GYC SE 2014: The Daily Battle

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GYC Southeast

Christian Bull

My Testimony

Father in heaven, thank you so much for the gift of life.

Father, I pray that you may be with Thomas and I as we share our testimony.

I pray that you may send your spirit in Jesus' name, amen.

So I want to tell you guys how I became Adventist.

And I didn't grow up Adventist, I actually became Adventist 5 years ago.

So you could say that I am a new Adventist.

And how I became Adventist was through a literature evangelist.

And I remember praying for 6 months, asking God to come into my life and open doors because I didn't know God and I wanted to learn more about him, so I asked God, I said, God, I pray that you may open a door for me.

And I prayed that prayer for a while and 6 months later, he sent a literature evangelist to my house.

And he literally went straight to my door and as soon as this literature evangelist came to my house it was like an answer to prayer but the thing about it was I didn't know that that was God's providence working at the time And so when they came to my door, I rejected them.

When they came back the next day, I, they came back and I was like, what are they doing back here again?

And they said, well, we just wanna talk to your mother.

And I said, well, you know, my mother's not home.

And I was like, man, they're just not leaving, are they?

And when they came back the third time, I finally was gonna tell them, you know, you might as well just not come back, my mother's not home.

And as soon as I was going to tell them that my mother's not home, guess what happens?

And just think about God's providence at the time.

And it's like I'm rejecting God's prayer, trying to answer my own, God was answering my prayer and I was rejecting it So they came to my house the third time and my mom invited them in and I was like, you know what?

I should just have a little fun with them.

I should just ask him questions So I started asking them questions And I asked him the first question about Jesus.

I said, you know, who do you believe Jesus is?

And they told me really quick, they said, you know, Jesus is God.

And they started going through the Bible.

They started going through John chapter 1.

They started going through Hebrews chapter 1, Colossians chapter 1, 14 through 17 and I was blown away.

You're telling me about Jesus in the Bible?

And you're giving me, it was like they were giving me a little Bible study.

And so I asked, because I was so intrigued, I asked for Bible studies.

I said, you know, can I receive a Bible study?

And they were like, yes, yes, we'll give you a Bible study.

So I started receiving 3 Bible studies a week.

And During this time of learning the Bible and learning these new truths, every time I learned the Bible, I came back home and I started sharing whatever I learned with my family.

Whether it was about the Sabbath, whether it was about the state of the dead, no matter what it was, I came back and I started sharing the truths that God had revealed to me in the Bible to my family.

And I noticed that at this time when I was sharing, I was like, I want to get some training experience.

So I decided to go to a missionary training camp.

And at this missionary training camp, we studied the Bible, we studied different topics for 4 hours in the morning, and then later in the afternoon, we were supposed to go out and outreach.

And we were to go to the University of Michigan campus in Eastern Michigan University, and we were supposed to go outreach to people, to students on that campus.

And I'll tell you right now that that experience at that missionary training camp was the best, the closest experience that I ever had with Christ because I was both learning and I was both doing.

I was learning the truth of God and I was telling people about God and at this moment at this time in my life This was the period of my life where I had the greatest love to Christ was when I was at that missionary training program Well as you can see I was so excited I was like man.

I want to learn more And so I decided to attend Southern Adventist University.

And it was so awesome when I first came to Southern.

When I first came to Southern, I went to a class, it was called The Life and teachings of Jesus.

And as I was in this class, I remember the first day we had sung a hymn.

And after the hymn, it was with Doug Tilstra, he stopped the hymn and he said a prayer before our class.

And coming into this university and coming from a public school setting, I was like, we are singing hymns in class?

This experience is gonna be the best experience I ever had in my life.

People were telling me, when you go to Southern, the landscape is gonna be awesome.

The biology trail, ooh, the Greenway, Christian.

You're gonna love walking the Greenway on Sabbath.

I mean, when kids get together, what they do is walk the greenway.

You're gonna love to climb the Goliath Wall and have that time where you can be there and just explore nature.

And I was so excited to come to Southern and when I came here I only knew 2 people and you know how it is when you get busy these 2 people and yourself you guys are doing your own thing and so when I was going to convocation I remember I was surrounded by so many people here at Southern, but inside, in my heart, I was 1 of the loneliest people.

Even though I was surrounded by so many people, I was still lonely inside because I didn't know anybody.

And my first struggle at Southern was this, I was consumed by trying to make new friends here at Southern.

That's the first thing that I wanted to do because I'm a sociable guy.

And if I didn't know anybody, I wanted to make new friends.

Well that was my first struggle is I was trying to make new friends here at Southern and I would sit down with anybody at the table and I would just talk random conversations and and I would just talk to them and try to befriend them and after a time I finally found the people that I would hang out with, which you could call my crew.

This was the people that became my good friends here at Southern.

Well, what was interesting is that when I found my friends, Southern looked different to me.

I came here at Southern and now the Goliath Wall wasn't just a place you could climb, but a place where you could lay out your blanket and have a picnic with your friends.

Now the Greenway was not just a place where you could walk by yourself a lonely road, but now you had your friends to come with you and you could play the guitar and you could sing hymns on Sabbath.

I was hanging out with my friends constantly here at Southern and everything was going great except 1 thing.

When I started hanging out with my friends, I started spending less time with God.

I hung out with my friends so much and I put them on such a pedestal that God became second place.

So if I decided that I wanted to stay up late and hang out with my friends, I would do so at the expense of waking up early in the morning to spend time with God.

So my relationship with God was going down the hill.

And I remember looking at Southern and seeing these beautiful hills that are all windy and beautiful and they're hilly and then Southern is in this like little valley and there's hills all around.

And I remember looking at that and seeing that as a metaphor for my life.

That I was here at Southern and it was like these hills were protecting me from the outside world.

Because remember, I'm here at Southern, everybody here is Christian.

I can walk down the street with my Bible and nobody would say anything.

I could sing hymns walking down the street and nobody would say anything because everybody knows that people love Jesus here.

And so I spent more time with my friends than I did with God, and I lost that first love that I first had.

When I first had that first love, when Jesus came into my life, and I was receiving these truths of God, and I was so excited to share, I had lost that fervor because I wasn't spending time with God.

I remember when people would come up to me and they would ask me to do ministries and they would say, hey Christian how about you do this, hey Christian how about you do that, and I remember in my heart I was saying, physically I was saying yes, my audibly I was saying yes, I was saying yeah, you know I would do this, I would do that, but deep down in my heart I was like Christian, why are you doing that?

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My Testimony

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