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 Becky Bishop
For me, my testimony might sound a little traditional; I grew up in the church with two parents and a brother who loved the Lord, but what you might not know is that the first one I said I wanted to be baptized I was told "no". That's because I was 5 years old and had seen my older brother baptized and only wanted to do it because he had done it. So, OF COURSE I wasn't ready to be baptized.


To fast forward just a bit, I continued to grow in my understanding of the word. When I grasped the impact of Christ dying on the cross for my sins, it changed my heart forever. In 1997 I confessed my faith FOR REAL in the Lord Jesus to save me, and when it came to getting baptized, I practically ran down into the water.


My entire life my biggest fear had been the knowledge that one day my parents would die. I
was so conscious of this fear that I would make sure to tell them I loved them and kiss
them goodnight as often as I could because I knew one day I wouldn't be able to.


This past October my mother was suddenly gone. I can remember standing in the hospital
room, now silent from all the machines that had been keeping her alive, no longer working,
and thinking, "How can this be real? This doesn't happen to our family. This is wrong."
The next three days were incredibly hard. You think you understand how something like that will feel, but as much as you think you do, you probably will NEVER understand until it
happens.


I was reeling so hard that these thoughts of doubt began to hit me. Of course, when we are the weakest is when Satan attacks us the hardest. A couple of days into this fight the new Bible I had ordered, arrived. This was it, I stood in my room, held it in my hands and said, "Okay God, I need you to show me something here, because I am struggling." I let it open before me and there it was, 1 Thessalonians 4:13‐14 ‐ "And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope.


For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when
Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died." It was EXACTLY what I needed to hear. God took my GREATEST fear and used it to give me this understanding of who He is in a way that I never thought possible.


Fear, death, grief... These things mean nothing in the face of God. His love and His sacrifice
wipe all those things away. And the peace that I have from that has changed me in a way that I can never explain and am eternally grateful for having.