Testimony of a False Convert

"But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away." - 2 Corinthians 3:14

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” - Matthew 7:21-23

Photo by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash

From the time I professed Christ, for twenty years, I read Matthew 7 over and over. I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t see.

I was raised in an above average American Christian home. My parents were married and happy as far as I could tell. We were involved in church. I was homeschooled for all twelve years of grade school. My mom taught me the Bible every day. Nothing traumatic or overtly wicked ever entered my small world to upheave me or my family.

First Profession

When I was about eight and thoroughly versed on the Bible, I recall riding in the car one night, going home from somewhere and my mom telling me how to be saved. She told me what I should pray. Afraid of the fires of hell, I silently did so and the next thing I remember, I was baptized, because that’s just what you did. I knew it was what I was supposed to do and I was glad about it. But that was all I found to be glad about for years to come.

I knew the Bible like a master of trivia. I sang loud. I was nearly an angelic child—compliant and eager to please. Apologizing for and feeling guilty about nearly everything. But I didn’t pray. Not unless I was in trouble. I remember sitting in my dad’s recliner trying to read the Bible and finding it desperately boring and irrelevant. And all the while, as I was making frail attempts to walk out what I professed, the sin inside me grew secretly.

Lust of the Flesh

As far as I can think back, to about the age of 4, I was lustful. “Boy crazy” just isn’t a strong enough phrase to describe what I now realize was the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16). And it was no different after I prayed and was baptized. I knew the clinical definition of sin, and I knew I had it, and I knew I needed to be saved from it. But I walked through even the innocence of childhood obsessing over romantic love, desperate for the attention of a boy.

Around the age of 13, I was set to join the youth group and my parents decided we needed to move to another church across town where our group of homeschooling friends attended. So we did. And I spent all my time there sitting in services with deaf ears (Jer. 5:21) and coming under spurious convictions while I schemed on how to trap what I was really there to hunt for.

Because of a lack of assurance and wrong theology about salvation, my life consisted of a series of fruitless re-dedications. This time I’m really serious, I would say to myself.

At the age of 15, at a Bonfire crusade, I “rededicated” my life to Christ and was counseled on the decision I had made. To no avail.

At the age of 16, I attended a mission trip where I learned about what it meant to be a “disciple” of Christ and not just a Christian in name only. I rededicated again; this time in a rather dramatic fashion. To no avail. After a short-lived spiritual high, I, like a dog, returned to my own vomit (2 Pet. 2:22).

Around this same age, I began to get the attention I craved and relished every opportunity to use my power. Jumping from boy to boy and dropping them as quickly as I became infatuated because of a guilty conscience, but was powerless to stop. And I didn’t want to. I would cut myself to memorialize how much I hurt people and move on to my next victim. I was content to burn with lust. I kept journals and would stay up late into the night furiously pouring out all the wickedness in my heart. Being raised in a semi-purity culture was the only thing that reigned in my outward behavior.

As I was enjoying a life of fast, dramatic relationships and sensuality, I was also enjoying horror movies, perverted music, any dark and strange thing I could justify. It was also around this time I began to get addicted to pornography. After months of struggling, the only thing that stopped it from being habitual was fear of getting caught, though it never fully left my arsenal of sins that I would occasionally take off the shelf.

Although my mind was warped and filled with darkness, I was content to call myself a Christian and evangelize those around me who were hurting or not in church. I knew the gospel was needed, but I was too blind to see it hadn’t even penetrated my own heart. I would justify watching demonic things saying, “I’m a Christian, so I can handle this. God protects me.” I would fall back into the slavery of pornography knowing God would forgive me and asking him to do so after the fact, swearing I’d never do it again. To no avail.

Just as 2 Timothy 3 says, I was “burdened with sins, and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (vs. 6b-7).

I continued on this path for a few more years until I met my husband at 18. Long story short, we began a marriage when I was 21, built on our pasts mutually filled with sexual immorality, though we both professed Christ. The outside of my cup looked bright and shiny to everyone, but inside I was full of death (Matt. 23:25).

False Christianity

I began to take more of an interest in my spiritual growth since I was getting married. I listened to Joyce Meyer, I virtually attended the Code Orange Revival in 2013 at Elevation Church, attended the Passion conference twice, began to practice some aspects of contemplative prayer and I began reading the channeled book “Jesus Calling” every day as my devotional. I had no idea that I was steeped in false Christianity and new age religion.

For the first two years of our marriage, my husband and I lived apart. Except for summers, holidays and weekends, I lived on a college campus while I finished my degree almost 3 hours from our home where he lived.

The only thread of true religion I remember having at the time was John Piper. Since I had attended the Passion conference a couple of years earlier, I had discovered his preaching. I had never heard anything like it and would listen to him once in a while to try and extract some of his passion to apply to my own spiritual walk. To no avail.

Consequence Repentance

My consumption of demonic images escalated around Halloween one year; it was my favorite holiday. And at the same time, I was in a research class that took us to the campus’s “haunted” dormitory to do a “fun” project. The professor had brought in one of the campus staff who did paranormal research as a hobby. He brought all his instruments and we were turned loose in this abandoned and trashed dormitory to gather paranormal research. I was all about this stuff and took it very seriously.

Immediately after these concurrent events, I began to feel very disturbed and unsettled. It felt as though I were being shadowed by a presence that I couldn’t shake. I would pray for God to protect me as I got in the car to drive, worried that something might happen to me. After a week, I began to despair as I couldn’t recover any peace. I broke down in silent sobs late one night in my dorm and begged God for his mercy to take it away. Over and over again, I remember quietly singing the words of “In Christ Alone” (with my earphones in as my roommate slept) trying to take hold of the truth in them, trying to block out the demonic oppression hemming me in. As I sang the final words for the fourth or fifth time, my burden was finally lifted. I repented of all the horror and demonic things I had been viewing. I broke and trashed DVDs, rearranged my Netflix and stopped watching shows I had been enjoying.

But still, it was only a repentance of consequence. I didn’t want to be troubled like that again, but I still could not see my sin as the thing I needed saving from. Even freed from demonic oppression, I was still a slave to sin; my thoughts weren’t of Christ, though my outward loyalties seemed to lend credence to the fact that they were.

Whatever It Takes

In 2015, less than a month after I graduated college, we moved to a new city and found a seeker-friendly church. It was the sort of church we were used to and we loved it. Lots of “life lessons” with Christ being merely tacked onto the end of sermons as your first step to a purposeful life. Besides that one familiarity, I was far removed from everything else that I knew. My best friend had walked away from me, my other friends and family were hours away, and everything around me was new. I hated it. I was depressed. But I recognized it was a new start and an opportunity to grow. In keeping with the theology I held at the time, I really wanted to “get my life together.” On May 23, 2015, I woke up in our apartment and for no apparent reason, I simply prayed, “God, do whatever it takes to conform me to your image.” I had no idea how much he would answer that prayer in the years to come.

A month later I found out I was pregnant with our first son; an entirely new life to take on—on top of everything I had already left behind. And from there, God continued to take things away from me that were familiar; my job, my time, my body, my sleep, my sense of control—vestiges of my old life. The last straw was my sanity.

Still Blind

On Sunday, January 29, 2017, after church, I made a joke to my husband of a dark spiritual nature. Although I had cleared my queue of horror films, there remained plenty of flippancy toward dark things.

And that was the moment when all the demons came back to haunt me. No pun intended. After what I said, my husband grimaced and I agreed it was bad and apologized. But the pit in my stomach wouldn’t go away. I ran upstairs and kneeled down and asked God’s forgiveness, that he knew I didn’t mean it. “Please God, give me back my peace.” Nothing. I told my husband, “I need to take a walk.” But after an hour of feeling terrified, I insisted we needed to go meet with the pastor that afternoon. A few hours later, we did.

I explained what happened.

No gospel was preached to me which pointed me to Christ, but instead, “Was there a time you believed on Jesus?” I was pointed back to a time in my life that I decided to accept Christ, quoted some scriptures to assure me that God knew I didn’t mean it, and sent on my way with promises that everything would be okay and I was forgiven. I thought that was the end of it.

But it wasn’t. For ten months I lived in utter dread. The fear of demons, Satan, and God took hold of me like I had never experienced. All I had was bad theology and I didn’t know God. Friends would pat me on the back and tell me to lean on my faith. But I couldn’t even open my Bible without shaking and crying, for every page I turned I saw only condemnation. I was damned and walking in a foretaste of it. Most days it felt like the anxiety and oppression might kill me and I almost would have rather died because the only relief I had was to sleep. The times when I would think least about spiritual things, the dread would fade into the peripherals. But I knew that’s what Satan wanted, so I would approach God again telling him, “Where else can I go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). I knew I could not abandon God because there was nothing else.

After ten months, I finally surrendered and told God, “If I have to live this way the rest of my life, I will not leave you.” From there, the terror slowly began to dissipate.

But still, I could not see.

Truth-seeker

When the anxiety finally relented in 2018, I made the false assumption that God had saved me. I was even re-baptized. Yet again, I neglected to repent and was still blind to the surpassing glory of Christ. Instead, I thought I had been saved for the great work of boldly spreading truth. Unfortunately, it was the wrong kind of truth. It wasn’t Christ and the gospel I was obsessed with making known, but conspiracy.

My research had begun with vaccines in the 2016 when my first son was born. I had spent the last couple of years researching them and come to horrifying (and true) conclusions about the damage they cause. So I was primed for falling further down the rabbit hole, and I certainly did. All my time was spent uncovering the secrets of conspiracy—my new addiction. And my gospel was: “Wake up! Stop being a slave to the system!” I believed this was God’s fight for me and I took it to anyone who would listen.

My eyes were opened to all the evils without, but still blind to the evil within.

Leaving Bad Doctrine

In the midst of all my anxieties and conspiracies, a couple in our seeker-friendly church introduced me to the preaching of John MacArthur after I had expressed a lack of assurance in my salvation. (Looking back, I had good reason to lack assurance!) I had all but forgotten about John Piper and had never heard anything like the preaching of John MacArthur. It was the first time I had heard of the term “expository preaching.” I began to learn about the Doctrines of Grace, election, sanctification and more. Things I had never heard explained, though I had been in church all my life. When I mentioned how much assurance of salvation I was gaining from my new calvinistic doctrines, some friends expressed disdain, saying, “That’s such a sad world view.” On the contrary, I had never felt more joy than I did listening to pastors proclaim the sovereignty of God after years of sermons on finding your purpose, getting your marriage in shape, and generosity. I was used to hearing a virtual gospel of works with a veneer of grace disguising it.

Mysteriously, the couple that introduced me to this Christ-centered preaching disappeared from the church.

Some months later, I was in my kitchen on youtube when I randomly came across a video about a girl who left the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry and was exposing the church’s new age doctrines. Our church used their music in services, among music from other false churches I would later learn, and I knew I couldn’t continue to be part of the church band if this wasn’t addressed.

Long story short, after many months and several meetings, I did not see eye-to-eye with the leadership and bowed out of the band quietly. A few months later we left the church—not because of the disagreement on music, but because we realized the preaching was a flavor of the prosperity gospel and the church operated according to Rick Warren’s unbiblical “purpose-driven” church model.

We contacted the couple that disappeared about visiting the church they now attended and began attending at the beginning of 2020. In the first service we attended, from the moment the pastor prayed with such a reverence for Christ that I had not heard in church in all my life, and the first hymn began to play, I burst into tears because I knew this is how the church is supposed to be.

By 2021, I had left behind all traces of bad doctrine and false teaching. I had even completely changed my eschatology. And I was eagerly teaching others all that I was learning. But even espousing right doctrine doesn’t save. I was proud and, though I was truly eager for others to know the truth about God and scripture, I lacked much humility in communicating it.

Born Again

I don’t know when I was regenerated, but, looking back, sometime in the spring of 2021, evidence began to mount that my heart had been changed. I publicly repented for leading people into conspiracy and exchanged my message of self-sovereignty for the sovereignty of God, imploring people to back out of the culture fights and cling to the gospel alone; I repented of private sins and desired holiness; I began to forgive people I had harbored resentment towards and seek their good; my speech, focus, and writing began to change and reflect more on Christ and less on myself; I began to hate the things God hates, and love the things He loves; I began to pray for my husband and seek patient submission instead of control; songs about Christ became almost the only music I listened to—not because I felt convicted about other music, but because Christ was all I cared to sing about.

By all evidences, it was the season of my new birth as right doctrine converged with a growing love for right living, a conviction of sin, and a constant looking unto Christ as my only hope. As Christ tells us in John 16: when the Holy Spirit comes, “he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (vs. 8). All the guilt and terror of sin I had carried all my life gave way to an assurance I had never known as I daily began to take my eyes off me and fix my eyes on Him. I began to preach the gospel to myself every day—Christ is my only hope; Christ is sufficient.

I had never prayed in all my life. Perhaps every six months or so I would pray, though not rightly and never for things in his will. I was too proud to bow the knee. Even as I began to walk daily in his Word, I struggled to pray. But I remember most days falling asleep saying, “God, thank you for Christ.” A gratitude for the cross I had never had overtook me. And over time, I began to pray more. I began learning to pray in accordance with scripture.

Additionally, a couple of years leading up to this time, I had been listening to men who taught me how to read the Bible. Even though I had read most of the Bible throughout my life, I read through the entire Bible for the first time in 2021. I had an appetite for scripture and I could see Christ on every page, in every illustration. The book was alive and moving me to conform my life more and more to his Word.

All I have is Christ

It has always been difficult to know when exactly God saved me. Even looking back to the season it appears He saved me, there were many bumps in the road. I had countless layers of false doctrine to peel back, making it hard to know when I no longer held heretical beliefs; I was homeschooled and usually outwardly compliant, which made it difficult for anyone else to notice a difference; I was raised in a conservative home and a culture where Christianity just “happened” by osmosis, so it was difficult to know when my head knowledge was supplanted by a new heart. I knew everything about Christ with my mind, even to the point that I could teach others; but it wasn’t until what I knew with my mind began to pour out of me and animate my life through what I meditated on and how I acted that I knew God was working in my heart and saving me.

Somewhere in the static, having been a false convert all my life, the picture of my need for his mercy became clear and I was truly converted. It was Christ or I perish. Christ became my life. And I knew: there is no other glory worth striving for.

Do you know Him?

Do you know Him? Does he know you? Do you love His Word and feast on it? Do you walk in the conviction of the Holy Spirit? Do you seek to be holy as God is holy and mortify sin in your life? Do you have a new heart that loves what God loves and hates what God hates?

All of my life I read Matthew 7 and pondered what it meant. Was it talking about me? It couldn’t be because I believed. Though I didn’t love and read his Word, though I didn’t pray, though my heart was wicked, though I didn’t keep his commands and sinned in his face and turned grace into license, I believed.

Yet I was on my way to hell.

But somewhere along the way, God reached down, took hold of me, saved me from my sin and gave me a new heart, so that now I can say Christ is my all in all. I am dead to sin and alive in Christ.

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” - Galatians 2:20

I can look back and see he kept me and used all things to bring me into his fold and is using all things now for my good and his glory (Rom. 8:28). I am confident he will complete the work he began in me (Phil. 1:6). It feels like so long ago that I offered that feeble prayer—“God, do whatever it takes.” But just as Paul’s letter to the Corinthians tells us, when he lifts that veil and we behold Christ, we shall become like him.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”

- 2 Corinthians 3:17-18

Like many of you, I’m sure, I don’t know when he did it. I don’t know when God lifted that veil and saved me. All I know is I was blind but, now,

I see.