My Testimony

(If you don’t have a test, then all you have is a imony! and what good does that do?)

It was 2019 BC (Before Covid)

I was sleeping and I had a dream that I fully believe was from God, I won’t bore you with the whole dream, parts are fuzzy anyways, but I It felt like I was going to heaven, don’t know exactly but it was totally white, there was like a metal gate you see at mansions, there was this important person at the gate, I have no idea who it was and I do not even remember seeing a face, but they asked me “Are you washed and ready to go in?” I said “maybe“ and I was almost crying and it was hard to speak.

(Let me add this, if you were getting married and the preacher asked you “do you take this woman to be your loving bride?” And you would say “maybe“ let me take a wild guess here and say, you probably would not be getting married)

To say the least this frightened me, because it was like in my heart I was not sure if I was ready, or if my heart was right, even though we do not know for certain how it’s going to be after we die, one thing is for sure you’re going to one of two places, and heaven is really the only choice if you ask me, and the thought of not making it into heaven absolutely terrified me, or to put it in Joe Lester terms, “it literally scared the hell out of me”

That was all I remember of the dream, But then I woke up partly I should say, my eyes were still closed and it was like the back of my eyelids were white and I seen in big black letters “10-18-2002” Then I seen another writing 10 - 11. (The meaning was I was 10 years old, almost 11)

Now this may sound weird right at first, but let me finish the story, “10-18-2002” is exactly what I wrote on a piece of paper that I tore out of my notebook so I could always remember that date, now I want you to understand that this was not a typed out message it was a scribbled date that I wrote down when I was 10 years old, and it was exactly how I wrote it, there is no way I could’ve remembered what that look like, but God showed it to me, the date was October 18, 2002 was the night that I excepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

I was so excited that night and I wrote that down so I could always remember it, I was fired up for a little while and then I was told that “You asked Jesus in your heart and that’s good, but you can’t be born again until you can speak in tongues” I would lay awake at night, I mean every night with my mouth open trying to hum, Again I was told that I needed to do this so when God was ready he would give me the ability to mumble and carry on like a pagan fool (speaking in tongues) I did not know any better, so this is what I did.

Sometime later I kept being asked if I could speak in tongues, the answer was always “no“ it’s starting to get where the answer was “NO! 🙄” I finally got tired of doing this every night and I just quit, instead of praying every night and reading the Bible and trying to talk and listen to what God had to say and trying to walk closer with my Jesus my savior, I was trying to mumble utterances that could not be understood, so instead of getting closer to Jesus I was pushing him away, but I then I finally stopped trying to mumble and I just quit altogether, when I was asked if I have received the Holy Spirit yet it started to make me angry and mad, which made me want to push back even further, One day I was asked that and I was totally fed up so I went and grabbed that piece of paper that had my date on it, that I had in my Bible and I ripped it up and threw it away! (I guess I thought the paper was the problem. I still can’t figure that one out, way to go Lester, way to go) But either way that’s what I did.

After a while I just forgot about what I did, no one asked me for a long time about speaking in tongs, so I just let it slip my mind. Years later I had thought about it but then I just put it to the back of my mind and kept on rolling, and don’t remember thinking about it again until I had this “dream/vision“ all of this was played back to me in time lapse mode, and I seen everything that had happened, and I realized what I did was totally wrong. (even tho I had made myself forget about it, somehow it was still in the back of my mind and heart and was hindering me from having a relationship with my savior for 17 years! Also not forgiving other people or myself for what I did.) Once the flashback was finished there was another note on the back of my eyelids

“If anyone is ashamed of me and my message, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in his glory and in the glory of the Father and the holy angels.” Luke 9:26

At that point I stopped everything and asking Jesus for forgiveness, just the thought of my savior Jesus Christ the Son of the living God the creator of the universe, looking at me and shaking his head because he is ashamed of me broke my heart in half.

And I asked Jesus what can I do, what should I do?

Then I woke up fully with my eyes open I sat up in bed, it’s really hard to explain but I heard a voice in my head it was not out loud, but it was not just me saying it to myself, but it said to me “I want you to know your Bible as well as you know your iPhone“ now that scared me as well because that’s one heck of a task, there’s not much I don’t know about my iPhone, but every time I read the Bible I find something new, so I knew it was going to be a long road, but with Jesus helping me and not ashamed of me anymore I was ready to take on the task!

At this point I had not told anyone about ripping up the paper 17 years ago, or any of the feelings I was having at that time.

What a wife!

(Back to that morning after my dream) My wife was still sleeping at this time, so I woke her up and I told her we need to talk. I knew if I did not say something to someone immediately I was going to explode, I could not handle it any longer! I was in so much of a frenzy that I believe my wife probably thought I was going to ask her for a divorce, or tell her that I had me a side piece or something crazy, she looked more frightening than I felt inside and that was no easy task!

But she handled it absolutely amazing, and as I was telling her what was going on she took out a piece of paper and wrote the date down and we have it in our safe now, and there is no way that piece of paper is ever being ripped up again, I believe that the image will be burnt in the back of my eyelids until the day Jesus returns to take me home, and now I am totally excited about that!

My wife handle the situation so good and so intelligently that I told her “I know you are filled with the Holy Spirit, because there is no way you could come up with that on your own“ (She tells me now that I told her she was too stupid to understand, but that is not what I said, it meant the same thing but I just wanted to make sure that we were clear on that LOL)

What God Showed Me

Now I asked God into my heart back in October 2002, and I believe the reason I did that, because I wanted to skip out on hell, basically I wanted fire insurance, not because I wanted a relationship with Jesus, but I did not surrender my heart to Jesus until that very moment in 2019 BC.

That might seem a little bit weird to some folks, But I believe the reason is because I did not realize that it’s just about a personal relationship with Jesus, not just believing in Jesus or even believing he is the Son of God, the devils believe and tremble. (James 2:19) It’s definitely not by following rules or ordinances or traditions of your “church” or parents or trying to keep God’s law, I mean that’s satans gospel and he tries to deceive so many people with that, and I was deceived by this for years and I could not fully grasp it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t like an atheist or muslim, I truly thought I was saved and following Jesus, but I didn’t know what following Jesus even looked like. I believe I was a lukewarm christian, and I believe that’s where most people that claim to be christians are today, they are neither hot or cold, don’t get fired up about Jesus and don’t tell others about him, but also don’t hate him. I knew Jesus was the Son of God, I knew He died for me, I knew He rose again and is now in heaven at Gods right hand, and I knew he was coming back again, But knowing all this I still wasn’t on fire and wanting to tell others about how awesome my Jesus is! What the heck is wrong? I just acted like He was a genie and I use Him when I really needed Him. I really thought I was good to go, but if I died in that state would I have gone to heaven? I can’t answer that, Only God can truly answer that for us one day, I believe God has more compassion then we could ever even know or imagine, but I think of (Rev 3:15-16) Jesus says “I’ll spit you out of my mouth”. But I think satan has so much control in this world that he can hold us back with “religion” and "rules” “churches” that we are so miserable trying to do all these things on our own that we can’t enjoy freedom in Jesus and just follow Jesus up that narrow path all the way to heaven. Satan can take us from Gods hand, (John 10:28-29) but he can sure make our lives miserable in the meantime!

I never realized this, I obeyed God from what I knew, tried to follow all the rules I was told and given and also did my best to respect God, But it was more a fear of God and what he would do to me if I messed up instead of having a fear I would be living apart from God. I had no want or thought of actually having a deep one on one personal relationship with my Lord Jesus Christ! Somehow somewhere God saw fit to reveal this to me, and I don’t see why He blessed me so much with this but He did and I’m gonna try my very best if at all possible to help someone else see this truth as well. It took me a long time to understand this, but it has been the best experience imaginable once God showed it to me and I understood it!

I’ll put it this way, you cannot be a half ass Christian, you cannot love God and money, If you don’t serve God, you are serving satan, Its hard to take in, but the truth hurts. When you give your heart to Jesus your life will change totally, I mean you must realize that you broke God‘s law, and your in desperate need of a savior, then you must be born again (John 3:3) putting your faith in Jesus, (Luke 17:6-10) dying to self, leaving your old path in the past, turning around 180° and run towards Jesus!

I heard somebody mistakenly say one time, that he turned 360° in the opposite direction, the sad thing is that’s what happens a lot of times we get spun around by religion and we think we’re going on the right path but all we did was spin 360° and we are still walking on the same path we were before with a little religion added to it, and that is not what Christianity is all about, following Jesus Christ is as simple as following Jesus Christ, there are no rules there is no religion, it’s a relationship with the one and only God in human form, Jesus Christ the Nazarene The absolute only way to get to heaven.

But to make a longer story shorter, that dream changed my life, I love when God gives me dreams that I know are from him, they have a amazing meanings and they’re so full of rich detail for my life but they’re also real short and sweet.

God showed me through this that I need to be open, say what’s on my mind and not hold it inside, when you hold things inside it’s almost like you put them in a savings account for a rainy day, and on that rainy day when nothing is going good you go to your savings account and make a withdrawal and it starts all over again, At some point you’re going to blow up or even get torn up inside mentally even though you might think you have it under control, You can argue this point if you want, I have many many times and I’ll probably do it more in the future, but one thing is for sure when you argue with God you can guarantee that you’re wrong

Bottom Line

Once you ask Jesus to come into your heart and you repent of your sins, repent means “to turn the opposite direction and walk away“ and follow Jesus then he will send the comforter to you and fill you with the Holy Spirit and at that point you are born a new, or in Jesus words, Born-Again!

Some people think that repentance is something you do every week on Sunday morning at church, and if you do that then you're good to go, but that’s just not the way it works. When you repent you need to let Jesus take all of your burdens and he will carry them to the dump for you, you no longer need to be tied down or worried about your old life and all the sins of your youth, Paul says the old man is gone and we are a new man, (hint: being born again) When we try to carry around our past and we keep going back to what we did and we keep thinking about it in our head we’re basically blaspheming Jesus Christ, and what we are actually saying is that the greatest sacrifice that was ever made (Jesus dying on the cross for our sins) was absolutely for nothing and we could care less about it. And that is something that we definitely can not do.

But once we are followers of Jesus Christ, we need to do exactly what that means, that is follow Jesus Christ, we need to read his word and we need to pray to him all the time, not praying in tongues like the pagans do, even Jesus says “don’t pray like to pagans do, when you pray, pray like this, our father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name“ (Matthew 6:6-13) he did not say Kaschak mumbo-jumbo, no, it is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, Jesus said to go inside in private and lock the door behind you, you do not have a intimate or a personal relationship with the public, it is a private personal relationship, we talk to him and he talks to us through his Word, if we know what the Bible says then we can know how to listen for God to speak to us, the only way to the Father is through the son Jesus Christ if we do not have a relationship with Jesus we do not get to the father, and we need to remember that!

My rule of thumb is if you’re not sure if you’re doing the right thing or if you’re doing something that pleases God, think to yourself whatever you’re doing if Jesus came back at that moment, I mean if the clouds parted and you saw Jesus hovering in the sky with his arms wide open to take us home and he saw you doing whatever you’re doing, saying whatever you’re saying or with an attitude that you’re having at that moment, would he be OK with it? And would he say well done my good and faithful servant?

If the answer is no, then we might should rethink what we’re doing or what we’re thinking or what we are saying.

Even our deepest darkest hidden secrets Jesus sees them brighter than the sun and if we do not repent from them they will keep us from the glory of God!

I just want to make something really clear, you do not get wisdom from God by being a idiot, when you push Jesus away, he in the end will push you away.

Before I had this dream I had started reading the Bible every day, I believe from reading the Bible that God was able to convict me of all this through my dream, I don’t think even a dream like that would have any meaning to someone that is not seeking God.

“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

I’m looking forward to my next dream from God, and I am eagerly waiting for his return, and when I get to the gates of heaven I’m not going to wait for someone to ask me if I’m allowed to go in or if my name is in the guest list, Instead I will unlock the door with the key that I have that was hanging on a tree at Calvary, and I’m going to run inside leaping for joy, singing praises to the King of kings and Lord of all lords, my savior Jesus Christ!

Until next time and from now on, May the good Lord bless you with His abundant grace!

~Joe Lester ~