By God’s grace I am a 32-year-old homeschooling mom of three, with high hopes to have a quiver full of children. It is amazing how far I have come from my childhood.

My parents divorced when I was a baby. I was raised by my mom and grew up effectively as an only child. My mom had been raised in the Southern Baptist church, but somewhere along the way she rejected her upbringing. When I was six we became Jehovah’s Witnesses. Eventually we fell away from the Jehovah’s Witness cult but still believed much of what they taught.

I was also easily swayed by culture. Without any Christian guidance, I found myself believing much of what our culture holds up as good.

I was a feminist who had said that the Bible was written by male chauvinist pigs and that organized religion was the cause of most war. I loved material things and believed I deserved anything I wanted. As a result I began to shoplift in high school, and in my twenties I turned to credit cards, maxing them out one after another. While I didn’t love others or ever sacrifice for them, I declared that I was in the top 5% of compassionate people and claimed that it was rare to meet someone like me.

I liked to wallow in my depression, looking to blame someone for anything to justify my pity party. I didn’t seek God or care about the truth, especially if it interfered with my life. I would have considered being a homemaker a prison sentence, and certainly nothing worthy of praise. God would have been fully justified to strike me dead at many points in my life.

In 2004 I became pregnant. My boyfriend at the time became my husband, and we began our life together—jobless, both unsaved, and having never heard the full gospel.

In 2007 my husband heard the gospel on the radio. He brought the message home to me. We listened to men witness to people on the street. I heard the full gospel in a powerful, God glorifying way. I don’t remember what I thought the first time, but I began to think about how other people apart from Christ were going to hell, that they should repent of their sin before it was too late. But I never applied it to myself. It didn’t affect me; I didn’t care.

About that time we found out I was pregnant with our second child. At the news, I sobbed. I didn’t want any more kids. I finally had a job that I loved and that gave me the sense of being important. Now that our first child was older I didn’t have to work as hard to take care of him.

In 2007, seventeen weeks pregnant, I had a miscarriage. The first night in the hospital I was too afraid to fall asleep. I was terrified that death was waiting. I knew I deserved hell and if I died that night that would be my eternal condition. While I never would have had an abortion, the wish to have a miscarriage had been ever present. It became clear that God judged more than my actions: He judged my thoughts. In my heart I had an abortion and that made me a murderer. It was as if a sheet had been lifted off my eyes and I could see how evil I was.

That fear went on for a week before it was replaced with assurance that I was saved. I found a love for Christ. I don’t remember, as clearly, the moment I first fell on my face before God and repented of my sin. But I clearly see tangible changes that could only come from being made a new creature. By God’s grace He also chose to save my husband and did not leave either of us with an unsaved spouse.

Over the next few years we lost two more babies in the same way. God walked with me through those dark valleys, even when I ran from Him or shook my fist in anger at these trials. He kept drilling into my mind and my heart Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.”

He brought me out of these dark places filled with a peace about the loss of my children, a trust in His will. He even gave me joy that my three lost babies can say, “I never knew a day I wasn’t in the presence of God.” Indeed I would say they are blessed. It gives me such joy that, while a child I had no covenant promises extended to me since my parents were not Christians, God now extends his covenant promises to my children.

I have been stretched and molded, as God has smashed my idols and ground me to dust in order to remove my sin. God has taken my comforts in this life and replaced them with something incorruptible that will not fade away. He has filled me with an inexplicable joy, more amazing than anything I ever felt before. And no matter how far I try to run from Him, He finds me and brings me back.

My sin is now firmly laid on Jesus Christ and I stand before God sinless. I was a rebel, a criminal, a child of Satan, but because of Christ I now am a faithful servant, a loved child and daughter of the King, who has the audience with the creator of universe. And only because of Christ, the day I die I will enter heaven to the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

David

I have always considered myself a Christian. Growing up, we hardly ever went to church. I would pray here and there if I wanted something, and occasionally I would try to read the Bible; but was never able to get into these habits. As I became older, I knew I was supposed to be doing these things, but I found that very difficult. I now see, I was just uninterested. There were periods where I attended a large church. Being very judgmental and self-righteous, I was happy to adopt many of the conservative positions a Christian should have: Things like believing the Bible was perfect, Jesus is God, He is the only way to get to heaven, hell is real, abortion is bad, homosexuality is bad, etc. But the book of John says that eternal life is to know God, and I had no desire to know God. I did not have eternal life. There were times when I considered not being a Christian anymore, but what I really wanted was to escape hell; and I assumed I could live a pretty good life even with the restrictions of the religion.

In 2003, I met Michele. We got married, had Lucas, and by 2007 things were going pretty well for us. I had a nice job, Michele had a nice job. We were making headway on our debt. I was pretty happy. We attended a conservative mega church in the area, but not regularly.

When I looked at other Christians, many of them seemed very excited, interested in the Bible and prayer, and I didn’t understand why. People talked about having a relationship with God, and that wasn’t something I could relate to. I assumed that most people must be either faking it or that their personality was the type to be excited about everything.

Eventually, I started to wonder how it was possible that God would send people to hell who had never heard the gospel. It seemed that God sent His Son, and if we reject Him we go to hell. Why didn’t He just not send Jesus? It seemed like a big setup, at our expense. It was as though God threw innocent man into a dark maze, with one hidden exit that if we didn’t find we would be punished for. But God of course didn’t want to punish us, He loved us. It made no sense whatsoever.

So, while I considered myself to be a very good person and others to be phony or overly enthusiastic, God was becoming more and more unjust in my eyes. I, the creature, sat in judgment over the Creator and His creation. God could have left me in foolish, prideful ignorance and used me to glorify His wrath, anger, and justice.

Five years ago, on New Years Day, I heard someone sharing the gospel to someone else on the radio. He asked her if she thought she was good. When she said yes, he asked her if she’d ever lied. If she’d ever stolen. If she had ever looked with lust or hatred at another. Each time she said yes, he pointed out what kind of person does such things: a liar, a thief, an adulterer, and a murderer—and that before God on judgment day, this is how she would be seen.

How gracious of God to allow me to hear the gospel! But I rejected it. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; I found it offensive. I thought one needed to win people over by talking about God’s love and how it will change your life. But a week or so later I listened again. And over the next couple months, I listened a few more times. Totally self-righteous, I never saw myself as the criminal.

One night, when I was alone, God did something amazing. He changed who I was. He made me into a new person. And in an instant, it hit me. For the first time, I had some sense of God’s holiness. I saw that He was good, and worthy of my honor and obedience, and that He was loving for offering someone such as me salvation. I saw myself for what I was: prideful, self-righteous, ungrateful.

I burst into tears because I saw all of this, who He was, who I was. I realized how worthy His Son is, and how I have so horribly treated Him, and yet He would offer me salvation. I was changed forever there. Not by any decision of mine I didn’t decide to regard God as Holy, Jesus as the King, and myself as sinful— but this is what God did for this sinner. While I was standing in judgment over God, He had already judged Christ in my place. * —David and Michele Daniels*

David and Michele Daniels attend Immanuel RPC in West Lafayette, Ind. David is enrolled at Purdue working on his Ph.D. in math, while Michele cares for the home and homeschools. They have been married for 8 years.