Testimonies

Bro. Sommerdorf

I was born in MN and raised a farm boy. The oldest of four, I learned the value of hard work and character at an early age. My father was a surveyor and farmer, while my mother was a Home Economics teacher at our small-town public school. Though I respected the word of God, and attended our family's Congregational Church faithfully, I was never taught the way of salvation.
     Shortly after joining the Marine Corps in 1979, while going through electronics training at Naval Air Station, Millington, TN, a Marine buddy of mine asked a question of me that I had never been asked before. "David, if you were to die today, are you 100% sure that you would go to heaven?" I told him that nobody could know that for sure, but when he insisted that the Bible declared that you could have that certainty, he took me to I John 5:11- 13. There I read for the first time in my life: "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God."
     I was struck by the fact that the Bible stated with certainty that someone could know that they have eternal life, not simply hope that they could get it. I realized that though I had carried the Bible with me for years, and had even occasionally read it, I really did not know what it said. I immediately determined that I would give myself to studying it to somehow understand the mind of God and settle the search for eternal life.
     I began attending church services and Monday night Bible studies. Approximately 2 months later, on a Monday night, the Lord revealed to me 'salvation by grace from Ephesians 2:8-9: "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." I saw that there was absolutely nothing I could do to merit God's favor and forgiveness... He had already done it for me at Calvary almost 2,000 years earlier.
     Dangling over the Hell I knew that I deserved for my sins and unbelief, I let go of my pride, my sin, and my self-righteousness and desperately grabbed the finished work of Calvary and the sacrifice and person of Jesus Christ with all my heart!

My faith had finally found a resting place in Jesus Christ alone... I was saved!