this is my story

 

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 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

-2 Corinthians 5:17

In 2015, I made a conscious decision to give my life to Jesus.

Back in Form Four (2013), life was good. Everything seemed to be going my way: I had a decent amount of friends, great grades, I was coming top in my class for French, I was finally getting the hang of English Literature and I was a part of first team tennis. I was blessed. 2014 came. On the morning before I was supposed to go collect my O’ Level results, I managed to get my provisional license. Yay! Even more exciting, later that morning, I got my O’ Level results and they were amazing. All I could think was, in the words of Chance the Rapper, “Seems like the blessings keep falling in my lap.”

My mum is Christian. My dad, on the other hand, is not a believer. He’s not atheist because he does acknowledge that there is a God, he just doesn’t believe in God the Father and Jesus Christ. Luckily, my mum always took us to church with her, so I was fortunate enough to know God at a young age. My mum and I prayed together and read the Bible together and when I was about eleven years old, I gave my life to Jesus for the first time. It wasn’t a choice, well it didn’t seem like I had a choice. It was a recommendation from my Sunday School teacher but I felt obliged to say the prayer and give my life to Jesus.

I went to church almost every Sunday, I prayed to God almost every night before bed and I would occasionally pray to Him when I really needed something. Even though I knew that Jesus was my saviour, I couldn’t feel it. He was always just out of reach.

2014 was by far my lowest year. Lower Six was hard. My grades dropped and they didn’t stop dropping, some of my closest friends moved to other schools so I had less friends, and I was trying to deal with my own personal issues. On top of all of that, God felt even further out of reach than ever. It was all too much for me. The worst part of it all was that I felt like couldn’t tell anyone. I’m not a very open person when it comes to talking about serious things so every emotion, every thought, every feeling stayed bottled up inside of me and at the beginning of 2015, when I got my AS Level results, the bottle was ready to explode.

I didn’t want an explosion, but I didn’t know how to stop it. When I realized that there was no one else who understood what I was going through and could help me, I turned to God and He was there, waiting for me to come to Him. He had always been right there. He emptied out my bottle and embraced me. He gave me a clean slate. He told me to start again, but this time, I had to do it with Him, and I did. 2015 was the best year of my life...so far. When I finally realized that my Father was so great, I immediately knew that I had to give my life to Jesus – for real this time.

Since then, I’ve actually enjoyed church and reading my Bible isn’t a struggle. Prayer - I do that every day because how else can I have a relationship with my awesome Father without talking to Him? I love life now. Finding Jesus is so beautiful – you begin to see life from a whole new perspective because that’s what finding Jesus does! It opens the eyes of your heart. I can only pray that if you haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, you do so soon because it feels amazing to know that you are loved, unconditionally and that you have been cleansed of all your sin.

If you’d like to share your testimony, email me here. Your story could be the start of someone else’s story.

God truly loves you.

With love,

Mandile

Shout-out: Chase God TV. An awesome YouTube channel with a lot of answers to a lot of the questions that you have as a young Christian. Check it out!