Cherishingsparrows2020 @Cherishingsparrows2020@dingdash.com

MY CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY - 1ST PART

The Lord be praised now and forever!

My name is Antonio and I want to tell what God did for me and how he saved me and gave me eternal life in Christ Jesus.

In the 1990s, before I met Christ, I was leading, in my opinion, a life that I considered normal, like that of many other young people of my age. I was a good boy raised on sound principles. I had a deep and intense passion for music; I also studied the piano for over eight hours a day. I was fully immersed in the cultural life of the classic music world. I played concerts, won piano competitions and always got excellent results. I have not only been involved in the study of the piano but also in that of conducting and composition.

MY CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY - 2ND PART

Basically, according to my ideals, I lacked nothing or at least nothing of what a young person could want. He seemed to me to be fine and to feel happy. I was an atheist! I was not a calm atheist but I was a convinced atheist and that, on every possible occasion, I fought every religious idea or practice, of any religion.

However, when I reached the end of my musical studies, I began to feel a great emptiness inside me. I felt like I had everything but I felt empty all the same, I felt depressed and very sad. So I started to move away from the sound principles of life that had been instilled in me and, believing to solve my problem, I let myself go, and I began to live my life experiencing everything that the world offered me, without restraints and without limits. Everything I could do and that could give me strong emotions I experienced without thinking twice.

MY CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY - 3RD PART

However, things did not improve at all, not even when I was hired as a teacher following the victory of a state competition. Not even the permanent teaching job, so coveted in my country, where work is often just a mirage, was able to fill that emptiness inside me and take away that sense of frustration in my heart. Nothing seemed to ease my suffering. So I fell into a very deep depression and, despite being a convinced atheist and always polemical against the religious, I began to ask myself new questions, which had never crossed my mind before; I began to wonder what had become of me if I had died at that moment. I didn't have the answer.

It was at that time, back in 1999, that driven by the desire to find an answer to my question about the existence of the afterlife, I began to read various religious texts of ancient civilizations and of Eastern and Middle Eastern religions. But nothing to do. I didn't find the answer.

MY CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY - 4TH PART

Nothing seemed to satisfy my thirst and my hunger to know more about the meaning of life and life after death. I also began to read a few pages of the Old Testament from an old Bible that my parents had in the bookshelf and that no one had ever really read. But I didn't understand anything.

All this went on like this until I ended up no longer sleeping at night. For five full months I could not sleep more than a few hours a night; and I didn't know how to get out of this tunnel. So one night, in the darkest moment of my life, although I thought I was a convinced atheist, I chose to make a simple prayer, which no one had ever taught me, and I said: "Lord, if you exist, do something for me".

MY CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY - 5TH PART

A few days after this prayer something happened. I was introduced to an engaged couple with whom I arranged to spend an evening together. So, after only a few days, here we are together again, eating a sandwich and talking about this and that. But that evening was not like any other! It was a special evening that nothing and no one can ever erase from my memory and from my life. From speech to speech I found myself talking about my research on truth and the fact that I had also read a few pages of the Bible.

So they opened up to me and told me there was an answer to all my questions; they confessed to me that they were evangelicals and asked me if I would like to speak more deeply with an elderly brother of the community they frequented, the girl's father. I readily accepted the invitation.

MY CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY - 6TH PART

That evening I will never be able to forget. We arrived at the home of these brothers very late. It wasn't the normal time to go see someone; yet they welcomed me with joy. We sat around a table and they asked me what I wanted to know. So as they spoke, they began to preach the gospel to me. But I countered everything they said to me, feeling strong in my philosophical and atheistic convictions. But then the church elder's wife said these words to me: “Unless anyone is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God,” and the scene changed completely.

To me those were not normal words; I felt something powerful, I felt a sweet presence in the room, I felt an enveloping love; I did not know how to explain it but I could no longer be a philosopher; all my arguments ran out. I had no more questions.

MY CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY - 7TH PART

That evening I was given a gospel and was invited to their church meetings. I began reading the New Testament with a spiritual hunger never seen before. As I read the Gospel I felt a profound peace and felt within me an ever more convincing confirmation that this was the Way.

I started attending church meetings that same week. And it was in one of those meetings that, one evening, I completely surrendered; God had won! The Holy Spirit convinced me of sin, he clearly showed me the sacrifice that Jesus Christ had made on the cross and that it was also made for me and to give me eternal life. So I confessed all my sins to God, believed in Jesus and accepted him as my personal Savior and Lord. I felt a powerful release and joy flooding me. The old things no longer interested me. Now I wanted to live for Jesus alone and do God's will. What a powerful experience!

MY CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY - 8TH PART

Now I knew that I had eternal life and that if I died at that moment I would go to Heaven. I finally had the answer! God had answered me! God had heard that simple prayer I had made in the darkest moment of my life. Glory to God!

Since that day everything has become new. I immediately began to feel a fire burning inside me; I had a desire to share my experience of salvation in Jesus Christ with everyone I knew; and I did. I testified to my parents, my relatives and all my friends. To God be all the glory.

MY CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY - 9TH PART

After my conversion, other young people also came to Christ, even those friends who had brought me to the church elder's home. God sent a real revival in the small evangelical community we frequented. Many young people, who had attended Sunday school since childhood and were children of believers, when they saw what God had done in my life, they too began to seek the Lord with all their hearts and God also worked in their lives. How wonderful are the ways of God!

So I immediately began to serve the Lord with zeal and strong conviction. And in that same community God also made me meet Anna, a dear sister in Christ with the same desire to serve the Lord, and who later became my wife. Since then we have served the Lord together with all our hearts.

MY CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY - 10TH PART

We have had to face many storms together. Even today, in 2022, we are facing a really heavy one. We can testify, however, that God has never left us alone and has never abandoned us and that nothing and no one will ever be able to separate us from the love of Christ.

We place our entire life in His glorious hands and we are confident that God has a wonderful plan for us, and that He meditates for us and also for you who read, thoughts of peace and good, to give us a future and a hope.

To God be all the glory for all that he has done and that he will still do for me and my wife.

I pray that this testimony will be edifying for anyone who reads it and that it will also put in your heart the desire to know Jesus and to let him enter your life.

God bless you all, in Christ Jesus.

Brother Antonio

@Cherishingsparrows2020 @sinbach it’s a little crazy over here. The other night almost 5000 were gathered and moved the other night! 😔😔😔😔😔

@weavers4jesus, how can we be in prayer for you specifically?

"There was a husband and wife who served many years in the ministry as missionaries in a far away land.

As they returned to the States, the arriving ship was greeted by a brass band. Their initial thought was that this was an arranged greeting to honor them -- but soon discovered that a dignitary was also on the ship.

They collected their luggage and booked a cheap motel room. While sitting on the bed, the husband started to cry and said, "We've served God for many years. We've got no money, no house, and when we've returned home, there's not even anyone to meet us!"

His wife looked at him and said, "Hon, we're not home yet!"

Once we accept that it is the role of every believer to heal and cast out demons; we are finally ready to start asking practical questions about how to do it. Enough debates about “if” we can do it. It’s time to get to the questions of “how.”

For example:
“How do we recognize the presence of a demon?”

Any thoughts?

@faith20 We are 80 miles from there. Prayer is the biggest thing now. There has been so much help materially that no more is needed for the moment. Pray for the families. Pray that God can use this to draw some hearts to Christ.

I worked for twenty years in primary school. Reading news like what happened yesterday in Texas breaks my heart. 💔 I pray that God will console the hearts of the families of those little children. I have no other words ...💔 💔 💔

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61573377

Urgent help needed in Bangladesh! 57 dead and two million displaced. Tens of thousands homeless. BTJ sending aid to our missionary partners now
YOU CAN HELP US BY SHARING THIS INFO WITH OTHERS
https://backtojerusalem.com/urgent-help-needed-%e2%9a%a0%ef%b8%8f-57-dead-and-two-million-displaced-as-deadly-floods-smash-bangladesh/

"If you think tough men are dangerous, wait till you see what weak men are capable of." - Jordan Peterson

😯 China rounds up thousands of people, marches them down the streets, loads them on busses, and locks them up in 'quarantine camps."
https://backtojerusalem.com/china-marches-thousands-of-people-out-of-homes-put-them-on-buses-and-ships-them-off-to-quarantine-camps/

Update from Mark's daughter - The reports of my father (Mark) just came now... Nothing but a miracle. I have no words to thank you for your prayers.

Its a grade 1 tumor. Tho rare, its small and slow growing...

Nothing to worry... But it has to be removed soon as it could become cancerous..

Thanks a million once again for praying..

But plz continue to uphold him in ur prayers for the upcoming surgery to remove this tumor. 🙏🏼