A Testimony

During the first week of meetings, I could feel a great unseen battle raging over my church. The sermons were going fairly well; I knew God was using me, lots of people were coming, but there were many technical glitches. I think Satan was trying to discourage me, but I prayed and pressed on, sometimes without slides or power. Then during the second week, I felt even more of the great controversy. Satan left off with the equipment, but less and less people showed up each night. Even though everything worked, hardly any people came. By Thursday night the second week, I could feel his attacks had shifted slightly and were centered on me. He tried to discourage me, using every tactic to make me feel inadequate and worthless as a messenger of God’s truth.

Eventually, I felt completely surrounded by his lies and my spirit became too weak to pray. My feeble attempts weren’t making it past the ceiling. That night, I knew I needed to tell someone about my struggle. My roommate listened to my story and immediately offered to pray for me. She rebuked the devil’s power and in the name of Jesus told him to leave. As soon as she prayed, I felt a burden lifted off my shoulders. That night, I realized how real the great controversy is and how we can only overcome in Jesus’ name.

Later I realized that Satan’s attacks on my connection to God were an attempt to prevent a great spiritual blessing that was to come.

The next Sabbath after this as I was listening to Jonathan preach, I noticed that a lot of what he was saying in his sermon would also be repeated in my sermon in the afternoon, and I began to wonder how necessary my sermon was. As these thoughts were going around my mind, I had this deep impression that I shouldn’t preach my Share Him sermon, even though I had practiced it several times and knew it backwards and forwards. I felt that I needed to share a more personal message. The set sermon topic was about Heaven, but most of the verses it used had already been shared in the previous sermon. Suddenly, I remembered what I had read in my devotions that morning and a sermon began to form in my head. Honestly, if I had not spent that time in the morning with God, I would not have had anything to share. In reading Isaiah 55 that morning, I now could use its picture of how to obtain a relationship with God as a parallel to talk about our relationship with Him in Heaven. A torrent of thoughts and ideas started to pour down, and in the half hour before I needed to speak, I deleted most of the set slides for my sermon, leaving only 8. I also deleted the set notes, and put my own in. The topic was still about Heaven, but the presentation would be much more personal through God’s inspiration. I had such a burden to share how it is practically to have a walk with Christ. As I typed out notes, I rejoiced how He was answering my continual prayer to be used in any way He saw fit.