Testimony

Insert: I posted this testimony on July 20th 2011 at 2:11am on Facebook. This is just a control-C control-V vibe.

OK, so I was just looking at Holiday Club photo’s for Time Travel Holiday Club (Eastside 2011) and seeing kids come to know Christ and how he worked and I really felt like I needed to share what God has done in my life, which I have never Facebooked before (I’m not really into the whole “This is how I really feel” thing), so here goes. (I won’t say something like “I’ll keep it short”, cause I want to tell you what happened, not a summary, it really is quite long, so hopefully you have time to spare…). I’ve only tagged people who appear in the story who had a major impact on my relationship with God, and some of you will probably worry about my mental health by the time I’m done. But Jesus was always a bit of a freak, and he works in freaky ways.

So I was born on the 29th October 1991, which seems like a good place to start. My dad was very sick at the time, and my mom’s dad passed away early the next morning, and it wasn’t long before my mom and dad got divorced. My mom supported me and my two elder brothers (Bryce and Travis) while working as a programmer for Spar. When I was 5 my mom remarried Claude (my stepdad), who had 3 sons of his own (my stepbrothers, Simon, Matthew and Chris). We moved from Durban (Kloof, to be precise, where I am still convinced Jason Watson broke my leg pushing me off a jungle gym…) to the Jacaranda City soon after that so that Claude could work in Joburg. My dad soon followed and got a job in Joburg. I went to a Jewish pre-primary school where the main attraction was Jewish bread on Fridays, but I remember being interested in all the stories of how God used people as they told us Old Testament stories. On weekends during my pre-primary and primary school life me and my brothers would go to my dad’s place in Randburg for weekends, where I went to Riverside church with him. I enjoyed learning about God, but it was at Scripture Union on Friday afternoons at Waterkloof Primary with Aunty Silvia and Uncle George that I really started to feel and grasp the fact that the spiritual realm was real and that the Holy Spirit could touch people. It was at one of these Friday afternoon meetings that I gave my life to Jesus Christ. My mom was (and is) Christian and we’d often do bible studies on her bed in the mornings. With all this my knowledge of the gospel grew, but my understanding and application didn’t. Somewhere along the line my dad moved to Pretoria, so I started going to Hatfield with him (from about grade 5 or 6). I remember always connecting with the worship songs they played, but I was too cool to do the actions and stuff, I mean, I was in grade 6 not a little kid! But even with my lack of dancing and singing, I knew every word to all those songs, and they meant a lot to me. When I started Boys High I started helping at Hatfield as a leader for the Primary school kids, and I got baptised when I was in grade 8.

So here I was, I’d given my life to the Lord, been baptised, gained a great deal of knowledge of his word, and felt the Holy Spirit touch me in worship, but I’d never had my faith tested, I’d never had to rely on God. I prayed often, but I never would ask for anything of value. That all changed as mom and Claude started having repeatedly bad arguments. In retrospect, I don’t think me or my brothers had ever connected with Claude, none of us had ever made an effort to get to know the other, and so I viewed Claude as a very generous man my mom was married to and who made the rules, and when he enforced them it felt to me like a teacher was shouting at me for breaking the rules. Eventually Claude (under a lot of work stress) began to become more loud and more unreasonable with rules, discipline and respect for us and his wife. He never smacked any of us (that was left to my mom and her terrifying “Go fetch the wooden spoon”) but because he felt like a stranger to me when he shouted at my brothers I would be genuinly afraid. My mom would defend us and it almost became as though the family was split into two camps, the Martins and the Manicoms. I can’t really remember what other personel issues Claude and mom had, but during the grade 9 June exam times the fighting reached a peak. I remember a period of about 2 weeks when there was shouting almost every night, and I really struggled to sleep (shouting or none). It climaxed with a family meeting in the lounge one day where we all spoke about mom and Claude getting divorced. I thought it was a good idea. Everyone else except Claude saw divorce as the only alternative if things didn’t change and change soon. I think Claude finally fully comprehended how much mom was getting hurt by everything and they both had some serious stuff to change and some lessons to learn about the others personality, and they got better after that. In this time I really struggled with the concept of who my father was, I never had a strong relationship with my dad, and not with Claude, and in this time I was told by my mom that her dad had died the day I was born (we found out a few months ago that he actually died the day after me). I started to think I was some sort of father curse, that I just wasn’t meant to have a dad, that my life would be easier just having my mom and God. I spent a lot of time praying in those intense months, mostly while lying on my bed listening to the arguments through the wall. The one night my mom burst into my room, and told me to get into the car and we spent the night at a friends house. I slept about 2 or 3 hours each night for about a week after that, giving me lots of time to pray and read the bible. I relied heavily on God during that time and I truly believe I understood him then more than I ever have since. In my mind he was my father, I didn’t need an earthly father, and neither did my mom. Soon after that I left for an exchange to America, partly cause Bush School had been so awesome I wanted to do it again, and partly to escape my 3 parents for a year. I was 15 and arrived to find a crazy single lawyer with a hot-tub, sauna, huge TV and a pool table. Talk about a bachelor doing it right! I got on extremely well with him (Dan Green) and I became far closer with him then I had been with my dad and Claude. I also went to his episcopalian church where I never really spiritually connected with the worship, the sermons or the people. So with my new father figure and a church where I didn’t get spiritual growth I soon drifted from God. In the course of a year I went from being in a deep relationship with God to living as though he never existed and starting to think the same way.

When I came back from the USA, I had had the experience of a lifetime, seen incredible places, done incredible things, and had to leave behind the only father I had ever been able to talk honestly to. I had got about a centimetre taller and about 12 kilograms heavier (AKA, I was a fatty). I had a trip home that would scare the pants off of serial killers but finally arrived at The Hole in the Wall, near Coffie Bay in the transkei, and all my family could talk about was my newly aquired shape. 😦 I wasn’t very impressed, but I was amazed at how much better mom and Claude’s relationship had become. I remeber being worried that things would get bad again now that I was back. Only now I wasn’t sure of my faith, and I felt like the Holy Spirit was just some sort of access into heaven, not a connection to a God who created me and loves me more than I can imagine. I never felt quite the same around my previous friends from Boys High in grade 9, but fortunately, my old friends sat in the Quad opposite a group of the most random people ever. They were imbued with an attraction to be completely random and illogical that all Irene Primary School graduates I have ever met have. In this group was Brian Nixon, who I had known before I went to the US and who I had skyped with in the US. So I began to chill more and more with him and the Irene Quad/Irene Gang/ the Quad and soon also became a bit random. :):) Some time in March Brian, Patrick and Jason invited me to an Eastside Friday night service. I was thinking “No ways, I don’t want to be made to feel guilty about the fact that I haven’t prayed or read my bible in a year and have serious doubts about God”, but I was also thinking “I haven’t been out in waaaay to long, and there are chicks at this place, besides, they talk about it a lot so now I can be part of that conversation”. So along I went, and it was pretty awesome, and there were chicks 🙂 and I felt a sense of exitement mixed with uncomfortableness as I sang the worship songs thinking they didn’t make any sense to me, but not guilty.  So I went again, and I really felt like I had to tackle my faith issue, and so I delved into the Word, looking for loopholes, for disproofs of evolution and Big Bang, stuff like that, which helps nothing really, because I never read that part of the Bible that says you can’t prove God, it must be faith. Those easter holidays I was at Sabie with my mom doing a bible study, and really connecting with God like I hadn’t in ages, when she told me her entire testimony. I was completely blown away by how she regained her faith after years of being faithless even though she was never healed (she had polio as a baby and had been prayed for… but that’s her testimony, not mine) but how God had came through and healed by brother Bryce as a baby. Now either my mom was a nut (which I didn’t believe) or all that she was saying about miracles and her complicated history with Christ was what she truly believed. I really felt my faith return after that and God reassured that faith with his presence around me and in my prayers. Soon after that I went to a worship night at Eastside, everyone went to the front and began to jump around like they were at a social. I liked jumping and socialising so this seemed like a pretty sweet deal, so I went to the front and as I sang the worship songs they just made sense, what those writers went through were real experiences of hardship/distance and of growth. Just like I was experiencing. As I was worshipping that night feeling like this is all real but wondering if that was just the awesome band, Jason Watson came up to me and simply said “Dude, when you worship hey, yoh, I can just see that it’s so real.” That changed me, I recommitted my life to the lord soon after that and sighned up for my first HC (Games Explosion, 2008). I don’t have some awesome experience from that Holiday Club, but I realised that deeds build your relationship with Christ in a way that’s hard to explain. Also, and more importantly, Eastside became a church I had true fellowship with. I felt loved when I arrived, and I never wanted to leave. I joined SCA at Boys High and became it’s head in matric. Summercamp that year was a eye-opener in the fact that I had been trying to grasp the concept of a God who created me, and the universe, and everything, and that I was stupid and needed to humble myself. The outreach also really touched me as I spoke to an elderly woman named Susan in the township and saw her pray with all her heart in a really rough situation. Again, Gray, stop being stupid, your problems aren’t that big and have never been, just humble yourself and have think about what you have seen, Jesus is alive. I really struggled with lust in matric (and continue to) and felt very guilty about leading SCA while going through some hectic spiritual resistance, but I had some strong friends to lean on and follow thier examples (even if I never spoke to them about stuff, I still watched thier relationships with Christ and how they operated). I was also always inspired by Earnest, a heavily rejected guy who had torrets and possibly some other issue, but he clung to Christ in everything he did. HC 2009 never helped me in my spiritual drought, and Summercamp 2010 was a month or two long spiritual high before a major crash as I hit varsity. Then came Eastercamp 2010, after a up and down spiritual ride since Jason spoke to me that night, I was asked to join the worship band for Eastercamp (now called Devoted camp). I agreed and was just blown away in practice sessions as we worshipped extremely intentionally and when we had short bible studies and prayer before and after our worship practices. Shae led worship and Mario drummed, and between the two of them and the way they worshipped I really felt the Holy Spirit touching me. Brian prayed in toungues for me at Choose Life one night quite a while before this which also encouraged me in worship, just to give myself over and the Holy Spirit will guide myself and others. 2010’s Holiday Club was the best one I had had, I really felt I had planted seeds in the kids lives and that God was using me, his willing tool. Trailer ministry that followed was exhausting but rewarding. I was blown away the one day when a kid asked me to re-explain the evangecube and gospel message just after I had done a pretty shoddy job the first time, when a little girl got up, took the cube from me and promptly explained the Gospel to a group of other kids. Since then I have had growth with occasional lapses mostly related to lust and the guilt that follows. But all in all I felt myself coming closer to God.

This years Holiday Club (2011) at Eastside I had the most personel and real encounter with the Holy Spirit I think I have ever had. The first saturday of training Abel gave us a personality test which was pretty cool and then gave us the Gospel message simplified. I was just reminded of how ridiculous Christianity actually is, how Jesus’ sacrifice doesn’t make any sense at all unless you realise that he is love personified, that night in worship I was filled with a super sense of expectation for the week. I knew that the most absurd requests about the following week were going to be intensified in their absurdity and then answered. But the most incredible moment was on the Thursday of Holiday Club. My mom had had a shoulder operation exactly 3 weeks earlier, and I had to go check my calculus exam perusal, so I stopped by the house to eat milo cereal and say wassup to my mom. She said she was very happy because she had been able to sleep that night without painkillers. This was the first time in 20 nights that she had been able to sleep without drugs because the pain she was experiencing was so great. It sort of blew my mind, but it was HC so I was in a rush, got to the church, completely owned in the obstacle course (go Dan’s team) and went to contemplate this in typical intravert style by going to the chill tent and thinking about it there by myself. But I fell asleep, and then had work to do, and then it was worship time. So it was only at the start of worship that I began to think about what that constant pain must feel like and we sang a song that said “He has conquered pain”. I was suddenly filled with an anger I never felt before, a strong anger at God. My mom loved him, and had already suffered her whole life on crutches because God hadn’t healed her, and now He, the conquerer of pain, lets her suffer more. What more growth and pruning does she need!? At the end of the song Mark went to the front and began speaking, saying he felt there were 2 groups of people in the room. I remember thinking, “Oh yeah, the ones worshipping with all their hearts and those who are holding back… like I haven’t heard that one before”, but he said, “The ones who are angry at God and the ones who think God’s angry at them”. I could feel the Holy Spirit working in me, I can’t explain it, but I imagine that if someone jumps of a really high cliff towards firey spikes and a collection of starving man-eating animals, at some point his whole being, mind, body and soul all connect in the realization that he will die, and everything else becomes insignificant. That’s sort of what I was feeling, my physical body was shaking, goosebumps, tears, the works, my mind could only focus on what Mark was saying, my emotions were dominated by rage at God and shock that Mark was being led to speak to me (if you think I’m crazy right now, I understand, but when I was there I perfctly understood what was happening, is was the same spirit leading Mark that was encouraging my anger), spiritually I felt like God was slapping me accross the face and screaming “WHAT WAS THAT PUNK!? IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, SPEAK LOUDER!!!” well anyway, when Mark called people who wanted prayer to go forward I marched up and he began praying for me. I listened to the words, but they were being lost in the sea of thoughts and emotions rocking my world, and then Shae’s voice interupted procedings with “Amazing love, how can it be? That You my king would die for me”. Spiritually: “YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT YOUR MOM IS SUFFERING, I FEEL HER PAIN, AND I LOVE HER FAR MORE THAN YOU, SO DON’T BE ARROGANT IN THINKING THAT YOU WORRY FOR HER PAIN MORE THAN ME. ALSO, I SUFFERED A LOT WORSE, IF I LET HER FEEL THE PAIN OF CRUCIFIXTION SHE WOULD SLEEP SOUNDLY IF SOMEONE OPERATED ON HER WITHOUT ANASTETIC!” well, those weren’t the exact words I was feeling racking my brain, but that was the just of it. And just like that, the Lord had opened up a resentment I had against him that I never even knew about, encouraged it until I was completely consumed by it, and then obliterated it and humbled me. Waterkloof Holiday Club (Superheroes) the following week was incredible as I got to share many parts of this testimony and my knowledge and things that have stood out to me with an incredible group of kids who actually listened to what I said and took it to heart. And here I am now, looking at photo’s being led to write this. I hope you have enjoyed it. I take pride in what God has done in my life and in the lives of those I have impacted, glorify him because of what he’s done.