ERIC ELDER
Before I put my faith in Christ, I was self-focused.  I believed I could do anything and tried many things.  My life revolved around my friends, my job and keeping busy with all kinds of things that I wanted to do, including some things God didn't want me to do.  But in all of this, I lacked a real purpose for my life.  I didn't have any direction.  I was going from one thing to another without any overall plan for my life.

I had heard about Christ all of my life, having grown up very involved in church and Sunday School.  But it finally became real to me when I first started reading the Bible on my own as an adult.  I had just moved to another city to take a job and was invited to attend a Bible study.  I bought went to a bookstore and bought a copy of a Bible and began reading it.  It started to make sense to me that God really did have a plan for my life, but I was doing things that would never fulfill that plan. 

When I realized this, and realized that many of the things I was doing wrong were actually sin in God's eyes, I confessed my sin to Him and asked Him to forgive me of my sins.  I had called the shots for all those years, and I saw where it got me.  So I put my trust fully in Christ, allowing Him to be the Lord of my life.  The next day, I felt like I went from being blind to seeing fully.  My eyes were opened so wide that I was now able to see the purpose God had for my life.

I changed totally on the inside.  People may not have seen any difference on the outside, but what happened that day set me on a whole new direction for my life.  I had a purpose, a direction, that would take me through the rest of my life.  It was a purpose that wasn't related to whether or not I had a job, health, a family, money, but it's a purpose that will be with me for eternity.  Now I want to use my gifts to serve others, to reach out to them and to let them know about Christ as well.

(For a more detailed testimony, please visit Eric's website "The Ranch" by clicking this link.)