My personal testimony of the work of Jesus Christ in my life.
I don't pretend to have the answers to any part of life, and I don't consider my interpretation of my life's events to be universally true. I only write this so the reader may better understand who I am, not to model my actions in their life, but that my experiences may cause them to investigate their own life and to discover who they are.
The beginning is the only place I can think to start. I was born in April 1978, and have been interested in the spiritual and esoteric side of life for as long as I can remember. My father and mother, I'm sure, greatly influenced me in that respect. During my earliest memories, around 1980, my father was a Baptist minister, and led me to seek the way that my Maker would have for my life. At the deepest levels of my being, I've always believed in God, or, at the very least, of the existence of a higher being. Sometime during 1983 or 1984, my parents left the Baptist church, and my journey to the truth took on a new dimension.
This is my testimony, so I won't discuss my parents' reasons for striking out on their own. One of the reasons that does factor into my own view of God, is the fact that religion is man-made and can actually obscure our view from who God really is. All religions begin with the best of intentions, but often take a few small ideas from the Bible, God's Word, and make an entire theology based on them. Our minds are finite, so the concept we have of God is limited by that. But when we accept a limited view of God and reject all attempts to expand that view, we are guilty of idolatry; believing in a God that doesn't really exist.
To check back on the progress of my journey, I recall that throughout my school-age years I was actually proud of the fact that I didn't attend church while my classmates did. With the simple logic of childhood, I also enjoyed the freedom of not being required to dress up and sit in a stuffy church on Sundays. I was happy to bask in my ignorance for many years, but during middle school and high school I began to feel a need for more. A sense that there was more to the world than could be seen grew stronger, and I began to search for what that was. There are as many concepts about the intangible as there are people who have ever lived on earth or will ever live, and I found quite a few that intrigued me greatly. Eighth grade is the first time that my search became mystical.
During my last year of middle school, I was given the opportunity to study Latin, which also brought up the study of Roman and Greek mythology. I was intensely interested in the ancients' belief in powerful beings which could bestow gifts beyond imagination and could also wreak utter havoc on measly humans, so far beneath their over-arching might. My father gave me his well-used Bible during that year, and I studied it a bit, but most of it seemed too familiar, and I was too interested in exploring other ideas, so I turned to brief, shallow studies of other world religions, including Hinduism and Islam. As these studies found their way into my school papers and speeches, I'm sure I tended to baffle my teachers and fellow students.
After high school, my exploration became ever more esoteric and mystical as I read what is referred to as New Age writings, to include Native American wisdom. Most of this struck a chord in me, which I believe now was pride. One of the biggest stumbling blocks between us and a personal relationship with God is our tendency to think that we are the most important being in our universe. The books that I read all discussed working toward increasing our spiritual awareness and ability, basically the ladder analogy which can be used in nearly any human endeavor. I entertained the ideas of karma and reincarnation, through which we constantly work to better ourselves, but in this we have all the power, God is merely a spectator as we work through our lives in the effort to reach the final goal of being enlightened.
These beliefs continued to coalesce and merge into my own personal religion as I entered the Air Force in 1998. I attended both Catholic and Wicca services during the 6 1/2 weeks of basic training, mostly as an excuse to avoid the ever-watchful eyes of the military training instructors, MTIs. A religion of personal power over my own destiny and development began to crumble during the seemingly endless year of technical training that immediately followed basic training. During my first training period as an Air Force weather observer, I became extremely depressed. Many factors added on top of each other until I became eager for an end. Financial problems compounded the stresses of restricted freedom, difficult study to learn a career that I did not want, and a growing knowledge that my recruiters had not been entirely truthful. Obviously enough, I was not in control of my life, and that made things even more difficult.
Graduating observer school, my life seemed to be back on track. I was still in training to be a weather forecaster, but many of the restrictions on my life had been lifted, I was being paid more, and I began to understand that there were many fates worse than being in the weather career field. Through all this, though, the feeling remained that there was something else that I needed. It took until the end of forecasting school for God to finally get me to pay attention.
During observing and forecasting school, I visited my aunt, uncle and cousins as often as I could. They lived in Mobile, Alabama, a mere hour's drive from Keesler AFB, Mississippi, where I was stationed. As I had never really had a chance to get to know them before, I loved every moment that I was able to spend with them. They were very involved in their local Baptist church, and of course I went along with them on Sundays when I visited. I listened to the sermons and sang the songs, but they seemed to be only guidance to better my life and develop my spiritual existence, when seen through the veil of my personal religion of enlightenment. To their credit, my relatives did not push me to accept their beliefs or to listen to something I wasn't ready to hear. If they had, I might have pulled back and would not be who I am today. God finally brought the message home through a pastor who visited the church one of the last Sundays before I was to graduate forecasting school and leave to another assignment. I decided that I needed to accept Jesus as Lord that day, the last Sunday of March 1999. The following Sunday I was baptized along with two of my cousins and two weeks after my decision I departed for my first military assignment to Holloman AFB in southern New Mexico.
Being a Christian is not the answer to all of life's problems, however, and living for God does not answer all of life's questions. My entire life has been a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, as I'm sure is true of most people, and the time after my conversion is no different. In fact, immediately after I became a Christian I sinned worse than I ever had up to that point. I left an environment of love and support with my relatives in the South for a new beginning, in a new place, with only one friend from my tech school times, who is a woman. I succumbed to temptation, but I won't go into details about my shortcomings, because with God's help I have worked through them and past them.
The high point of my time at Holloman AFB, and one of the reasons that I believe God brought me there, was a man named Chris, who I met at the base chapel. Chris was the charismatic youth pastor there, as well as being in the military. We became strong friends, and he guided me through studies that led me to understand what being a Christian was all about and helped me to grow in my relationship with the Lord. He also worked to develop me as a leader and teacher, eventually turning the youth group over to me as he finished his term of service with the Air Force and moved on. I will always treasure the memories and friendships that I developed during that time, as God worked in my heart and I turned my life over to Him. I attribute the many blessings in my life to Him and I have faith that He has been with me through all my ups and downs.
Leaving Holloman was another trying period in my spiritual walk, because my world was once again rearranged. I left the United States in February of 2002, the Air Force having assigned me to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan. For many reasons, the change was an upheaval. Though I was in the military, my assignment at Holloman was much like any other job. The office was open 24 hours a day, so my shifts were strange sometimes, but I went to work each day and went back home, often had weekends off, and very little restrictions. My time wasn't always my own, but I never went anywhere. My assignment to Kadena, however, is 180 degrees opposite. Over the past year, I have traveled from "home" on Okinawa to South Korea, Thailand, India, the Philippines, mainland Japan, and Guam, to a couple of those places more than once. I have walked inside the Taj Mahal, seen Mt. Fuji, ate lunch overlooking the Mekong River, and listened to a live bagpipe concert while leaning against a Humvee on a Philippine Air Force base. I have seen and done some amazing things, but that makes it hard to find a constant on which to base the furtherance of my spirituality. Again, I believe that God is orchestrating my life, demonstrating his love and power to me again and again.
I am happy and at peace with my life and all of the decisions, good and bad, that have led me to this point. I believe in God and have faith in who He is as I constantly seek to learn about Him and to know Him more fully. He has blessed me immeasurably and continues to do so. I want to live as He would have me live, not striving for the approval of men, though that is often a blessing of following God. One of the most recent lessons that God has taught me is humility. I have nothing and am nothing that He has not given me. For everything that someone may look at me and say, "look at how hard a worker he is," or, "look at how honest he is," or, "he's such a good person," it's not through my strength that any of that is accomplished. I'm haven't been that good or honest of a person, not from anyone's standards. I hope that when people look at me they see God shining through my life, whether they realize what that is. I have a hope and a peace, even in the face of war and hardship on earth, even unto death. For I have faith that God has so much more for me than there is in this life.
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Jeremy Henderson, March 2003, South Korea