A Full Life as a Testimony

Whenever I remember the day of my conversion, I cannot help being moved with gratitude. I wandered through the world in confusion, but I did not know it, and I was an intellectual believer in every invisible deity. The only true god was myself.

When you reach a certain age believing you have had some success in life without God’s apparent intervention, why believe in something you have not needed to live until now? Why complicate my life with religious commitments that would take up my free time and my Sundays of rest and ungodly celebration?

I never had a real awareness of my need for the living God, but I was a proud watchdog for other gods that neither speak nor hear nor see nor act; therefore I was just like them (Psalm 115). Through all my striving in life and work, there were times when my standard of living reached 100 times that of the average Cuban. Why did I need Christ in my life?

But the Lord had me in His plans. It is incredible to think that God has plans for a sinner! Me, a sinner? Why, when I am a good man, when I harm no one and even harbor noble feelings toward people in my heart? That was how I thought, justifying my worldly excesses. Yet He never tired of sending me signs, of knocking at my door and raising His voice. While I kept placing vases of flowers before my “protective” deities, He, compassionate and loving, sent me generous messengers with verses of love and never stopped trying to get my attention. Those flesh-and-blood apostles, Christian men and women who preached to me constantly, brought me the message of salvation, and I ignored it, kept silent, rejected it, resisted it… until my worst crisis came. God uses every means to bring His plans to fulfillment. I—wretched, disobedient, worldly, proud—in the plans of the God of Abraham, Joshua, Paul, and Jesus, God Himself incarnate?

A great Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, once said, “If you shut the door on your errors, you will leave the truth outside.” That is a great truth. Since I did not want to see my errors—I was not even aware that I was a man carrying a great sack full of human wretchedness—the truth seemed very relative to me.

In the midst of a total crisis—the loss of my job and a serious breakdown in my family—came the collapse. My emotional stability, my marriage, and everything that truly matters to a human being were at stake. One of those messengers of the Lord approached me once more and said, “You will find comfort in Christ; seek Him!” And in those days of seclusion, suffering, and pain, “the messenger” got a Bible to me, and the Word of God began to work upon my soul so tangibly that God, in His mercy, gradually revealed to me the true face of my sins, my rebellions, my pride, my false self-esteem.

Those early mornings that I call “eyeless” mornings—because suffering kept me from sleeping—became vigils of reading and something resembling prayer. Then one night, in my room empty of affection, I came to Matthew 9:13: “… for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” I felt the Lord wrap me in His mantle of mercy, and I brought all my self-sufficiency to its knees, surrendering myself, repentant and finally overcome, at His feet. It was as though a light shone within me; it was like a balm with the fragrance of heaven.

A lot of rain has fallen since then. The end of the story was the complete restoration of everything I had supposedly lost—my job, my family, my life. Do you know Job? God did something similar for me. Nothing is impossible for Him. Christ changed my outlook on life because repentance brings freedom. I knew I was forgiven and began to taste the sweetness of grace in full joy and also amid many stumbles. The old man struggles ceaselessly to reemerge because sin has good friends who are seductive, treacherous, and bent on the Christian’s destruction: the love of money, worldly pleasures, disobedience. It is a war that only the Holy Spirit can wage. That is why Christ overcame all the evil in the world on the Cross by bearing the guilt that I and every sinner deserved to bear.

God has His heavenly quiver full of sycamore trees (fig trees) so that we can climb up to see Jesus when He passes by and accept His invitation to dine with Him (Luke 19, the story of Zacchaeus). I knocked down quite a few of those fig trees before deciding to climb them to look at Him and hear His command to come down—to my knees—and follow Him. Jesus entered my temple of strange gods and filled me with His grace, with His sufficiency. My sycamore tree was the crisis, an incomplete life: a house, but no home; a woman, but no marriage; children, but no arrows to shoot into the air (Psalm 127:3–5) so that God might be glorified in my life. What sycamore tree is Jesus using so that you may see Him? Have you seen Him pass by? Do you think you are so self-sufficient that you can manage life without the symphony of Jesus in your heart?

This world makes you promises, offers you dreams and well-being with guaranteed success. I fell into that trap and found myself deities to help me make those dreams come true: one god (with a lowercase g) to open my paths (“I am the Way,” Jesus said—John 14:6), another god to keep me safe from dangers and fears (“I will never leave you nor forsake you,” says the Lord—Heb. 13:5b), and still others to use whenever it suited me. So the world goes, from god to god, from bad to worse, from its self-sufficiency to its own exaltation, denying the one true Lord of all things, the fullness in whom the Father was pleased that all things should dwell, for your salvation and mine. He is sufficient.

If your heart is searching for rest, humble yourself and cry out to Him: He hears the heart that humbles itself. If you have no peace, He is the Prince of Peace who longs for you to rest in His grace. If you think you cannot go on, He can give you living water to drink that will quench your thirst, refresh your humanity, and make you grow wings like eagles so that you may live a full and abundant life (John 4:14). Come to Christ, and you will not regret it!

Since then, my family and I have been blessed spiritually beyond what we deserve, and we have seen the hand of God every day since Christ entered our home.

Beloved, in Jesus there is freedom and love. Do not hide behind the claim that you are not yet ready to accept His love and come to His feet. Just a little faith is enough. He loves you as you are and desires only that you come to Him. Give Him a chance. He wants only your heart in the condition it is in today. Do not wait for a crisis to bow your head, test the strength of your knees, and humble yourself. He waits; He longs for your embrace and your surrender. He can be your shepherd, your sustainer, your great Lord.

God bless you!

(Taken from the author’s personal testimony of conversion)