- Good morning. My name is Lauren and I'm a recent graduate from UC Riverside and it's a privilege to be able to share with you this morning how God has worked in my life. I had grown up attending church every Sunday as early as I can remember. I have fond memories of it from when I was a child, but still I would not have considered myself a church kid as many people's testimonies would go and there are many reasons for that.

Since early childhood, I was taught about God and as I would graduate into the next ministries as I got older, my curiosity would ever so slightly grow too. Transitioning into middle school, I moved to a different area and before that I had never dealt with change in my life.

During that time in youth ministry, I found the pastor's messages very engaging and encouraging to my troubled soul. In seventh grade, I went on a retreat. There God revealed his presence to me through worship and prayer. For the first time, I felt that God was in the same room as me and that he wanted to have a relationship with me.

The church I went to did not emphasize the importance of being in the word. My relationship with him was vague, but my desire to be near him was strong. I only knew God to be a feeling, so when life continued to move, I fell away due to my lack of foundation.

In my first year of high school, my church relocated. Many of my friends went to a different church. The remaining people were all very close to each other, being family friends and going to the same school. Though I knew most of them my whole life, it was a group that was difficult to infiltrate.

My family seemed to share the same sentiment and slowly we stopped going. Finally, I found myself in a relationship very early in my first year of high school. He was everything to me, my taste and my identity shaped by him, my friends attached to him, and my comfort and pride came from him.

He was not Christian and at the time, my relationship with God was something I still treasured and was chasing after. I thought my faith was important to me. I knew that this was something that a Christian was not supposed to do because of the many compromises that would arise.

I knew God was watching and would be displeased, but my lust and curiosity led me to continue anyway. I felt like I was building a wall thicker and thicker between me and God because I couldn't face him and the guilt only started to fade away as my heart began to harden.

But even still, I knew that God saw right through this wall and being on the other side, I saw right through this wall as well and yet I couldn't reach him. There was something in me that still desired the comfort I had felt that I only knew came from God.

After a couple years, we broke up and naturally my whole world shattered. We shared the same friends who would circumstantially reveal that their loyalty sided with him. I sought to fill the void in my heart with other relationships, but instead hurt those I used selfishly for physical and emotional comfort and lost almost all of the remaining friends I had.

As much as I wanted to care about, didn't want to care about anything anymore going into college, I learned very quickly that drinking and searching for validation in others was also vanity and also led to emptiness. Still early in my first year of college, I was invited to attend a retreat by one of the Christian fellowships on campus by a hallmate of mine.

I really had nothing to lose and I also thought that I hadn't been in a Christian retreat in a while, so I agreed. I got to the retreat and I was excited to meet people, but during the morning devotional, God met me through his word. I knew that he brought me there for a reason and I promised to him that I would hear him out with what he had to say that weekend and God challenged me through this promise.

Through the messages and through the conversations I had with people, I realized how little I knew about Christianity. There were so many concepts I've never heard of and I was shocked to learn how much I misunderstood, not even knowing the gospel by name, but just as a mere story in the Bible.

For the first time, I had met people who exuded joy because of their close relationship with Christ and they naturally poured out a love that was supernatural. During a Q&A, I sat in distress learning about what Christians believed and why and how it contradicted to the values that I held that were shaped by the world.

I had told God that I would hear him out and I knew that if I chose one of these world views, I would have to completely reject the other. A staffer approached me and walked me through a few of my questions and through the gospel once more and asked me if I wanted to accept Christ in my life.

Although my understanding was elementary, I knew very well that there was nowhere else to run that would be able to fill the emptiness in my heart. I realized then it wasn't God who wasn't answering to me all these years, but me who did not listen. All of my life, I had sinned against the holy God who created me and loved me even though I deserved eternal death.

God already shed his love for me by sending his one and only begotten son to die on the cross for my sins. And as a sinner, I could do nothing to repay such a debt I owe to the one and only who deserves my worship and praise. I prayed to accept Christ and give him my life.

From that point on, I was like a sponge wanting to know everything about God and soak in everything. And as the years in college passed, God continued to walk with me and sanctify me. And though it was challenging at times, I saw my desires change and my joy grow in him as I learned more about God's character.

And seeing even more greatly each day how depraved I was and still am makes me tremble in fear and awe and beyond grateful for this grace that I've been given. All I have and is for Christ. Thank you.