The circumstances surrounding my decision to become a follower of Jesus Christ

- using various Bible passages as the framework for my salvation and eternal life in Christ.

This is actually the essay prompt to apply to Biola, but I'm going to do a quick ramble here as a sort of skeleton for the actual submission.  This is not even a draft!  Just some thoughts.

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My testimony is an ongoing one, so attempting to document something that is ongoing is somewhat difficult.  For most of my life, I grew up in the church.  However, I thought as people going to church, we were supposed to learn to be perfect and not truly recognize that in reality we go to church because we're sinners who yearn to have the likeness of Jesus.  To me, God was a concept and a mighty being who we merely had to listen to, not necessarily learn to love as person as well, and the Bible was like a textbook to me.  I didn't really treat God and His Word very seriously.  Sunday School was literally schooling for me.

I think one minor but important turning point for me in my faith was when I was beginning to start middle school.  Up until that point, I was an extremely outgoing, extroverted person and I remember teachers telling me that I would be a good leader in the future because of how outspoken I was.  What also happened around that time was that I had some family problems.  For the most part, these problems at home made me shut up and I suddenly became a very introspective, quiet, and unsocial person.  Any hopes of becoming a leader in any way diminished.

I think in American culture, my turning from an extrovert to an introvert definitely would not have been a good thing, but I have this feeling that God wanted me to retreat from whatever else I was trying to pursue in the world and examine myself.  This was the time that I really grew fond of music and I discovered that I have a talent for playing and understanding music.  I wasn't one to talk much, so music was something I enjoyed listening to and a hobby that took up much of my time, as I didn't socialize very often. God has used my fondness of music to allow me to deeply understand music and music in the context of worship.  As a result, I have even become a guitarist and a vocalist for a local church and sincerely enjoy contributing to the worship portion of every service.

Something happened a few years ago that was a major turning point which finally lifted me out of my shell.  I had begun to grow this tumor in my body, and for a short while I thought that my time on Earth was up.  During this time of deep contemplation of my life, I mostly began to think about the people in my life and that aside from God, people were what made my life worth living for.  Opening up and talking to people suddenly became more important to me than it used to be.  After learning that this tumor was benign and having it removed, I became a lot less shy and more friendly towards strangers than I used to be.  I have made some invaluable friends from initiating conversations myself, and even though having that tumor a rather emotionally insufferable experience that I went through, I do sincerely thank God for the lesson I had learned.  There is those group of verses in Hebrews 12 about God disciplining his children as any Father would, and that "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it" (Hebrews 12:11)

Something else that helped me largely to be a follower in Christ rather than society's perception of Christian, or a "Churchian", was that I began to realize the distinction between body and soul.  I know there are words such as in Ephesians 4:4 where it says "For there is one body and one spirit" explaining how our bodies, spirits, and souls are one.  However, there are also verses that discuss how though these all integrate to become a human being, sometimes they can stand out from one another - Matthew 10:28 says "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell."

Becoming more and more aware of our souls helped me to become more aware of the Holy Spirit inside any of us who has accepted God - and that blew my mind.  That same spirit - the one living and breathing inside of us - is also the one who parted the Red Sea for Moses and his people as well as the spirit who resurrected Jesus Christ himself!  That very spirit is in me, waiting for me to listen to it and allow it to guide my life as God willed it to be.  Romans 8:11 confirms that "the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies his Spirit who lives in you. The fact Jesus Christ had to die for the Holy Spirit to be sent into those who accept the Father to be able to have intimate relationships with him finally clicked in my head; thinking about this breaks my heart but also makes me rejoice.  This was probably the most recent turning point for me, albeit not as early as I would have wanted it to be, but God knows what he's doing regarding time, as I know he doesn't live in time as we do.

Every day that I have my quiet time with God, that I have more sincere and frequent prayers, and the more I fellowship, I begin to learn more and more about my father who is waiting for me in Heaven.  I feel like all these turning points were all God's doing, and not so much initiative actions on my part.  It's as if all of these turning points together are a wake-up call to begin to actively mature in my faith - and I hope possibly being at Biola can help me do just that.