My Testimony (Updated)

Hi! I'm Teenage Jesus Follower (also known by E. Smith)
I thought I'd tell you a little about myself.
I'm a girl who loves the outdoors, family, friends, and also head-over-heels in love with my Savior, the King of my life, and I want to tell the WHOLE world about it. :D How did I get to this place? Wasn't I that girl who was quiet, more comfortable in the background?
Don't get me wrong, I'm still a little shy, but there was something that I had to change in my life.
I have always grown up in church. It's all I have ever known.
When I was five, I asked Jesus into my heart. To this day I still don't really remember doing that. I mean, I remember them asking me things like had I been bad and stuff like that, and I needed to ask Jesus into my heart, but thats all...
I was very involved in my church. I did everything possible. I went to church, rain, snow, sleet, or ice, it didn’t matter. Every time the doors were open, unless I was sick, I was in that building. I was doing everything they told me.

Two summers ago, 2009, I felt alone. I really couldn’t remember that day. I couldn’t remember the date or even just doing it really. I held back for months, thinking, maybe I did and I shouldn’t worry about it. I started getting scared of everything. My inside was a mess. Being the quiet me, no one knew.
I went to a camp with my church that summer, and there I made assurance of my salvation. I believed that Jesus, Who is the Son of God, was alive here on this earth and lived a perfect life. I know He died on the cross for my sins and rose again on the third day.

I think it was not to long after that camp, I felt as though something was missing. A sense of, well, emptiness. Why was this? I was doing everything that they told me I was supposed to do, but why the emptiness? Why did the 'religious buzz’ wear off after I walked out the double doors? Wasn't I doing all that I could? What in the world was missing??

What I didn’t know was my parents had this same feeling. My dad talked to a friend of his and this friend gave him a sermon by an awesome pastor. It was a sermon about being all about Jesus. My dad listened to that and was in awe. He let my mom listen to it, and then told us.

When I heard this, I realized a BIG thing. This whole religious thing I was doing, I was just rolling through the motions. Checking my list of things. Worshipping my parents and my preacher's Jesus. Jesus was just a part of my life, a sliver of what He should be. He wasn't who my life was all about....

After realizing these things, I totally changed my way of thinking. We, my family and I, came to these conclusions:
It wasn’t about what we did, what we wore, or anything like that. What it is about is Jesus! That is what, or really Who we were missing. Not that we didn’t already know Him as our Savior, no. It was we didn’t really have a good view of Him. He wasn’t really everything we looked at. Jesus wasn’t the center of our lives, like He should be.

So, now my purpose in life is to live for Jesus, keep Him in the middle of EVERYTHING I do, fulfill the work He told us to do (you know, go, teach, baptize? The Great Commission? Check it out, you should.) and make sure I don't live a wasted life (John Piper's 'Don't Waste Your Life' awesome!). I hope to grow closer to God while going out into the community and telling others of His awesome love for them.

Confused? Questions? Just leave a comment below and I'll do my best to answer ;)

"Who am I that You would come and die?
I don't understand
Why the God of all the universe
Would become a man
To redeem the mess that I have made
Take away the shame
Of what I've done
There is no, no greater love" -33Miles

~T.J.F~