Testimony
“At the age of ten years old, I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour”
Michael Thomson
I was born in Merida, Venezuela. I had the privilege of growing up in a home where both my father and mother had a moment in their lives when they put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I attended the local Sunday School and even at a young age I remember stories from the Bible. I learned of Jesus Christ and why He went to the cross.
When I was six years old my family moved to Canada. The move was a life-changing experience that affected everyone in my family. When I was eight years old, my mom sat with me one day on my bed and explained to me that my dad was in the hospital. She told me that he was diagnosed with Bipolar Schizophrenia. I couldn’t fully understand or grasp what that meant, but as the years went on I saw the changes that my dad was experiencing.
When I was about ten years old, the police was called to my house because my dad was having a breakdown and had to be hospitalized for several weeks. It opened my eyes to realize that there really wasn’t anything that I could count on for sure. If this could happen to my dad, there wasn’t anything that could stop it from happening to my mom, brother, or even me. I was losing my father before me and there was nothing anyone could do to change that.
I remember sitting in Sunday school and the teacher reading a verse from the Bible. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23. I was so hung up on that word “all”, thinking that it couldn’t possibly include me. I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t perfect and I couldn’t call God a liar.
I was very upset during this time and I wanted nothing to do with God, but had no say in whether to go to Gospel meeting or not. I don’t remember very much what was said that night, but for some reason, a verse spoke to me –
“For I am persuaded that neither death,
Romans 8:38-39
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
There it was. It all made sense that with such a powerful love God has shown, nothing can separate me from that love. I had never made Calvary personal; it was always a fact, not something that I took for myself. Not only did He die for me, but there is nothing that could keep me from His love. I knew that I deserved to be separated from God for all eternity. At the age of ten years old, I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour.