Hello, my name is Jamie, and I am a junior in high school in the youth ministry. This is my testimony of how God has worked in my life. I was born in New York and was a pretty big troublemaker as a kid. I grew up going to church every Sunday with parents who were faithfully serving the Lord.

At a young age, I heard the gospel, but it had no personal meaning to me. My family moved to Maryland when I was in third grade, and when I was around eight or nine I was exposed to lustful things by a friend, and I quickly grew an addiction. Along with this, other sins opened up in my heart, such as lying and deceiving my parents and always talking about lustful things.

I indulged in these things for about a year. I felt a little bit ashamed for my sins, but I was also clueless at the same time and did not realize the extent to how sinful my actions were. About a year later, my mom caught me in one of my lies.

This led her to ask me, "What else have you been hiding?" I confessed to her my lust problem as well as many other things I had been hiding and lying about for the past year. While confessing felt like a huge weight was lifted off my heart, I still did not understand how wretched of a sinner I was before God and how much I needed salvation.

But I could see how grieved my parents were that at such a young age my heart was so full of sin. It was at this point that I started to look to God through prayer and reading His word more seriously. A lot of things changed in my life, but for the wrong reasons.

I did not struggle with lust as much and became a better behaved kid, but these were just to please my parents who I had grieved a lot. It was clear that I still did not have a relationship with God. Two years later in seventh grade, I was at a retreat where a lot of people gave their testimonies.

It was a blessing for me to hear about God's work in these people's lives. After this retreat, I came away with a sense of desperation, realizing that my fate was to end up in hell, separated from God. I thought about how miserable and unfulfilling life would be if I continued to live in sin as I already had been up to that point.

God showed me how true life and joy outside of Him was impossible. A few days after the retreat, I repented of my sins and Christ came to my heart. For the first time, Christ's love through the cross became real to me and I had peace. I felt so much gratitude to God knowing how much grace He had poured out on me.

There have been trials that tested my faith to prove its genuineness. In 2017, my family abruptly left our home church and moved out to California a few months later to a new church with a different culture. My parents said that the old church and its teachings were no longer following God.

This really shook my faith and for a while, I struggled in my relationship with God. I had a hard time understanding why God would lead us out of the church where I had first come to salvation and grown. But by God's grace, especially during the last several months of COVID, He gave me a growing desire to know Him more.

I now see how Christ used the struggle I had to show me more clearly the treasure I have in Christ. He has shown me that no matter the circumstances or hardships, He is the same unchanging God and is always worthy of my worship and all that I am. One passage that applies to my life is Titus 3, 3-7 which says, "For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.

But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace, we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

I am so grateful to God for the mercy He poured out on me through Jesus Christ. I am the person that these verses speak about, foolish, disobedient, and enslaved to my lusts and pleasures, but purely by God's grace can I stand before Him righteous in His eyes. I continue to battle my flesh every day, but my prayer for myself is that I grow spiritually daily and never forget what Christ has done for me and live this new life to glorify Him.

Thank you. >> Thank you for your testimony. We understand that when you go into the water, you are united with Christ in His death. When you come out of the water, you are united with Christ in His resurrection so that you can walk in human delight. I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.