My Testimony of God's Amazing Grace

A little while ago, I was asked if I would share my testimony on Instagram. Yes, definitely! But… I decided to do it in a blog post so there would be more room to share God’s story in my life. I will say that I’m a little hesitant to do this, because it’s going to require vulnerability on my part – something that does not come easy for me. I pray that you will be able to read this and feel comforted, encouraged, and emboldened. I pray that you will see God through it all. My life is not for me, but for the glory of God. Though this is my life story, it’s even more so God’s story in my life.

My story isn’t like many. There was no rock bottom experience that brought me to my knees before Jesus. There was no hardship that led me to the feet of Jesus. But there was the understanding that I needed Him, that I was a sinner in need of His grace. My story focuses on how Jesus is sanctifying me to become more like Him, even through the times when my heart was disobedient to Him and I was choosing my way instead of His. I wish I could give you more of a background of my life before Christ and how I came to Christ, but being that I was so young, I don’t remember a whole lot. I don’t remember a lot of the issues I had before Christ that really propelled me towards Him. But, though my story isn’t like many, I am still eternally grateful that God grabbed my hand and my heart and led me to Him.

I’m going to start by telling you how I got saved. But then I want to focus on a handful of struggles I’ve dealt with all through life and how God has worked in me through those struggles. These are struggles that I know many of you deal with as well. So Lord willing, the things that have happened in my life will comfort you and help you grow deeper in your walk with Christ. Since I gave my life over to Jesus, He has been sanctifying me and molding me to be more like Him, even when I stumbled (hard) and made choices that were not Christ-like in any form.

So… here we go (pray for me!).

Where it all started…

By the grace of God, I placed my faith in Jesus when I was 6 or 7. Can’t quite remember which one, but I know it was around that time. My mama extended the invitation to me that I don’t have to wait if I wanted Jesus to be my Savior. Even at that age, I knew that I was a sinner and that I needed Jesus to be in my life. Though I didn’t have much wisdom or a large vocabulary to say it how I’m saying it now, the knowledge of needing Jesus remained the same. My sweet parents have been faithful since day 1 to share who Jesus is and to show us (my sister, my brother, and myself) His love and our desperate need for Him. I know God could have used anyone to lead me to Christ, but I am beyond thankful that He used my parents to show me who He is.

My mama always says that after that moment in my room praying for Jesus to come into my heart, I changed. I wasn’t a horrible child or anything like that… just the typical little girl. But according to her, I changed. She could see the heart transformation played out in my life even then. What an amazing God we serve! He can take any heart and transform it, bringing it from death into life.

My struggles in life…

After becoming a daughter of the King of kings, my heart has been inclined to live for Him. But even so, the battle with sin has been and still is very present. Over my life, I’ve struggled with pride, anxiety, seeking attention from guys instead of God, and being content with where He has me. Over my life, He has allowed hard things to happen that have rooted me deeper in Him. Over my life, I have made decisions that were disobedient to Him, following my sinful desires rather than following His righteousness. But through it all, God has never left me nor forsaken me. God has always coaxed me back to Him. God has always forgiven me. God has always molded me to be more like Christ. God has always loved me.

Pride

My first struggle has always been pride, even before salvation. My independent spirit and my ridiculous need to be better than _____ has caused me to fall into pride. God detests pride (James 4:6, Proverbs 16:5, Proverbs 6:17). Time and time again, my actions revealed the pride in my heart. My arrogance led me to hurt relationships. And time and time again, God humbled my heart. It sounds like a pleasant thing, but the process of being humbled is painful.

When I would think myself to be so great in an area of life or so much better than someone, God would show me that I am not. When I would seek to accomplish things on my own, trusting my own strength rather than God’s, He would show me that I can’t do it on my own, that I need Him. Now God never tempted me, because He cannot tempt anyone (James 1:13). Rather, He revealed to me how my pride was blinding my eyes to see the sin in my life. And He provided a way out to repent of my pride and turn from it.

I would say that I have come a long way from where I was, but pride is still a struggle for me. I hold high expectations for myself, and it’s easy to hold those same expectations for others. My independent spirit often wants me to try to accomplish things on my own, trusting myself rather than God to work things out. But I am thankful that God has brought me to my knees over and over, showing me that pride is not Christ-like, showing me that I need Him in all things, and showing me what damage pride causes.

Anxiety

Oh friends, God is a God who heals. God is a God who comforts. God is a God who brings a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Anxiety has been a reoccurring struggle for me in life. I am usually anxious about two things… health and what if’s.

In 8th grade, something very strange and painful was happening within my body that we couldn’t figure out. I hid it for a long time because I was afraid to find out how bad it could be. I was terrified of dying, terrified of the unknown, terrified of having something out of my control. The anxiety tore me down. I’m still not 100% sure what was causing the pain, but through a very gifted (and I believe spiritually gifted) Christian, God brought healing. And for many years, it was not a huge problem.

Then in the first year of my marriage, a similar issue was occurring and getting worse. Randomly. Without warning. Without pattern. The more it happened, the more stressed and anxious I became. Come to find out, the very thing that I was doing… stressing… was causing the issues. Stress is so damaging to our bodies. And the stress and anxiety that I fell into over the years had taken its toll on my body.

The stress was not always health related (although it did cause health problems), but was often related to what if’s. One of my hardest and most anxious times in life was when I was dating and engaged to my husband. Before I continue, there were no red flags, godly people around me were affirming that this was the man God has for me to marry, and my husband was the sweetest during this time. But I was so afraid of what if’s. What if this isn’t the man I’m supposed to marry? What if I’m supposed to wait? What if God is telling me something and I’m not listening? On and on. I worked myself into a pit of anxiety that took months to get out.

One day, my mama gave me godly advice that I most definitely needed to hear. “Brittany, you cannot just sit in your anxiety. You need to take steps forward in order to see if God is closing a door or opening one. Trust Him to lead you. Trust Him to show you.” So I took steps forward. It wasn’t easy taking steps, but I did. And praise the Lord, He faithfully led me in the plan He has always had for me… marrying the man I call my husband today.

Over the years, through the many seasons of stress and anxiety, God has graciously shown me that He is trustworthy. He has taught me that He is in control and that His sovereignty is not something to be scared of, but to find peace in. He has shown me that no matter what happens in this life, He will never leave me nor forsake me. He has molded my heart to trust Him more (though I do not do it perfectly and still fail to trust Him at times). I needed to go through these seasons of anxiety to see more of who God is. I don’t know what life will bring, I don’t know if I will always be free of anxiety, but what I do know is that God has rooted me deeper in Him through it all.

Seeking attention from other sources than resting in the love of God

Admittedly, this is the hardest one for me to talk about. It’s the area that I have made the worst decisions in. It’s the struggle that has caused me to mess up horribly. It’s the temptation where the damage will always remain until Jesus wipes them away in heaven. And it’s these times that I have been the farthest from God, choosing to dwell in my sin rather than dwelling on Him.

Naturally, we want to be loved by others. God’s perfect love is the love that we absolutely need. And since getting saved all those years ago, I have had the blessing to experience His perfect love over and over.

Yet, in my sin, there have been many times that I wanted attention from other sources. I was not resting in the love of God, I was not filling my heart with who He is, but was wanting to feed off the attention of guys to temporarily satisfy my heart. I was blinding myself to the fact that only God can perfectly satisfy my heart. And in doing so, I made terrible mistakes.

In college, before meeting my husband, I entered into a relationship that I never should have. I was “lured and enticed by my own sin” (James 1:14). I fed off the attention that I was receiving from different guys. I flirted with sin. I allowed myself to fall into temptation when, even then, I could feel the Holy Spirit urging me to run back to Him.

After several months of disobeying God, thinking that I could have one foot in sin and one foot in righteousness, God yanked me out. And I am so so thankful He did. He opened my eyes to see how wrong my sin was and that I needed to turn from it. The things that were once enticing suddenly became disgusting. But the damage was done. By committing the sin I committed, I robbed myself of the blessings I could have had in the future.

But sisters, unfortunately it doesn’t stop here. After God graciously removed me from that life situation that was causing me to fail time and again, He moved me to a different town in close distance to those who would keep me accountable. But I failed again. When faced with the choice to be obedient to God and fill my heart with His love and His grace, I failed. When God closely placed me around godly friends, I failed to use that. In a college town where there was plenty of opportunity to feed off the attention of guys, I failed to resist.

I have been wrestling with the fact of how deep to go with this testimony and how much to share. But, for the sake of hoping and praying that my testimony will help you grow in your relationship with Christ, I feel like I need to mention this one thing. In my sin of wanting to seek attention from guys, I struggled with physical temptation. Though I never crossed the boundary of sexual immorality (having sex before marriage), I was not pure in my physical conduct.

But God… the words that have redeemed me and forgiven me over and over. God provided a way out each and every time. I did not always take that path, but He was working in my heart to learn to say no and to run to Him instead. I wanted a guy so badly. I thought that a guy was all I needed in life to truly feel whole. But I was so wrong. And those times that I did fail proved to me that I was so wrong. God is the one who satisfies, who fills our cup, and who makes us whole. It just took me a long time to see that.

But God… provided me with a godly husband. I fully believe that God brought my husband along at the right time to protect me from continually making the same mistake over and over. Now don’t get me wrong, there was physical temptation with him too. Sometimes that temptation got a little strong and we weren’t 100% pure. But God even protected us by sending him to boot camp, and then having us endure a long distance relationship 10 out of the 12 months of dating and being engaged.

Though God has forgiven me and transformed me, though He has taught me and convicted me, there are still consequences to my sin. The blessing of saving myself entirely for my husband, even saving hand holding for my husband, was (and is) gone. There is a HUGE blessing in waiting for your husband to have the first everything. And though my husband was able to give that to me, I am not able to give that to him. I have robbed myself of the blessing I could have had, the blessing that God intended for me to have with my husband. But my heart praises Jesus because even with the consequences of my sin, He has blessed me with a man who loves me despite my past mistakes. He has blessed me with a man that loves me more than he loves himself. And He has blessed me with a man who seeks to keep Jesus as the foundation of our marriage.

If you’ve made it this far, then thanks for sticking with me!

Hopefully I haven’t rambled too much, but my testimony, God’s story in my life of how He has saved me and is sanctifying me, is one that I don’t want to withhold. I have struggled with many different things in life, but God has always been there to help me through them. He has always been there to convict me and teach me, reproof me and mold me more like Christ. God is good. God is worthy of my praise.

In the last few years of being a military wife, I have grown so much closer to God than I could ever have imagined. Being away from family, being away from friends, and often being alone, I have had the beautiful blessing of only being able to rely on Him. God has deepened my knowledge of Him. God has shown me more of who He is. God has given me more understanding of His Word. Jesus has grown in me a desire to be a light to other women. Jesus has placed within me the desire to be bold for Him. Jesus has shown me that life without Him is no life at all. The Holy Spirit has filled my heart with the love of Christ, comforting me in the times I need comfort, leading me in the times I need lead, and convicting me in the times I need conviction. My God and my Savior have redeemed me from death and have made me the woman I am today.

Without Christ, I would be hopeless, lost, hopelessly lost. I would be seeking and seeking and seeking for things that would never fill the hole in my heart that only Jesus can fill. But I am beyond thankful that Christ has saved me from my sin, from death, and from myself. I am thankful that He took my place, dying on the cross and raising three days later to pay for my sin. I don’t know if my words are conveying the depth of my gratitude. As I’ve been writing this, tears have been pouring out of my eyes as I think back on all the wrong that I’ve done, but how God has saved me, redeemed me, forgiven me, transformed me, and loved me. May God be given glory through my life.