A Hard Choice
The Easter conference this year turned out to be one of the most important for me because I had to make the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. It changed the course of my life from plunging ever deeper into Satan’s trap to living from the truth, as who I really am Jesus Christ in my form.
To give you a bit of background information, I started at the University of Sussex, in England, last October. Everything was great; I was having fun, I had friends and to top it off, I met a wonderful boyfriend, Chris. We were good friends, it seemed like we could talk about anything, we spent loads of time together, and we were in love. All our friends, and probably our families, thought we were the perfect couple. There was just one tiny snag that bothered me. Chris was not a Christian. I sort of knew, in the back of my mind, that we couldn’t be together in the end because Chris didn’t know what we believe. Anyway, sometimes I got confused about it or felt guilty that I might be doing the wrong thing by going out with a non-Christian, but I always glossed over it and didn’t really want to face it because I felt so strongly about Chris.
So, I went to the conference kind of hoping nobody would say anything about it…. BRRRR! ! Wrong! God just always gets right to the root of your believing, especially at conferences (I should know that by now!) It was the last night and we were having a campfire when my Mum came out and said she wanted to speak to me. She just got straight to it and said that she had been worried ever since I told her that Chris wasn’t a Christian, and that she wanted me to finish him.
I think I was in quite a state of shock; I really did not want to believe that there actually was anything wrong with me going out with Chris. I stumbled out into the woods and just cried and cried. I missed the campfire and didn’t even answer when the others called out to see where I was. I couldn’t consider finishing Chris, couldn’t imagine living at university without him. He was my best friend and if I dumped him because I was a Christian, (of all things?!), I thought nobody would understand and that all my friends would sympathize with Chris. I cursed and shouted at God because I thought he was so unfair to want to take seemingly everything away from me. I wondered why he had let me meet Chris, only to cruelly take him away again. All I wanted was to stay out there in the woods, to never go back inside and face it.
Of course I did go back inside eventually and reluctantly agreed to talk to Christina, Meryl, Pat and Mary. They reminded me that because Chris had never accepted Christ into his heart, Satan was the one living his life. I was hoping I could talk to Chris about being a Christian, then maybe he would accept Jesus and everything would be alright. I came to see that because I was romantically involved with Chris, I couldn’t truly be for his salvation because I was not presenting Christ to him, in my form. Pat pointed out that Satan wasn’t going to let me talk to Chris about the truth. After all, I had already been going out with him for five months but hadn’t been able to discuss the most important thing in my life–the truth about Jesus Christ. If my only intention had been for Chris to become a Christian, I would not have gone out with him and gotten into this situation in the first place. As it was, I was thinking about MY feelings and living in unbelief.
I thought that I loved Chris and that he loved me. That night Christina read to me some parts of The Road Less Travelled which, due to God’s perfect planning, I had been reading anyway. Scott Peck, the author, says, "Of all the misconceptions about love the most powerful and pervasive is the belief that ‘falling in love’ is love or at least one of the manifestations of love. It is a potent misconception, because falling in love is subjectively experienced in a very powerful fashion as an experience of love." He goes on to say, "Love is not a feeling. Many, many people possessing a feeling of love and even acting in response to that feeling act in all manner of unloving and destructive ways." I don’t want to get too into the psychology of it all (you can read that for yourselves) but the point is that I really didn’t love Chris. True love is expressed by ‘self for others’ actions but I saw that I had only used Chris to make myself feel good or feel popular and I certainly was not putting his spiritual development first. Christina told me that the only truly loving thing I could do for Chris now, bizarre though it may sound, was to stop going out with him, even though that would hurt him! In other words, REALLY loving someone is not about being sweet to them and making them feel good but about doing what is really best for them.
By this time, I was convinced that the only way I could put God first and let Christ live my life 100%, was to make the decision to end my relationship with Chris. I just had to be willing to do it, willing to give something up, willing to act because of what I believe despite how terrible it felt. I was also convinced that if I did make that decision, my life would be totally miserable and lonely, and that going back to university would be very painful. Then Pat said to me that I couldn’t be sure how it was going to be, nobody could, and I had to admit that I really didn’t know for certain. So, of course (else I wouldn’t be writing this article, would I?!) I made the right decision. Actually that was the worst part and I felt quite relieved afterwards. As it turned out, I had to tell Chris the next morning because he was coming to pick me up. I was feeling very nervous, but I just explained things as simply as possible. It wasn’t easy. He was very upset and just couldn’t understand at all, it was such a shock really. He phoned me during the next week, just distraught and not knowing what to do with himself. It was very painful and frustrating for me because I wanted him to realize why I had made my decision. He just thought I had been brainwashed or something.
During the week before I came back to university, I phoned Christina every day and had to say the truth about my feelings all the time, e.g.. Christ is not a sad person. I had to live one moment at a time as who I am, in Christ, not getting overwhelmed by the pain of the whole picture. I felt scared to death about coming back here, knowing that I would see Chris, but on a spirit level, Jesus Christ lives as me and I know that His strength is more than enough to deal with my life.
I have been back at university only one week and God’s reward for my obedience was beyond my wildest dreams! Of course, the situation was and is painful and lonely at times and God has used that to press me to living from my spirit, not my soul. Some of my friends reacted as I had expected, but actually one or two admire that I have taken a stand for something I believe in. Over the last week, Chris, so driven by his pain, came to ask me about what I believe. Some of his family and friends are Christians but they couldn’t understand what I’d done either. I showed him the verse 2 Corinthians 6:14, which says, "Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?" This seemed to make clear to him the problem with our relationship because right there, in the Bible, God states that it was wrong. The more we talked, the more Chris understood my reasoning and found himself unable to find anything to argue with. Although he already knew quite a bit about Jesus and what the Bible says because of his Christian background, he said that he had never believed it important enough to REALLLY make a decision. Now though, it had directly turned his life upside down! He agreed to phone Christina and to think about becoming a Christian. We both made it clear that he had to consider it regardless of me, that is, he couldn’t become a Christian just to try and get me back. He had to do it for himself and live it for his own life, whether we got back together or not. So he went away to make his decision, and I said a word of faith that it would be the right one.
Chris came to me on Thursday night and said that he had decided to accept Christ!! He sat with me and asked Jesus into his heart, to live his life. I can’t explain to you the absolute joy and excitement I felt. It wasn’t because of any prospect that Chris and I might get back together but just the sheer delight of seeing how God had used the situation. Chris knows that he has to be a Christian with the right motives and show the fruits of that for a long, long time before we could get back together, IF EVER. My focus has changed so that it’s not on us going out again, but on Chris’ spiritual development and his coming to know what we believe. I just want to say how incredible it is that Chris is saved, and that this is all the evidence I’ll ever need that God is alive and working in our lives.
To all of you, especially the youth, PLEASE, PLEASE learn from this testimony. Save yourself pain AND SIN, by making the right decisions in your life NOW!! Choose Christ’s way whatever it means, however it feels and make sure that every area of your life is free of unbelief and of Satan. I know that my story seems to have a somewhat ‘happy ending’, but going Christ’s way is by no means easy. I still have very painful feelings to deal with in a constant battle against Satan, who is trying to pull me off course. However, as I have been assured by several of the adults, it is a lot easier AND BETTER to start living a ‘sin free’ life now, rather than later when you might not even have the chance.
