Read Johnathans's Story
I grew up in St. Bernard Parish and I had the benefit of having two fine examples of Christians: my grandmother, Dorothy Mae Johnson, and my mother, Dorothy Hills. Beyond just being raised in a church. I look back and realized that I saw Christ demonstrated in the lives of those two women. For me, it may sound funny what I’m about to tell you, but this is really the moment before I profess faith. I was probably about seven or eight years old and back in that time, Mickey Mouse was one of my favorite cartoons. There were certain Warner Brothers films where they would show sequential clips, like different frames. I asked myself the question. I said, “Hmm, well, I wonder who made God.” Literally the thing that popped up in my mind as an answer, which I believe is from God, it was a blank frame. He self-existed, nobody created God.
So with that again, seven or eight years, old cartoons were a big thing for me. I asked a question in deep contemplation, that was the answer. And then at that point, all of the Bible knowledge I had at the time, at that time, all of the Sunday school, that was when I made the decision to follow Christ. When I think about the idea of what am I going to depend on to provide the security I need when so many things are uncertain, I know that my source is the Bible. Not because it’s a book written by people that are trustworthy. No, because it’s God’s word spoken and he has proved himself to be a God who is strong enough to answer a question of a seven or eight year old, and I know He is God strong enough to answer the questions of me at any point in time in my life.
God has given me, through the Lord Jesus Christ an identity that cannot be compared with. I’m in Christ, and what that’s going to mean for eternity can’t compare with any joy or any disappointment I would have with my identity in this life. The growth that I can see in myself, even in my thinking patterns of the way that I kind of would’ve just jumped on something that I wouldn’t jump on today, or things that I wouldn’t have been bold enough and faithful enough to partake in, in the past and I am today, and I know it’s by God’s spirit working in me. I love the fact that He is constantly changing me. He changed my life by giving me a hope that no man can take away and that no man gave.
