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> A Short Testimony of My Life and Conversion |
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 I’m David Westerfield, 29, and have lived in Fort Worth my whole life, and so has my wife, Courtney. I was raised in your pretty typical dispensational Bible Church (affiliated with Dallas Theological Seminary), which we left to go to Christ Chapel Bible Church (also associated with DTS) in Fort Worth, because the former church began employing many of the marketing techniques dominating many churches nowadays. I have been at Christ Chapel now since I was in fourth grade. Going back to my childhood, and then even further, my mom's, she was abused severely by her mother. Unspeakable things happened. Back to my childhood, during the early years of my existence, things were going fairly well for my family, that is until my mom had a total psychological meltdown and memories began flooding back from her childhood. The abuse (sexual in nature primarily, as well as psychological torment) was so severe that her mind split into multiple personalities to deal with it all once the memories began coming back when I was four. She was in and out of psyche wards and mental institutions all my growing up life. So there were great trials in my family in which many times the suicidal personalities came out and she would cut on herself and then go into the psyche ward for about six weeks at a time.
I heard about Christ from a young age from my mom and dad, as well as at church, and “invited Christ to be my Savior” when I was about five. But I still wonder to this day if it was genuine at all only because of the turn my life made when I became a teenager, and lining that up against things said in James and 1 John. As a teenager, sinfully rebellious at heart, I began questioning (as everyone does at some point I think, though my questioning was in the form of cursing at God) how an eternally loving God could permit such evil in my life (and the world) to 1) befall my mother, and 2) our family as a result of that evil. The questioning turned into bitterness, which ate me alive. My actions then fell in line with what I perceived to be reality concerning the nature of God and His control over all things, especially my own life. I got into drugs, partying, slandering my parents, fits of rage, etc. There were two particular instances where I literally should have died: 1) from “huffing” or using inhalants to get high, such as lighter fluid; and 2) from alcohol poisoning after drinking way too much. It is a wonder God did not just give me over to wrath and let me drop into the eternal pit that I deserved for my sin. He indeed should have. But clearly, He had a different agenda for me in His sovereign plan, for it was not my own agenda at all that I later turned to Christ and I never would have jumped on board had He not intervened because I was desperately sick at heart, spiritually dead, and unresponsive to God's calls while in my sin.
After continuing in that lifestyle for several years, at the age of 17, things began to turn. And I clearly remember now that it was not my own doing that brought about my increasing convictions concerning Christ and the Gospel and my lifestyle, but it was the Lord putting those things into my heart that were coming to life, seeds starting to grow that had been planted years ago, and were now being watered by the Holy Spirit. At the end of my sophomore year in high school, I began to read the Psalms because I knew there was hope in the Scriptures, but I didn’t know where to start, so I started there, because it was easy to find. During this whole time I was still pursuing drugs and the party scene, but slowly and gradually, reading Scripture each night, there began to be a shift in my thinking and conviction concerning all of it. I felt increasingly out of place with my actions and the company I was keeping. As an aside, I want to ask a question: Was it something I did that made me think or feel in this way? Not at all, but it was all God’s doing going underneath my thinking and willing and acting to show me my desperate condition apart from Him and His irresistible beauty manifested in Christ. Anyway, this continued into the summer until it finally culminated in late July of 1996.
I had been watching TBN (yes, the Lord can use anything) and they had these scenes of nature and Scripture passages to go along with each scene. I had been watching this in the middle of the night for many weeks, and this particular night at about 2 am I went outside to read Scripture and pray to God (which I had been increasingly doing all summer). And suddenly I was overcome with a deep convicting sense of my own unworthiness in my sin before the Lord in how I had back-slapped Him in the face my whole life, but also a deep convicting sense of His goodness to me in Christ, made effective in the cross, shown so clearly to me in the Scripture He sovereignly brought to me on the TV screen that night. I then asked Christ to forgive me for the way I had treated Him and the Great Burden of sin, shame, guilt, and fear lifted instantly. Looking up to the stars in the night sky that night with tears of gladness, I then felt as if I was caught up into eternity that evening with Christ, with one foot on earth and one in heaven. The Holy Spirit had overwhelmed me and lifted me up from the mire, as David says in the Psalms. I wept for several hours at His mercy toward me as to why He would have ever saved me after pursuing such licentiousness with my life. All I could answer is that He had always specially loved me, from the very beginning, and would not let me go, and made it so that night by His effectual grace purchased in the cross.
There were a whole lot of other factors as to what precipitated my conversion including people the Lord sent who pursued me in the ministry at Christ Chapel, one of which who passed away in a car accident a couple of years ago, David Phillips, a father-figure in the faith for me, who was the minster over the student ministries there. In addition to him, there were other leaders in the ministry, Ryan McCarthy and Jon Dansby in particular, who invested in my life, who are now peers of mine and friends in the ministry of which I am still a volunteer to high schoolers, though they are vocationally involved.
So I really got plugged into Christ Chapel’s student ministries in 1996 after my conversion my sophomore year, and then after high school, started leading as a volunteer in the middle school group in the Spring of 1999. I then began dating my wife, Courtney, in 2000, who I had known throughout high school, we were then engaged in October of the same year, and were married in 2001. Shortly after, as in three weeks after we were married, my mom passed away from causes that were undetermined. I personally believe it was the accumulation of high levels of anti-psychotic medication over the years, but we will never know. She loved Christ though and was converted literally when she was four under the preaching of S. Lewis Johnson in the 1950’s at Believers Chapel in Dallas. The Lord spared her soul, but not her suffering, all in ultimately bringing glory to Christ. That was her hope despite her years of tears and pain. And that has been my hope through all of that (Romans 8), that though we had no real resolution to her life, Christ was her joy and satisfaction and she now rests in His arms of comfort in the presence of His majesty.
Continuing on, my wife and I then left the middle school group and became involved in the high school group, and we are both still there ministering to high schoolers alongside the friends I mentioned earlier with their wives. Courtney and I had Grayson last year in August and he has been such a wonderful blessing to us and has brought such joy to our hearts. Unbelievable. God’s faithfulness and love to us cannot be overstated. Not only has He rescued us from sin and its consequences, His wrath, but He has also blessed us with gifts in this world we are unworthy of as well. ‘Tis mercy all, immense and free, for oh my God, it found out me. That’s my life’s story in a nutshell. The undeserved, free, electing grace of God is what saved my soul. I had no real contention with the Doctrines of Grace and Reformed theology when presented with the doctrines formally, because that was my life’s story. God saved me, nothing I did, thought, or willed. He granted the faith, gave me the eyes, transplanted my heart. That is the Gospel, Jesus’ substitutionary death and resurrection for His people who were rebelliously running astray and then reconciling them to God by His blood. That was me.
I pray this testimony of mine makes you consider your own salvation experience (or even if you don't think you've been saved by God and rest under His wrath even now) in seeing how God alone is the one who moves us to believe in Christ for salvation in the first place. What other explanation is there? The message of the cross is foolishness to the world, that is until the Lord shines the light of His glory in our hearts to make us see the transcendent truthfulness of it, that we may look upon His beauty, be satisfied, and thus glorify Him forever.
I will close my testimony by echoing the words of C.H. Spurgeon and Martin Luther concerning their own salvation experiences that I can truthfully say is exactly my own:
"The thought struck me, How did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment—I should not have sought Him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek Him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession, 'I ascribe my change wholly to God.'" - C.H. Spurgeon, A Defense of Calvinism
"I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in true faith." - Martin Luther, Smaller Catechism
God's sovereign work in my heart by the Holy Spirit to believe in Christ is why I am saved and others are not, not any knowledge, wisdom, or good intentions I had toward Christ within myself that I thought up or willed. My will was broken by sin and therefore I pursued that which God hated. This is why I am a Calvinist, because these truths, the Doctrines of Grace (called that for a reason) unpack this unmistakable truth within the Gospel: that it is God, and God alone who chooses who He has mercy upon and who He saves through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus. And this Gospel, that God saves sinners through faith in the blood of His Son (Romans 3:21-26), is to be preached indiscriminately to all and God will do as He sees fit to bring people to faith, according to His plan. That indeed is the hope in evangelism and missions and is my life's story of how I was saved.
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