Tammy Bumgarner--
I grew up not going to church, and I was never baptized. I wouldn't exactly say I was a non-believer, because I barely knew anything about Jesus or about what's in the Bible. I believed in something, but I didn't know for sure what that was. That all changed in March of 2004. My husband was going through a hard time battling what I would call was almost depression. A negative force had come over him that he couldn’t shake. During that time, two different family members passed away, which made things even worse. I was going crazy trying to figure out how I could help him. He turned to God to help him through. This was all a foreign concept to me. My husband started changing before my eyes. I couldn’t even believe the changes that were taking place in him. I started thinking he couldn’t have done this alone.
Still in my agnostic state, I began researching on the internet and reading books about Christianity. I didn’t know anything about it, and it seemed I was being left out of this new important thing in his life. He spent a lot of time talking to his sister because she was a very strong Christian who had been praying for him and talking to him for years about coming back to God. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid that we would grow apart.
Then something started changing inside of me. The things I was reading started making some sense. One article particularly stuck with me. It was about non-believers not having to clean up their act before they asked for salvation. My “clean up” was mostly the fact that the little that I knew about Christianity I found very unbelievable. But as I said before, I had never really known much of anything about God, Jesus or the Bible. The article said that having doubts was okay. You could even be a Christian and still have doubts. It also said that if you pray for Jesus to come into your heart and your life that you would see changes in yourself that would help confirm His presence. I knew it happened to my husband, so I had seen it work before. But would it work on me? At least he had 18 years of church before. I hadn’t had any. I thought, “What do I have to lose?” So I tried it. I prayed.
I'd like to say I knew it worked right away, but nothing really changed instantly. Actually, it was pretty slow and gradual. When I am asked about my story, sometimes I think that my testimony is uneventful, so boring, that it’s not worth telling. Seriously--I read some stuff and then prayed--that’s my story!
But, then I think about how many times and for how many years my family, especially my mom, prayed for me and never gave up on me even though it probably seemed completely hopeless. And I think about how far I've come since I said that prayer. It's then that I realize that my story is in no way uneventful.
I got baptized at Hope Church in May 2004 so I could publicly announce my faith, not only for myself, but for each and every person who prayed for me. My story is a testimony of love, faith and the power of prayer--and I know now--that could NOT be boring!
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