Real Stories, Real Faith - My Testimony, 5/1/14

This is audio of the testimony that I gave at the PM service of Campbelltown Church of Christ (my church!) for their January series of 2014, "Real Stories, Real Faith" yesterday. It was received really well, and I was very fortunate to have this opportunity. 

Don't take this as a word-for-word of what I said; there's a couple of moments where I'd add a note here or there, but this is basically what I said.

Tonight, I've been given the opportunity to talk about a great subject - myself. But I think you'll find that when I take you over the aspects of my life that I'll be talking about, you'll discover that there's actually not that much of stuff I've done - it's more what other people have done, and mainly, what God has done. 

I'm going to be taking you through some ups and downs of my life, of my journey with God. I can't really point to one spot where I became a Christian; but I think as we go through these points in my life, you might see how God has been shaping and changing me to become the person he wants me to be.  But that's something that we'll get to in a little while. First, let's pray.  

*insert prayer here* 

Now, it's possible that some of you don't know me, or don't know me very well. So I'll give you a quick introduction into who I am, before we get into the meat of it. My name is Brendan James Raymond, and I was born on the 27th of November 1992, which makes me 21 years, five weeks and four days old. My parents are Samantha and Peter Raymond, both Christian, and raised in Christian families, which has been a real blessing.  

I was the first child my parents had, but certainly not the last. One year, six months and three weeks later, Rosie was born; another three years, five months and two weeks and it was Kieran's turn; then Bethany came along one year, two months and three weeks later. We had a pretty busy house sometimes.  

As for me; I've got a bit of a variety of hobbies, skills and interests. I'm into a lot of creative things - drama, writing, composing, making clever things on the computer; I'm quite into music, which is what most of you probably know me for, seeing me up here playing the keyboard and singing. I did also do a Bachelor of Music that I finished the year before last. And then promptly followed it up by getting a job this past year in outdoor education.  

One thing my friends learn about me quite quickly is that I'm pretty unpredictable. When I was in high school, people would have called me more the science guy than the music guy. A lot of people were very surprised when I did the Bachelor of Music, and others even more so when I got the job I've been doing this past year. But I guess that's part of who I am.  

I'd like to start our journey tonight by taking you back a fair way, to when I was quite young. As I mentioned before, I came from a Christian family - I can't remember a time that I didn't know about God. For that, I have my Mum and Dad to thank. And even back then, I probably would have called myself a Christian. I believed that God was real, that Jesus lived and died and lived again - that's what being a Christian meant, didn't it? 

But there was one thing I knew that I didn't have. And that was a passion for God. I saw it in other people - I saw people that were on fire for God, that were passionate about him, and I wanted that fire; I wanted that passion. I had a will, a desire for that passion. So the first thing I thought of was praying the prayer, where you ask Jesus to come into your life, and I thought everything would change then. It didn't. I must have prayed a dozen different versions of that prayer, hundreds of times, but I never got anywhere. I read the Bible, I went to Oasis - here, and at school - I tried devotion books; there was one in particular I remember, where there was a section each day for you to come back and write down how you heard God answering your prayers. Those sections were always empty. I never heard God.  

Eventually, I pretty much gave up. I still had a will for that passion, but I realised that that must just not be something God had planned for me. So I kept living out my life, as best as I could - all the way up through high school.  

But even then, when I thought I had nothing more than a knowledge of God (and not much of one, at that); God had actually given me much more. He had given me the desire, a will, to know more about him, to have a passion for him. And even if all you have is that will, that can still take you incredible places.  

We'll come back to that story in a little while, but before that, I want to tell you about something that happened to me near the end of high school. 

At first, there was Oasis and Pulse. Then Oasis diversified a bit more, and Pulse eventually became Dynamite. At that point, Wendy was leading the group. Eventually, though, the McMenamins left, and Michael took over the group. And things changed a little bit; the group gradually became SWORD - the Spiritual Warfare Organised Response Division - and Michael's style of leading the group was a little different to Wendy's.  

Now, I had thought beforehand that I knew Bible stuff pretty well. I was a smart kid; I'd read a fair bit of the Bible, and I'd heard most of the stories - or at least enough that I was already feeling like people were repeating the same thing most of the time, and I knew pretty much all of it.  

Now, I probably knew more than some of the other guys in the group. But, needless to say, Michael did a pretty good job of making me question pretty much everything I knew. He was really good at asking the questions that made you suddenly realise that you really had no idea what you were talking about - in a good way! He helped us to not just believe in God, and Jesus, and the Bible because that's what other people had said, but because we'd actually taken the time to look at it for ourselves. To really question why we thought the way we did; why we believed what we did, and challenging that if we couldn't find a good reason.  

Like 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, "Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don't drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular check-ups. You need first-hand evidence, not mere hearsay, that Jesus Christ is in you. Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it." 

It was a great experience, and one that I still look back to, and still try to emulate - I still do my best to look at why I believe what I do, and challenge those beliefs. Because the thing is, if we don't challenge our own beliefs - then we won't be ready when our friends do; when the world does; if our family does - and that's what this series is about, "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have," - when the devil does; or when God does. And if you think that God can't or won't challenge your ideas or beliefs - maybe you need to be more open to God changing you, changing your ideas and preconceptions. Because he can, and he probably will. 

That time of challenging my faith, testing my belief - that really strengthened both my faith, and my knowledge of God and who he was. For that, I have a lot to thank Michael and the whole SWORD group for. And a lot to thank God for. 

Now, I'll take you back over to what I was talking about before; trying to find that passion and fire for God. At this stage, I was at uni. It was one of the better times of my life - I felt like I was in the right place for me, doing what I loved to do. And at some point during my first year of uni, I realised that I had started talking with God, rather than just to him - I wasn't so much hearing direct words and messages from him, but there was a definite interaction there, that wasn't before. They were good times. But I still didn't have that fire, that passion that I longed for.  

It was a bit strange when it happened. I still don't really understand it. It was a pretty regular day. I can't remember exactly what was on that day; it was a week day, but I was driving to Campbelltown for some reason. I'm not quite sure why. But I was driving, and I even remember that I was right near the turnoff to the Hume Highway. I was in my old metallic green Volvo - the Tank, as we used to call it - and that's when it happened. 

I suddenly realised that I had that passion; I had that fire that I had been longing for. Not through anything that I had done, but through what God had done. And as well as that, I had a desire for leading others in Christ, and helping them to learn more about God, and a desire to get baptised. And I had this strange feeling - that I don't think I'd ever had before - that I can only describe as the peace of God. I've only really felt that again once since then, at my baptism - which was a couple of months later - but that passion, and those desires, haven't left me since. 

But here's where it gets a bit more complex. Because that's not all there was to that - that's just what I understood at the time. Recently, I've had a few instances where God has only fully revealed to me the true implication and meaning of things some time later. 

Now, one thing that may have struck you as weird was how suddenly it happened. And it was quite sudden - but the thing that was sudden was the realisation, not the transformation. God had been working on me for quite a while now.  

Just under two years ago, God threw me a bit of a curveball. It was suggested to me that I might have something called Asperger's Syndrome. Before the end of that year, it was confirmed that I either did have or had had some form of Asperger's.  

Now, chances are, the majority of you have never heard of Asperger's before. It's sometimes called high-functioning autism, and is what is called an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Now, chances are you already have an image of what autism is. I want you to throw that image out the window for now, because it's not going to help you here. Your image is most likely of low-functioning autism, which is quite different to high-functioning autism.  

Now, Asperger's is quite complex, and I don't have time to give everyone a psychology lesson. I also don't really understand it quite well enough to truly explain it properly. If you do want to know more about it afterwards, you can come talk to me, or probably better, talk to my mum. She knows a fair bit more about it than I do, because she's actually done the research.  

But the crux of it is this; imagine that you're in a game, and you're creating your character. When you get up to the stats that the character has (like strength, speed, stamina and so on), there's generally a set range that each point can lie between, and then each one is randomly chosen somewhere in that range. In better games, you'll have different percentage chances as you get lower or higher, and so on. It's generally a bell curve.  

Now, imagine that you have the stats for intellectual intelligence and emotional intelligence. Typically, you have a bell curve for both. In Asperger's, however, you're much more likely to get a reasonably high IQ, while quite a low EQ. Again, there are other things it affects - everything from social ability to physical ability - but that's the core of it.  

When I was wanting that passion - that was Asperger's (at least to some degree) that was being a wall to that. And it's taken me a long time to realise, but God has been helping me to overcome that for quite a while now. Slowly, surely, he put me near people and around people that helped to teach me just what being a good friend was. What caring for someone meant. What being passionate about something looked like. And they helped me to find that for myself, whether they realised it or not.  

So when we go back to that point when I had that sudden realisation as I was driving - the path to that point, the transformative process, actually took quite a while. Years, in fact. Maybe most of my life, for all I know.  

We can often complain that God doesn't answer prayer; or that he doesn't work fast enough. There's a verse in the Bible that I found, Isaiah 60:22, recently that I quite like, that addresses this. It says: "I am the Lord; in its time I will do this swiftly." I can't think of a better verse to sum up my experience there. It may have seemed like a long time to me at first - but when it did happen, it was so sudden! 

God often works on a much bigger scale than we ever realise. 

There's a lot more that I could talk about, particularly on things that have happened in this past year. But I don't think enough time has elapsed since then for me to truly understand the significance of what God was doing with me in that time; and I think that that would almost be a whole speech in itself. Besides which, I only have so much time with you.  

My journey with God, however, doesn't stop there. Indeed, our journeys never stop until we die. Our testimony is never truly complete until then.  

This coming year, I already know, is posing many new challenges for me. At present, my income is basically an unknown - I have only one casual job, and I don't know how frequently or regularly I will be getting work there. I do potentially have opportunities to earn some money through busking or gigging, but I have no idea how reliable that will be. I get the feeling that God will be teaching me a lot about trusting in him to provide, and trusting that he knows what's happening, even when I don't. I'm sure that if I did this series again next year, I'd have some very different things to talk about, and some very different lessons to share.  

But for now, I'll stick to three.  

Even if you have nothing else, a will and desire to be closer to God and learn more about him can take you so far. Hold on to that.  

Question and challenge your faith, your ideas, your beliefs. Because if you don't, other people will. "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." 

And God doesn't always work on the time frame that we want, expect, or would like. But he is working, and in it's time, it will happen.  

Now, some of you, after all of this, may be asking why. Why it is that I believe in God, or follow Jesus, or think that the Bible has some truth in it.  

Well, it's because of these things. It's because of these experiences that I have had, because of how God has effected my life. Because of these experiences, I feel that he is true; I know that he is true; and I believe that he is true.  

And I know that that isn't something concrete; it isn't something you can measure, or test, or prove. It's a very personal and unique reason. 

But what I encourage you to do, if you're searching for answers, is to talk to people here. Troy and Edwina, I'm sure, will be available after the service; there's lots of other people here that you can talk to; or just talk to God. I know he wants to talk to you. 

If you're interested, the actual audio from the talk is available here: https://soundcloud.com/bjraymond/real-stories-real-faith-my; and the video is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Q-0GEfFds. The audio is available for download; if you want a copy of the video, please get in touch with me.
Edit: I've recently learned a bit more, and gotten (what I think) is a more complete picture. Look here to read about it: http://modnarama.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/the-emergence-of-self.html