Tell it Often, Tell it Well Workshop 26 April 2008

Karl's 5 minute testimony

I was brought up in a half believing home; my mom was a believer and my dad was not. One night around the age of 7, before I fell asleep I asked Jesus into my life. I grew up getting to know the Lord for myself and he turned me into a cheerful and joyfully happy person. When I reached the end of middle school, I started to drift away from the Christian life. In my senior year of high school, I started experimenting with drugs and soon found one called crystal meth. It felt great being high but the good times were deceiving as it swiftly turned my life into misery. It got to the point that meth was no longer something to do just for fun; I needed it to survive. I realised my addiction was too big of a problem for me to deal with and that I needed help.

Remembering from what I had learned back in sunday school, I knew that I could turn to Jesus for help. He loved me even if I didn't love myself. I reasoned that if I belonged to Jesus, anything I had also belonged to him, including my drug addiction. I also thought that if it was true that Jesus could die on a cross and be raised back to life, then he could defeat this addiction that was killing me.

I asked Jesus to take it from me and deal with it for me, and gave him the two reasons why I thought he was able to help me. Suddenly I realized I was wrapped in chains and then I felt a great power come over me. The chains around me shattered like glass. Even though I felt free from the addiction to meth, the habit of doing it was still there. That night I still went out with my
friends and got high. Jesus, being the loving and powerful God that he is, worked in my life and in my heart, despite my own efforts against him. From that point on, getting high was no longer fun, and I slowly started hating meth. It took another 2 years before I had had enough and stopped getting high altogether. During that time, the Lord also brought back the joy of life and the cheerful, happy person I used to be. He reinstated me as a functional member of society and even sent me
back to school for horticulture (and i graduated at the top of my program last april). I now look forward to where this relationship with Jesus will take me.