A Baptism Testimony: Lauren Barnes

Here is another testimony of a lady baptized in our church:

I was saved when I was 19. It was the summer after my first year at college. Before that time, I had spent all of my teen years in extreme opposition to God, my family, and anyone who ever expressed any care for me. I was angry, bitter, hateful, and completely positive that the whole world was against me.

Fortunately God had been working on me in small and large ways. He put some really good friends in my life who were Christians, and throughout high school they challenged me on a lot about the things I was doing and why I didn't want to believe that there was a God who was intimately involved with the details of humans' lives.

The most concentrated work I can recall God doing in my life was during 2001-2002. God was revealing Himself in my life in many places, which scared me a lot, but it also caused me to stop and consider him. I knew I was running from him. I started to drink a lot, I began doing drugs, I was entering into the whole "freshman year at college" party scene. I was severely depressed.

In the midst of it all, God was showing compassion on me. My Christian friends had become two of my best friends, and they invited me to an Alpha course. I heard that Jesus Christ died for my sins clearly for the first time. God used that course to prepare me for the moment at a Christian music festival when I prayed to God for the first time as someone who truly believed the gospel, and God saved me right then and there!

It was incredible! One minute I was this angry, hard, messed up person, and the next minute I knew a peace that was unreal!

A verse that really encapsulates my testimony is 2 Corinthians 5:17—"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come!"