BAPTISM!~

Hehe, to be honest
I didn't really "feel" anything
I know I will later = ="
Usually things come to me in intense worship
or when I'm just thinking by myself
so yea I'm starting to do that hehe

but I always have the thankful thought that God is so gracious ^^;
and I will always hold on to that thought.

Here is my actual testimony that I gave :D

[it's long T^T]


Hi, my name is Tiffany Lin and I am a junior at Monta Vista High School. In my first few years of being introduced to Christ, I was rather clueless. I remember half of the time in first grade, classmates kept telling me to believe or not to believe in God, and most of the time, my response was just, “What’s that?” or “What does that mean?”. My mother kept trying to find a suitable church for our family, and around third grade we finally stopped at the Fifth Home of Christ. Up till third grade, I was still clueless of who Christ was. To this time, it was just responding to the Sunday school teacher’s question of “Who has not accepted Christ as their Lord and Savoir?” Realizing my response that I have not, I just listened to whatever the teacher told me, prayed, and asked to become a part of His family, not actually realizing what all of this meant. I continued the rest of my life from then on as someone who “goes to church” and someone who “believes in Christ”, but I guess not so much a “Christian”.
I noticed that at the end of every school year after seventh grade, it would be hard to control my anger, probably because of pressure or probably because of something else. Seventh grade was probably the year I started noticing things, like the occasional arguments between my parents and discovered that they were divorced long before I knew they were. After starting high school, it was even more of a nightmare. Though I seemed to be shy and daydreaming in my own little world most of the time in front of others, I had my own burdens and struggles that I dare not spoke of except to a small number of people. I didn’t even bother turning to Christ, thinking that He was too slow to answer my prayers, anyway. I seemed to like messing around with a kind of pride, pretending to omniscient when I wasn’t, and then end up misinterpreting a lot of things in the end. I kept trying to find the bad and immoral parts of my teachers, blaming their teaching methods for my horrible grades, which added more oil to my flame of anger. Though I didn’t show it, the discovery of my parents’ divorce really hurt me. I didn’t believe my troubles could be solved so simply through God, and so I didn’t go to Him for help much. In fact, I refused to believe that God would answer prayers from such a troublesome person like me – a lie that stuck with me for a long time. Even up to the end of sophomore year this June, I was still mad at everything around me. One day, I suddenly remembered that a while ago before all this “madness”, a friend asked me, “Why do you go to church, Tiffany?” It took me a week to reply her, but my reply was so that I could feel refreshed and renewed in Christ every week, and to make sure I was not breaking away from him. Remembering my reply to my friend, I decided to start over this summer and devoted myself to church every week. Now that I was out of school, I was able to catch up on my pastime of listening to music. I decided to listen to Christian music for a change. Thought it feels and sounds a bit strange, I can easily say that listening to these inspirational gospel genres of music brought me closer to God. I knew most inspirations of these songs came from the Bible, which led me to reading the Bible more and more often. Though music may have been a large factor of truly falling in love with God, I was reminded at the summer church retreat through one of the songs saying “Stepping forward, move us into action, keep us from just singing, we must go.” Another song reminded me that without the love of God, these songs are just words and anyone singing them would just be making pointless rackets. I began to realize how gracious, big, and powerful God was, the pain and torture He went through just so He wouldn’t have to see us suffer, and how much He really wants to have a relationship with all of us. I always knew that walls formed between God and me, but I finally learnt that they could be broken down, too. So I finally decided to actually start living and breathing God’s word and having Him be in my everything, instead of only singing about His love all of the time.
Now that I’ve become a true Christian, my faith in God has grown tremendously. My problems do not seem so burdensome anymore, and I believe that this tug of war for me between God and Satan is headed towards God’s victory. Though I occasionally might think of myself as unworthy to have any kind of bright future because of my past, I can joyfully remember that God has His own plans for me, guaranteeing a brighter future with Him forever. Reading over the book of John one night a few years ago, I came across a verse that has stood out to me ever since; John 8:32 says “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”. The truth, to me, is to acknowledge that when I can’t handle problems on my own, God is always there to help and has always been there regardless of what kind of person I am, making me free from any other spiritually or mentally destructible alternatives. He has His own reasons of how quickly He answers my prayers and what He does to answer my prayers, which I have accepted completely. When I think about God, I think of Him as someone who will be there for me when no one else is, someone who will love me when possibly no one else does – a best friend, a guardian, and just someone who I can always take shelter to – and I am here today to profess that.