by Mary | Jul 14, 2025 | Testimonies
I was born to parents who raised me up to believe in the traditional religions, and to follow ancestral worship and false gods. But during my childhood the gospel of God concerning His Son (Lord Jesus Christ), started reaching remote areas where we lived. Eventually, an aunt became a Christian, renounced traditional religions, worship of idols and started trusting in and following the Christ. And the Lord used her to witness to us, telling us about how God sent His son to save and redeem sinners. This greatly disrupted everything parents believed and taught us. Nevertheless, they did not prevent her taking us to church and hear the preaching of God’s word. By the time I had become a young adult, the more I went to hear God’s word, the more I became convinced of the true God and His gospel. I kept remembering about God’s judgement to come, heaven or hell questions, and that God wills to save and redeem sinners through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I was a sinner through and through and in need of God’s salvation. The word of God had taken hold of my heart, and I believed the gospel. By grace and mercies, God granted me repentance and faith to believe in Christ Jesus my own Lord and eternal Saviour.
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by Mary | Jul 12, 2025 | Testimonies
When I reached my teenage years and went to High School my sin really started to become manifest. I began to despise authority and in many ways rebelled. The Apostle Paul said to Titus a fellow believer “For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another” Titus 3:3; this reminds me of myself during those times, I was truly wallowing in the mire of my sin. Once I left High School I went to college in order to study Music Technology as I desired to go into the music industry, possibly to become a sound engineer. Around this time I started to visit the clubs where the music scene was and this was where I began to build my idols. I was totally deceived and spent the next few years chasing one idol to the next. My hedonistic and sinful lifestyle soon caught up with me, my empire of sin began crashing down on me and I felt as though I was being crushed. I was in pain and wracked with fear and anxiety. It felt as though my mind was broken and there was no turning back. In many ways I knew my soul was in trouble and I felt the guilt of my
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by Mary | Jul 11, 2025 | Testimonies
I was born and raised in Liverpool and grew up in a Catholic home. My Mum would tell me and my siblings stories from the Bible and we occasionally went to mass together, especially during Christmas and Easter. Because of my upbringing, I pretty much believed that I knew God and that I was okay as I was. I would think that because I believed God existed and prayed sometimes and went to mass often I was right with Him. When I was in my teens the gospel was witnessed to me a few times. I specifically remember a girl around my age asking me where I was going when I die and I couldn’t say that I was going to heaven so I replied, “I don’t know.” By the time I was 17, I began to feel burdened about the life that I was living. As a teenager, there was nothing about my life that gave God glory. I was truly living a sinful life. It was almost as if the more I indulged in sin as a way to silence the conviction, the more convicted and burdened I became. At this point in my life, I knew that I wasn’t right with God. I then began to clean up my life and stopped doing the things that I knew
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by Mary | Jul 10, 2025 | Child birth, Testimonies
I was born and raised in a middle-class family in the Netherlands. My father was a naval engineer but worked in project management and technical coordinator jobs. My mother was a schoolteacher, and she taught me how to read and write in elementary school. As a child, I served as an altar boy in the Roman Catholic church and later as a musician in youth choirs. From an early age, I have always believed that God existed, but, in hindsight, never knew you could have a personal relationship with Him. Early January 2012, my mother passed away after suffering from cancer for almost one and a half years. Optimistic as I was, I remember telling my mother to stay positive, but frankly, she was the most optimistic person amongst us. A few months later, in 2012, my best friend asked me to attend a service at a charismatic evangelical church out of curiosity, and we were both not even Christians. On that day, my life started to change radically for the better. I started attending church services faithfully and, although the charismatic movement had its downsides (I changed church three times in seven years), it was the beginning of my journey in faith. Soon after, the Lord provided me with a 400-year-old house in the city centre of Leiden, and
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by Mary | Jul 9, 2025 | Testimonies
I have always believed in God and the sacrifice the Lord Jesus Christ made for sinners, but I did not live my life as though this was personal to me. I made a mess of my life whilst doing my own thing and this included a marriage breakdown and subsequent divorce. However, I told myself that I would go back to church in my 70s or 80s before I died – what a ridiculous notion!! What if I had died in my sins and not in Christ before I reached my old age? Indeed, what if the Lord Jesus Christ had returned before my twilight years? The story I am going to tell now is about my journey back to God. One evening I received a phone call telling me of some tragic and very upsetting news. The news was that an eighteen-year-old girl I knew had gone home that afternoon to find that her mum had taken her own life – her mum had hung herself. This was a direct result of sin as her mum had found out that her husband had been having an affair and she just could not cope. It really is no wonder that God hates sin; it often has damaging consequences for ourselves and others and our sin certainly offends God. Although I
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