I am very excited to get to share what my God has done for me while being under the beautiful teachings found here in Remnant Fellowship! My whole life has changed because of it, so it's hard to know where to even begin so I will hit the highlight of it.
I grew up in the church from day one. My dad and grandfather were both leaders in the church and I followed in their footsteps and became a youth leader for a mega-church of 10,000 members. While helping lead, I kept noticing something was not right. The youth were not changing year after year. There was no zeal for God and they would look bored during worship. Us leaders didn't know what to do about it so we thought bringing in a musical band would help liven things up. When that didn't work we'd try puppet shows. That still didn't work so we'd try doing drama shows. Nothing seemed to light a fire under these kids and I knew something was very wrong but I couldn't put my finger on it. One day somebody gave me a list of about 25 different scripture verses they had written down from a Desert Oasis conference, led by Gwen Shamblin, they had attended. They told me to look them up as they had set them free. The scriptures sat around for about three months in my Bible. One day I decided to check them out. For the first time in my life I saw four words that I had never seen in my life... " If, only, do and obey"! My jaw hit the floor. How could it be that I was raised in the church but never saw these conditions to coming to Christ! I had been taught, and had been teaching, all my life it doesn't matter what you do, you can never lose your salvation. There are no conditions to being a Christian as long as you "believe". For the first time in my life, God was opening my eyes to his word. I was seeing clearly that there are conditions to being saved.
I was seeing that the teachings I was under were false and they were not producing any fruit in my life or in the kid's lives. The teachings I was under allowed me to continue in sin and still be saved. I was full of so much anger and hatred it is frightening! My life was miserable and pointless. It had no meaning and I was so focused on trying to get everyone else to change that I couldn't see that I myself needed to change!
Remnant Fellowship is the first place in my life that I have been that taught me to look inward! I needed to change, yes me! I took one good look inward and compared my life to the scripture I was seeing and it was frightening how far away from God I was because of my actions. Yes, it does matter what we do. We cannot continue in sin. Christ came to set us free from sin, no longer free to sin! It's now been 6 years since my wife and I pulled out of the false teachings that allowed us to remain in sin and still go to heaven and joined a true army of God. We are now with a group of people that have all gone through the fire, dying to our sinful ways and living only for the will of God. We now walk in the footsteps of the true Jesus Christ who said "Not my will, but yours be done" all the way to his death! My wife and I now have a beautiful, peaceful marriage, that was at one time a hair away from a divorce. We are expecting our first child come January 2007 and we both praise God we have 6 years of this truth under our belts so we can raise up Bradyn in a way that he will never have to go through the pain and suffering that the false teachings we were under brought us. We cannot wait to raise up a child to love God with all his mind and heart. He will know from day one, the only way to do this is to have an idol-free life and to deny himself, by saying No to sin, and to live daily to DO the will of God!
I thank you God for allowing me and my wife April to see this truth and put it into practice! Who are we that you have allowed us to obey your beautiful laws and commands that bring about LIFE! This family is forever committed to DOING your will! - Chris Herbst