK” (pastor’s kid) it couldn’t get any better, especially in a very “dark “town. There was alcohol freely brought by parents to elementary school dances, the grad theme the last year was witches and warlocks, drugs were rampant everywhere… I chose the church school.

It was kind of a lonely existence, there was only one other my age, but we had moved a few times and I was used to grinding it out by myself basically anyways.

Still in this very dark town, where if you didn’t get drunk and stoned every second night at some party you were ostracized by most everyone… I stuck to my guns and didn’t. Probably less because I had the moral fortitude but more because my older sister did not and the effect it had on my parents. I would listen to my mom cry herself to sleep almost every night as my sister was out partying somewhere and not coming home till the wee hours of the morning. I resolved that I would never do that to them. I was just playing the game of christianity. “Doing” the things I thought would please my parents, “believing” but not really “buying in” to everything.

It got pretty bad with my sister, to the point where my parents made another decision in faith. They got my younger sister and I to the table and told us that we were going to hand my older sister over “to Satan for the destruction of the flesh” 1 Cor 5:5

Yikes.

She was my best friend.

What did this mean? Well, they explained… that she would go so low and deep into it that it would destroy that sinful desire for that lifestyle in her. So low, even if the Lord had to take her actual life.

Scary. My parents would do this? Why? Because they believed and had faith in Christ and His word. Wow.

So, we did it, we handed her over.

It got worse. But only for while. She decided she needed to move away from Lillooet because of the circumstances were dragging here down… where she didn’t really want to be.

She moved in with an aunt and uncle of mine about 8 hours drive away and the Lord, in His mercy, restored her and she came back to Him.

I was glad. I realized this was a good thing. No more hurting parents. Everything back to a “good place”. But still, I was just playing the game, not really serious about christianity but of course recognizing what was the “right” thing to do and what was the “wrong” thing to do. Sure, I was saved. I knew that Christ had taken my sin upon the cross and had offered me forgiveness. I believed it. I trusted Him. But it really wasn’t my own you know? I was living on the faith of my parents. Did *I really* trust Him, did *I really* believe Him? I guess it wasn’t that important to me to really find out.

After I graduated I went to the same bible college that my parents did, in Saskatchewan, a 22 hour drive away. I had a great time. Ups and downs. I made lots of mistakes (there’s lots of stories here, but we won’t go there right now

). I learned tonnes. My faith was slowly becoming my own… I now knew WHY I believe what I believed, or at least gained the tools to find out. I watched as the Lord met my needs with summer jobs, student loans, car parts, safe traveling. I watched as the Lord meet my needs with some great friends after growing up with very few. After 3 years I graduated with my diploma.

Back to real life. Bible college had been a cocoon of safety. Now we would see if it was my own. Did I trust God? Did I have faith in Him? Did I believe He really loved me? Did I really believe it all or was I still riding on those great coattails?

I wish I could give you a definite answer that on “this” day at “this” time. I found out. I can’t, it was a growth process (and still is). But there was a time in my life where God *did* teach me some hard lessons and tell me something I’m not sure I had every truly maybe believed.

In the fall of 1995 I crashed my car. I was traveling at 60mph and I didn’t make a corner, here in the mountains, and I hit a cliff wall at full force. My car flipped end over end UP the cliff and then fell straight down on it’s roof to the ground. There was a piece of the rear spoiler left 30 ft up the wall. Amazingly I was basically ok. My arms were extremely sore for a couple weeks because, with the adrenalin rushing through, I had pushed the steering wheel in half before/when I hit. But that was pretty well it… a few bruises, not a broken bone.

The biggest hardship was financial. I had just bought the car a few months earlier. Insurance didn’t cover it.

The next month, my house burned down. I had no insurance.

The next month, I got fired from my job, the only thing I had every really done.

So within 3 months I crashed my car, had my house burn down, and lost my job.

The next week was Thanksgiving Day. Ya right.

I was ticked off.

I had no home, no car and no job. I’m realllly thankful. Mhmm.

Life went on. There’s a lot more that I won’t go into right now that caused a lot of financial and emotional hardship… all my own fault… but anyways… I found a new job in a town 50 miles from here and started rebuilding.

I scrimped and saved and bought this car for about $500 sight unseen (don’t ever do that) and I once made a list once of everything that worked properly on it… the passenger seat and the glove box. Even driving it home from Vancouver the driver’s seatback snapped and fell backwards to the floor. One day driving back from work the turbo charger in it burst and the engine oil flowed directly into the turbo. I looked like the space shuttle driving down the hiway. I had to stop at intersections and get out to see if it was clear to keep driving, there was white smoke everywhere. On another day, a very IMPORTANT day, to me, something else happened to it.

On that day just as I was leaving work for my 50mile drive home on the steep and curvy hiway, the car wouldn’t shift out of 4th gear. Understand… you can not drive up extremely steep hills with sharps curves on the highway, you need to be able to shift down. I couldn’t. Grabbing that stupid shifter with both hands and all my strength I could NOT get that stupid thing out of 4th! As I was driving down the highway up the hills with the engine lugging away, chugging, almost ready to die and stall I would shake that stupid gear shifter with all my anger yelling at it to get out of 4th. Every hill, every corner was an event. I was so angry. All the events of the last few months were bearing down on me and coming to the surface… angry at why I had to basically be financially destitute, my friends are all prospering but for me everything is going wrong (or so to me). Crashes, fires, jobs, vehicles. ARGH! Why? Why do I have to go through all this crap God? Why me? What’s the point? WHY!

He told me. He said “I just want to show you that I love you.” Tears flowed. I reached down shifted down into 3rd and drove home.

You know, something so simple, so stupid and silly as that experience, when I was so wrapped up in my own little world, God was working. He was guiding me to points where I need to be to hear His voice. To hear Him say that He was aware of me and my struggles. That He loved me. That He had a plan for me and that He just wanted me to follow Him through them.

It hasn’t been all roses and tulips since. But “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.” (2 Tim 1:12).

*I* have faith in Him. I know He loves me. I know He has a plan for me. I know who He is. I know He’s forgiven me. I know it, I don’t just believe it. I know it. And because of that I want to do what I can for Him. If that means watching my home burn down to teach me humility, I’ll do it. If that means owning a little business in a little dark town, I’ll do it. If it means gulping my pride when I feel I’ve been stepped on, I’ll do it. Because I know Him, and I love Him because He first loved me.

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by **[ISI]HudsonHawk** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 5:50 pm

Wow, thank you brother. God has great plans for you, but only in His time. God Bless!!!

by **[ISI] VictorValiant** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 5:54 pm

remind me not to ever get in a car with you. :lol:

seriously, thank you for sharing. i've been blessed by reading it. i think it's an amazing testimony - amazing because God knows each of us so well, he knows exactly how to mold and make us to be more like Jesus. who says a life following Jesus is boring?