It is my hope and prayer that I can share my testimony with you all today in a way that is honest, meaningful, and brings glory to God, who is the reason I am here.

One of the most significant verses in Scripture for my life is Ezekiel 36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

This verse describes what my faith journey has been like, and I will share how. 

If I could pick a word to sum up how I came to Jesus, it would be surrender. I had to come to a point where I could say, “A little less me, a little more Jesus.”

Let’s start here. I’ve always known God, sort of. He was this abstract being that I remember learning about some as a child. But because He wasn’t made “real” to me, it became easy to forge my own path and rely on my own understanding. I was an independent and self-centered young lady.

What I didn’t know in my young adulthood was that my idol of independence would lead to emptiness and searching. Little by little, God knocked down this idol. First, I swore to myself and others that I would never get married; I could do life on my own. Having been a child of divorce myself, I grew up in the tension and pain that divorce can bring, and I wanted none of that. But then, God put a man in my life who could see all my rough edges and loved me anyway, and I surrendered to the idea of sharing my life with someone. That came first. I married my husband at age 24. In all honesty, I was a terrible wife in those early years, thinking I could still do things my way. 

I clung to my vain independence by proclaiming I’d never have kids because I had goals and, well, kids would make reaching them harder. I’m happy to say, God had other plans for me.

By age 27, my husband and I had reached a place of yearning to become parents. I can’t quite explain what caused my change of heart on this matter, other than I was beginning to see the benefits of God’s good design, though I wasn’t ready to admit that yet. 

By age 28, our hope and excitement for having children had faded. If any of you have ever experienced infertility, you likely know the unique pain that comes with it. There’s sadness, anger, and shame. It didn’t feel fair to me that I had finally come around to the idea of being a mother and now it seemed impossible. We had listened to advice and sought out medical opinions, but none of it told us why this was happening. With an empty womb, quite literally, we were left searching for answers. There were none, because we were searching in the wrong places. 

My husband and I reached a tipping point – we came to the end of relying on our own strength. For me personally, I remember bringing my anger at my own body to God and thinking that He might be angry with me for having shut Him out for so many years. 

But He wasn’t. I look back now and can see how patient and loving God was with me – almost like He was saying, “Yes, I’m still here. I’ve been here all along. I never left.”

And although we weren’t living like we had a relationship with Jesus at that time, there was certainly a surrender on our part. We knew the whole thing was bigger than us, and that we couldn’t do it on our own. 

When we started reading in the Bible and attending a few church services, seeds were planted that would later sprout and grow.

By God’s grace and in His timing, I was 30 when we had our daughter, Elly. This led to more of a surrender. I came to understand that this blessing was not my own doing but had been given to me. I came to understand that my child belonged to God before she had ever belonged to me. I knew He had chosen me to be her mom, and this both amazed and terrified me. Slowly but surely, a relationship with Jesus emerged, as I learned that this distant God I remembered from my childhood was in fact still here and very near, that He loved me so much He sent His only Son to die on a Cross for me. If God could surrender His Son, if Jesus could surrender His life, how could I not completely and fully surrender mine to Him?

So in my slow, methodical way, I began surrendering. A little less me, a little more Jesus. I began reading God’s Word and saw things with new eyes; I listened to sermons and heard things I had never heard before. And by age 33, I was able to say that I was a sinner in need of a Savior. My heart changed. As the verse in Ezekiel says, the Lord will give you a new heart. This is how it happened for me.

I’d like to say I completely changed all at once, but my faith journey has been more of a slow surrender. Don’t get me wrong, I am completely and fully a child of God, but as the sanctification process reveals how deep my sin nature goes, I realize how much more changing still needs to take place.

The difference now is that I know I can’t do the changing on my own. I was never meant to. I must fully rely on the saving work of Jesus Christ – He already did it all. Once stubbornly stuck in my own independence, I’ve been freed to now say, I am not my own but His. I don’t define who I am; He does.

My testimony can be summed up like this – in my pride, I rejected being a wife and a mom for my own gain, rejecting God in the process, and it’s as if God took all that and said, “Not only am I going to make you a wife and a mom, but I’m going to make it your ministry” – and He has. Not as punishment, but as redemption. I now serve a great God by serving in two of the most important roles I’ve ever had – wife and mom. The duties I once thought would ruin my life turned out to be the very things that would not only bring me to the Lord but also plant the purest joy in my heart; a joy that I never knew was possible before. He uses my daily work to sanctify me and bring me ever closer to Him; He has graciously replaced my stubborn independence with dependence on Him, and helped me to see what a gift this is. Only Jesus, the true heart surgeon, could have done this work on my heart in this way.

So as I stand before you today, now at age 39, with my new heart, I want to thank you all for being a part of my testimony. Since coming to this church the last four-plus years, my family has grown so much closer to God through the relationships we’ve formed here and the faithful teaching that takes place. You all in various ways have shown us that following Jesus is a daily choice.         

My choice today is to surrender even more, so that I may say “a lot less me, and a lot more Jesus.”

Thank you.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.“

Ezekiel 36:26