It’s time for me to post what most Christians would call my “testimony” It’s basically the story of how I came to know Jesus.
I’ve hinted at it on and off of my blogs, but up until now I haven’t given the whole thing in one fell swoop.
I wrote it down part of it a couple of months after the events because I didn’t want to forget anything. I wrote the other part sometime this year. I know I still didn’t get all of it in there,l while I was writing it. And some of it is personal and doesn’t need to be online anyway.
This is about the second time in my life that Jesus saved me:
The death and Rebirth of Daniel
God still works. A lot of people can try to deny it. A lot of people may not see it, but it is true.
I went out with a girl in 1997-1998 my last year of college. God had told me that she wasn’t the one.
But I was stubborn so stubborn I convinced myself that she was who God wanted for me. In 1998 I graduated and moved to Davenport for my first full time job. My church attendance began wavering and eventually, it was more rare to see me in than out. Some of this was due to work and traveling between Osky and Davenport on the weekends. In Feb. 1999 I got a job with Musco back in Oskaloosa and I thought that this was great that me and my girlfriend could be close again.
In the summer of 2000, due to circumstances I finally opened my eyes and saw that God did not want us together. I reluctantly broke up with her. It was about that time I stopped going to church
altogether. I was angry. Ashamed. Heartbroken.
In 2002, I met up with another girl who I knew we weren’t meant to be, but it felt good to be with
someone again. She tried getting me back into church because she knew it was once important to me, but I also didn’t tell her that I didn’t mind missing as much. After all, I was still praying. Still calling myself a Christian. What kind of Christian would claim he didn’t want to go to church?
In 2004 I broke up with her because my previous girlfriend had called me. I didn’t want to go out with her again, but the string of emotions I felt brought me under conviction to break up with girlfriend number 2.
I’ve kept them anonymous to protect their privacy. So I gave up another girlfriend for the sake of
conviction? A conviction that I was slowly drawing away from. This was the beginning of hell for me. My life consisted of work and going home. At home I’d watch cartoons, movies or video games. I was alone.
In August 2004 my basement flooded. My furnace needed replaced. My dryer broke. So now I was
poor and lonely. I spent 2005 paying off debts and barely keeping my bank account happy.
As of 2006 it had been at least since 2001 since I’d been to church regularly. At this time even my closest friends were kept at a distance. They knew about my money crunch but they didn’t know the internal battle that waged on the inside. I agonized over being alone, but it freaked me out to bring anyone in. If I told people how I really felt, would they laugh. Would they distance themselves farther than I’d kept them? I had lost my one true love, or so I thought. I tried to love another and thought I did, but I couldn’t. Maybe I was now unable to love or be loved. Looking back this is very dangerous thinking. It leads to questioning and then doubting that God could even still love me. I was alone.
In February 2006, I believe it was then that God started to tell me to go back to church. Or was it then that I was only beginning to listen? My friend James got backstage passes to the Barlow Girl concert and invited me to go.
I said yes. A free concert is a free concert after all. When we got there I hadn’t realized it was one of those mega-churches. It looked more like a mall than a church, but still the strangeness of being inside a church after so long felt so odd. Would God strike me down for not being faithful? If he’d wanted to do that would he really wait until I was back in a church?
Two other things struck me while I was there. One we went backstage and had our pictures taken. One of the Barlow girls put her arm around me. Common I suppose in group photos to make sure everyone gets in, but how long had it been since anyone touched me? I mean I hugged my nephews when I’d seen them, and other family members … or did I even do that much? Human touch had been missing from my life for far too long.
The second thing was the song Rebecca St. James sang when we came back out from backstage. She said she wrote it for an old friend whose name was also Daniel. She said he had walked away from God, and this song would be the one thing she would tell him if she ever got the chance to see him again and could only tell him one thing and that was that he was loved.
Those girls will never know how much they moved my heart that night … Unless they ever read this, if you are, thank you for doing God’s work.
Still I was stubborn and didn’t listen to God to go back to church. Why couldn’t I just serve him on my own anyway?
Hebrews 10:25
“not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one
another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. “
Nice Biblical answer… I was about to receive my own answer, much more personal to me. For now, I still had my pain. My regret. My doubts.
In May 2006, I got inspired to go back to church again. I’d been battling the inclination to go back for a while, but this time I was really determined to go. But then I got a weird neck cramp and I could barely move on Saturday. By Sunday it got worse so I missed church yet again.
Sunday evening I could barely breathe when I laid down to sleep. I called Mom and Dad and they took me to the ER at Osky Hospital. The doctor on call told me to see the chiropractor in the morning and gave me some pain killers and muscle relaxants. He said the pain was what was making it hard to breathe.
Three days of going to the chiropractor and I still wasn’t any better. And now I could barely move at all. The chiropractor said, “You should’ve been better by now. You don’t look like you feel well, and you look yellow.”
I hadn’t noticed my color before that but I was starting to feel sick. And I ached all over. Went to
Family Medical after that. Dr. Hirl cleared his schedule to take some time to look at me and sent me up to Iowa City Hospital.
Mom and Dad took me up there. I was there for a couple of days with hepatitis like symptoms. My color had almost gone back to normal by Thursday morning. Except for when Mom and Dad visited me I felt so alone. I had gone so quickly to the hospital that almost no one knew I was up there. The question I kept asking myself was would they come if they did know?
I was humiliated in the hospital. For one you have no privacy. You are barely clothed and they
wouldn’t let me eat so they could run tests on me. I was so tired. so weak. so alone.
It was during this time that God made it clear to me why I needed the church. It was the support they give you. Even if they couldn’t be there it would’ve been nice to know that more people were concerned and praying.
I felt such a loss. For so long I’d been turned away from God. But here in the hospital, I was at my lowest. Alone. Guilty of lust, pride, selfishness, lying(after all no one knew what I was going thru all this time). I didn’t want them to know. I realized I had wanted to wallow alone. How was this possibly something I wanted? I definitely didn’t want anyone else to know me. I was disgusting.
I knew that if something didn’t change I was dead. Was this what God was telling me? That if I didn’t change I was going to die like this? I realize now that he was speaking spiritually, but spiritually is what matters. What good is it to gain a whole world and lose your soul?
It was how I described my nakedness and shame in the hospital, my life was now an open book to the doctors after I’d fought so hard to keep people out. It was like that with God. He saw thru my barriers, my lie. He saw into my heart and even then he loved me. No lie had been greater than the time I had concluded that I was unloved and unable to love. Satan had lied to me. I was LOVED! Looking back at what I’ve written here I realize that this is the greatest missed truth by most people today. That their Maker knows them and loves them Greatly.
Then the only place left to look was up. I know now that God found me that night. Figuratively, or was it spiritually, when I looked up I found myself at the foot of the cross. Sometime during all that I gave it all up to God. No more holding back I finally accepted what he did for me. I traded him.
His righteousness, for my disgustingness.
The Hospital released me on that Friday. I was weak all weekend so Dad gave me a ride to church and I’ve been going since. Jesus had saved me. I wasn’t not going to go.
I found that I tested negative for anything serious like hepatitis. The doctors never found out what I had. A month and a half later, God directed me to help with the youth. That night was prayer night and I was going to only pray for the youth, but then I remembered all the pain, joy, and confusion of high school.
This made me feel more than just a feeling. I had been wrestling with the idea a couple of weeks but I was still getting used to hearing the master’s voice again and he was basically putting his hand on me and not letting me go till I agreed with him. I cried uncontrollably. I asked Pastor Dave if I could help.
He said, “God has his finger on you, and you’re asking me for permission?”
We both agreed that God is king and we should do what He says.
God used my illness as a way of getting me to go to church regularly. He used my attendance at church to make sure I died to myself and then he rose me back up again with a new mission.
Over the last year God has been opening up new insights. I’ve been firsthand witness of his mercy and love. I’ve seen lives saved and changed. God has showed me that it is not what I do that changes lives it is what he does in me. He is the one who saves. He is the way. I only loved him because he first loved me and that is how it is for everyone else.
No matter how much I rewrite this I just can’t seem to capture it all. Why have I written it down? Lest I forget. I always wish to remember what God has done for me. And if anyone else finds themselves reading this, maybe this will point them to the Saviour. One thing to note looking back is that everything that we have is on loan from God. God has shown me that just as we have a physical body that we must take care of it, that when we get a new spiritual life that we must feed our spirit. Thru reading his word, going to church, prayer, and fellowship. Wonderful fellowship. God has restored my fellowship with fellow believers. With him in my heart and my brothers and sisters in Christ I am no longer alone. Even my relationship with my family has greatly improved. We do more stuff together now.
So I see now that when I fell away I was starving the spirit man and feeding the old man. Just before the old man finished choking the life of my spirit man, God supplied me with a can of spiritual spinach and it was my choice to eat the stuff. When I did the spirit man clobbered the tar out of the old man.
So does God still talk to people today? I say yes. He’s talked to me. And he’s talked to every other Christian out there. To give your heart to God you must first be called by God.
John 6:44
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.
Revelation 3:20
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.
This is the account of my new testimony.
A ragamuffin,
Daniel Job Birch
