My Testimony

So.... to become a member of my church I grew up in, you're required to be baptized and give your testimony to the congregation. I never knew this was rare until I started going to other churches. Most places, you say you want to be a member and you're in. Not here! Nope, you have to write down how you came to the faith and make a public proclamation about your beliefs. Needless to say, it's taken me 25 years to do this because it's pretty intense and intimidating to speak like that in front of a few hundred people listening to every word you say! But I did.

To be honest I was dreading it for weeks. I really hate public speaking and it makes me so stressed and nervous to just think about it- so now that it's over I'm really relieved. I gave my testimony with 5 other young people around my age. It was kinda nice to be with my friends in front of everyone. People were crying the whole time, which made me want to cry but I didn't, thank goodness.

ANYWAY! I figured, hey, if anyone should know my testimony, it should be my friends, right? So here's my story (written as it would be read in front of my church):


Many of you sitting here tonight may not know exactly who I am, so I'd like to start off by introducing myself. Most of you were either friends with, aquatinted with, or at least have heard the name of my father, Jim Truman. My mother is Susan Melillo, and my step-father is Tom Melillo.

If you knew my father, for me to start off saying "I grew up in a Christian home" may sound like an understatement. I have spent the majority of my life in this church, and have been under the preaching of Gary Hendrix and the other elders as far back as I can remember.

My family moved from upstate New York to Mebane in 1985, mostly because of this church. In 1993, when I was 9 years old, my dad passed to be with the Lord, leaving 3 children and a wife behind. My father's death has shaped the person that I've grown up to be.

For the majority of my pre-teen and teenage years, I felt quite lost and unconfident in my faith. I went through phases of rebellion, mostly by way of sibling influence. I have never truly doubted God's existence. I've always said, "The grass is green and God is God." There has never been a time where I knew He was not present, and there has never been a time that I questioned the earth's creation and how it came to be. However, even though I've always been confident of His presence, I have not always been confident in my assurance of salvation. I had always believed that because I was not as biblically knowledgeable as others around me, especially my peers who grew up in this church, that I somehow was lacking God's acceptance.

For me to give you an exact date of my conversion would very difficult. I simply do not know the exact time in my life when I accepted Jesus Christ, because it has been a very gradual growth in the faith. However, experiences and milestones scattered throughout my life have been monumental in my maturity.

During a family conference when I was 14, I experienced a plea from a close family friend to come to the Lord. I thought I was already saved at that time, but there was something more significant about this day. I remember simply asking the Lord to give me the assurance I needed and to show me if I had been saved. When I was 16, I traveled with the youth of this church to the Dominican Republic on a mission trip to build a house for a pastor. This was the first time I had felt a strong desire for missions. When I was 18 and moved away to college, I struggled with loneliness and spiritual apathy, though I found that this was a time where I was forced to rely upon God as the only one that would never leave me or forsake me, like so many friends had already done. When I was 20 I moved to Orlando, Florida. The first year there was the most difficult time in my life. I struggled with severe depression and anxiety, and eventually came to a point where I was angry with God. The ironic thing about this anger was that it came from reading a popular Christian book that described the perfect attributes of God. "If God is so perfect, then where is He and why isn't He helping me?" I thought to myself. Despite this unexplainable anger, I still could not and did not deny Him, and He did not forsake me. Over months of counseling and prayer, I began to find myself being renewed and spiritually alive again.

Since 2000 on that first mission trip with this church, I have traveled to different countries and assisted short term mission teams to spread the Gospel. It has only been in the last year, since my most recent trip to Slovakia, that the Lord has completely turned my heart upside down about HOW I should serve Him. It has been in this past year that God has really opened my eyes to His goodness. He has used His calling for me to serve Him in missions to completely and totally depend on Him alone for direction and provision. I feel like I have surrendered my future and all of my plans to Him, so that I can use myself in whatever way He pleases. It has been a life-changing experience to sit in the passenger seat of my life.

It is only by the sheer grace of our Heavenly Father that I have been able to overcome my rebellion and anger against Him. There is no other logical explanation for me, or any of us to turn from sin, other than Jesus Christ and his abundant mercy. It is not by my own works or my own decisions. I am confident that the Enemy will continue to shake my confidence in the Lord until I die, and I know I will fall at times; but I believe that because Christ died on that tree, my salvation is assured, my future is in His hands, and nothing can take away that love from Jesus Christ.