Although it feels like much longer, my husband and I have been apart of Change
of Life Pentecostal for almost 7 months now. My first visit to the church was back
in 2023 (almost a year to the day from when we returned in 2024). My first visit
was anything but easy. Before coming to Change of Life Pentecostal, I was
comfortable in “my walk with God”. I was bought into what the World told me
about who God was. I had no true desire to know His word and frankly, I didn’t
want to because I couldn’t understand it anyways. Nothing stuck. I continued to
live my life the way I wanted…leaning on anything and everything EXCEPT God,
to fill the void until the “happiness” meter ran out. And yet in the same moments, I
called myself a Christian…a responsibility I truly didn’t understand.
In October of 2023, I came to Change of Life for my husband. He visited one
night on his own, came home and was hooked. When he got home that night, he
told me that he was getting baptized in Jesus’ name, THE NEXT DAY. I was
beyond skeptical. What on earth was being preached at this Church, that my
husband is so on fire for God and needs to be baptized right away. We had been
to A LOT of churches since we’ve been together. He had NEVER felt this way
about a church before…and in all honesty, where I was in my walk, it seemed too
good to be true. I promised I would go with him despite my hesitation. I had to
see what was going on here.
If you can believe it, it was almost too much Bible for me…TOO MUCH TRUTH.
At the time, I was so full of myself to think “well I’m a good person, therefore, I’m
a good Christian. THEREFORE, even if the Word of God is specifically talking
against everything I’ve ever known to be true about loving God and convicting
me about my life, I DON’T NEED CHANGE.” Oh man, did that devil have a hold
on me. Pastor Hoffman spoke directly from the Word of God and put EVERY
single scripture up on the screen. I refused to even acknowledge it. My husband
was baptized that evening and I still told him on our way home that I never want
to go back to that church. I had superficial and selfish reasons…NOTHING
regarding the Word of God or what was taught. My spirit (back then) did not want
me to be there and definitely did not want my husband to be there. Well, the
Word of God in Jeremiah 10:23 (KJV) says “O Lord, I know that the way of man
is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” If not God, oh I
wonder who was directing mine…
Fast forward a year, I completely put God on the back burner. I still said I was a
Christian, yet I made every excuse not to go to church. And when I did go to
church, I’d check the box and plan for what brunch place to go to afterwards. I
was a fraud. I wasn’t living for God. I was loving and serving the World and its
idea of God. Not based on His Word, but based on the sugarcoated, hand picked
pieces of His Word, OR no mention of His Word at all. Just “well my God”, “well I
believe”….Romans 3:3-4 (KJV) says “For what if some did not believe? shall
their unbelief make the faith (doctrine) of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let
God be true, but every man a liar.”
My husband and I had a tough year from October 2023 (first time visiting) to
September 2024 (returning to the church). Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually,
we were not in good places. In September 2024, we sat down on our couch and
had the most vulnerable conversation we had ever had in our entire relationship.
It came to the point of my husband saying “we’re dying spiritually”… I felt the
presence of God for the first time in a long time come over me and the words
spilled out of my mouth “we can go back to that church”. My husband and I cried
together and immediately, a weight came off my shoulders.
We made arrangements to meet with Pastor Hoffman the next day. Without
hesitancy, he met with us and was fully available to answer any and all questions
I had regarding the Word of God, WITH the Word of God. Not his opinion of it. He
spent hours with us, rightly dividing the Word and at the end of it all, I knew this
was the Church God led me to. I asked Pastor at the end of the meeting “when
can I be baptized?” The next day, I was baptized in the name of Jesus Christ,
with the support of every single brother and sister in the church. Come to find
out…the church had my husband and I on their prayer list the whole year we
were gone. They were truly standing in the gap, and making up the hedge for us.
Their prayers, Pastor Hoffman, the power of God, and His merciful and
chastening hand, is why my husband and I will forever be members of Change of
Life Pentecostal Tabernacle. I have never in my entire life, understood the Word
of God so clearly that it has made me finally make changes in my life, and
FINALLY put God first above all things. I am so grateful to God for leading us
here. Luke 15:24 (KJV) “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was
lost, and is found.”