Testimony of Melanie

Acts 26:18 – “..to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.”

 

The following is the testimony of Melanie (Mel) of  Buckinghamshire, England of how Almighty God worked in her life by His grace to bring her ‘from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that she receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith’ in Lord Yeshua the Messiah, Son of the living God.

Mel, roughly how long have you been saved?
I was born into a Muslim family in Turkey but God opened the door to salvation for me and led me into His path 25 years ago.

In your own words, what does “saved” mean and where in the Scriptures do you derive your understanding?
We are saved from the darkness of separation from God who is the only Life-giving Spirit, who created the universe and all that is in it. We separated ourselves from the only true God, when sin entered the human race through Adam and Eve in Eden, but God reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ. Romans 5:10 says ‘For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.’ Saved from darkness, death, wrath and instead, we have light, life and rejoicing through our redemption. Praise God for His love, mercy and righteousness!

Let me share this with you:

I used to think I was not worthy of God’s eternal kingdom and said to a group of people in my dining room while offering them supper one evening, that I doubted God would forgive me and accept me. Some thought I must have done something very sinful in the past. I used to live with this feeling. I just could not see myself as worthy – I felt stupid, worthless and sinful. The next day, my Holy Bible app on my phone pinned the verse of the day and it was this message with this verse:

All who are acceptable because of their faith simply say, ‘The message is as near as your mouth or your heart” And this is the same message we preach about faith. So you will be saved, if you honestly say, “Jesus is Lord, and if you believe with all your heart that God raised him from death. God will accept you and save you, if you truly believe this and tell it to others.’ (Romans 10:10 ,CEV).

The NKJV [Ed. New King James Version of the Bible] says the same, but notice the emphasis of the word ‘accept’ in the CEV version. This was the answer to my words at the dining table the night before! I declared myself unworthy in front of people, but His answer was I am deemed worthy in and through Jesus through faith in Him.

In your own words what is repentance and its connection with salvation?
To understand why we have to repent, we need to understand the original sin in the account of Genesis. Sin entered into the human race through Adam and Eve. God created us in His image, in His goodness. Death was not the plan for us. The corruption and death came only because of their disobedience and failure to trust in God. We now live in a world ruled by Satan, a fallen world, in corrupted bodies. Our sinful nature, the faulty choices we make, and our weakness lead us into darkness but the acceptance of our corruption help us understand why we need our Saviour. We need God’s continuous mercy and the Bible tells us His mercies endure forever, they are everlasting and new each day! God is good. Even when we are evil, He is still faithful and just. He wants us to repent and be sorry for our sins and then He will forgive us. Praise Him! “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear them from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land (II Chronicles 7:14).

God kept this promise so He made a way for our salvation. He made a new covenant through Jesus Christ, His Son. ‘Behold the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah – not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says The LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people’ (Jeremiah 31:31-33).

Repentance is the first step to salvation. Asking God for forgiveness and receiving His redemption by the blood of Christ is what saves us from darkness and from the wrath of God. After this, we are new creations and the Holy Spirit, given to us when we received Lord Jesus the Christ, guides us to good. He rebukes the evil in our lives, so our spiritual growth is continual and repentance is continual in that sense. When the Holy Spirit rebukes us, we gladly accept His rebuke and we repent.

Mel’s Background

Can you share with us about your family background?
I was born in Turkey in 1972 and lived there until I married my husband Peter, who is English, in 2002 and then moved to England.  My parents said they were Muslims but they did not observe any religious practices. My dad had great faith in the existence of God – he knew there was a God and he feared the god he had faith in. However, having been born into a Muslim family in a country where 99% of the population are Muslim, he never knew the truth. He was a Muslim because he was born into a Muslim family and to him, Islam was the only true religion because he never even considered the possibility of Islam not being the truth. Like my dad, my mum was also a believer in the Islamic religion – she believed that God existed but never thought deeply about Him.  I grew up therefore in a setting where people never even thought of the possibility of an alternative religion. We just thought Jews and Christians were sinners.

I have one brother who is an eye surgeon and is a non-believer.  While studying medicine, he had been able to make wise conclusions from the workings of the human anatomy and would tell me how amazing creations humans are, as well as The Creator.  He now thinks the theory of evolution is likely to be correct, that the universe formed itself through millions of years and that religion is for people to make themselves feel better! I pray for his eyes to be opened, and we know nothing is impossible for God.

When I was a child, the Muslim culture was all around me even though my mum and dad were not religious. 99% of the Turkish population were Muslim back then. My nan also lived with us for a long time and she was the religious figure in my life. She used to tell me of a god who created the world and us. He also created heaven and hell. She taught me that if you do good, you go to heaven but if you do bad things, you go to hell and hell is a horrible place to go to! You go for punishment and burn for eternity in this place! It was a simple and horrid message.

The goodness of the true God was still present in our lives however: He blessed us with love and togetherness as a family, a roof over our heads, lots of lovely food, sunshine and laughter. I had so much laughter with my nan and my mum was a very loving person too. My dad was very strict but an honourable man who worked very hard. I was brought up with a lot of love, good moral values and a lot of discipline too. However, nobody really made a push to drive me to think about God.

I think around the age of twelve, I began to feel compelled to think more deeply about God. Who is He? What is it He seeks? Why did He create us? Why are we here on earth? Why are we dying? Why do we exist in the first place? Why is Allah so harsh? Why would Allah put us in hell where we burn eternally, can He not forgive us? These thoughts consumed my mind and caused me to have bitterness towards Allah. I felt so distant from this horrible god. Only now though do I know that what I was distant from was Allah, not the true living Almighty God.

False religion made me become angry and bitter. I was also really fearful, but had no idea that all of this could have been one big lie. I thought everything I was told about God was true and that Islam was the only way. Period. When you are brought up in an environment like this, your eyes are closed, you are like a child who knows nothing and follows the bad shepherd, the hireling.

In the meantime, the true God was watching over me and He saw that I was good. I was a loving girl, who wanted to have a family of my own one day. I loved children, even as a child and would really hope that one day I would have beautiful children.  I even had a vision of children’s heads….and both my daughters’ heads were just like in that vision when they were little! God already planned to give me the children I wanted and He blessed me with them.  Moreover, He saved me from that darkness I was in – and the lies of Islam – and He also brought me to a place where He replaced the lies with His truth in Christ.

Can you remember when you first heard the Gospel? What were you told? What impact did that have on you? Where were you in life at that time? What was happening?
I studied maths at university and got a degree in Maths. After this, I began to study a postgraduate diploma in applied maths, but I had some free time occasionally. One day my father asked if I would give private maths tuition to someone’s child, so I started going to their office where I would meet this child and teach him maths. There I happened to meet a man who said to me that he did not believe that Islam was the true religion and that he would give me some books to read if I wanted. I was shell-shocked and just so amazed anyone would think this religion was false! It was like a shock to my system, and I did not quite understand what he even meant!

After a few weeks, the books arrived and they were the books of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I loved the books and contacted their organization to find somebody who could minister to me. They sent a lovely person from their organization to talk to me. She could come to my house and we would read their books, read scriptures from their bible using their translation. I was rejoicing over the name of Jesus, how wonderful He is, and how different this new God was from Allah. Just the sheer knowledge of Islam not being the truth was enough for me to rejoice. She told me about a loving God! There were so much good news: God’s plan for us, how much He loves us, the eternal life and the evidence of the Bible being true, scientifically, historically and archeologically.  Everything started to make sense!

You probably know very well that Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult, and that they deny the deity of Jesus and distort God’s word by translating it wrong. However, it is true that some of their teachings are parallel to true (biblical) Christianity, for example redemption. They told me Jesus was my redemption, He died for my sins and that I am forgiven because of this redemption. This may not sound like the perfect story of how I first heard the good news but who are we to question why God used them to open the door for me? The thing is, it would have been almost impossible for me to meet a true Christian in Turkey under the circumstances. But even today it is rather more likely you will meet Jehovah’s Witnesses whichever country you go to because they actively evangelize, knocking on front doors and speaking to people about redemption through Jesus.

I was just seeking some light from the darkness I was in and I suppose I was really not in a position to question who Jesus was anyway, because I simply did not know that He was God. They said Jesus is the Son of God and He died for my sins and this was fine by me. Plus, at the time I probably would have found it too hard to understand who He really is and perhaps that is the reason why God chose to reveal just what I needed to know at the time. There were a lot of things I needed to know and my questions were mostly answered, for example: why the Bible is the Word of God; what evidence is out there; why the creation story is the one that makes the most sense; what the scientific, historic and archaeological evidences are; what God’s plan for us is in the future. These were the things I needed to hear. There were many other things in Islam that made me so confused such as destiny… as free will doesn’t mean much in Islam. You see, Islam gives you fear and expects obedience through fear but to hear God is love, and He gives us peace not fear was good news, not just good news, it was fantastic! Do you know what it was like when I heard about Him for the first time, it was like, JESUS IS THE TRUTH! – just like that – in capital letters, and so it felt like a massive revelation when I heard it.

 Even though there were many things I loved to hear in these meetings, I sensed there was something not quite right. I still continued meeting my mentor as there were so many things to learn and I was always keen to learn more. After around three years, our meetings had to end because I married my husband and had to move to the UK in 2002. The last time I saw her was at my wedding.

When did you become conscious of the Gospel of Lord Yeshua,  that Messiah died for your sins, personally?
This is brought out and better explained below.

Mel’s Journey to Faith

What was your journey to saving faith from then on? How did God work in your life to bring you to the light of the saving knowledge and salvation of Lord Yeshua the Messiah?
After I got married  there was a big pause in my spiritual life. I had my first then second child and soon after, I began to seek God again. I contacted the Jehovah’s Witnesses again and they happened to find a local person who could speak to me. She lived locally and was a lovely person who I met regularly for a long time, probably around two years. However, she gave up on me after she realized I was not going to be convinced. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not give blood to anyone even though the person who is dying is in need of blood. They could not answer my question of why a loving God would ask me to watch my child die instead of saving her by simply giving my blood to her. So, this lady stopped seeing me and I did not realise it was a blessing that she did!

Then years went by. I was searching and searching, feeling lost but never gave up on seeking God. I just knew that I knew that I knew that there is a God – I was just failing to find Him.

During these dull years of my spiritual life I kept thinking, “well I know the Bible is true, I believe Jesus is the truth, but I just need to read the Bible and understand everything fully to see the direction I have to go.”    I started going to a local church, but I found the services so dull. I wasn’t drawn closer to God in those services except for the times when we were singing hymns.  One day, my friend told me she had been praying for two people that she knew and that she wanted to have Bible Study with them. She told me about a short course of eight sessions on videos from The Bible Society which I bought and we started these weekly sessions in my home. During the course, we would discuss what was said in each video and we found them useful indeed. There were however a number of occasions which led us to realise that some people call themselves Christians but actually do not take the Bible literally! This was a shock to me and a sadness came upon me again. I knew I could not continue going to this church fellowship anymore.

In 2019 the Covid virus hit the world. I had a lot of time to myself and I spent much of my time reading the Bible, listening and watching testimonies of believers of Jesus on social media and the internet. When everyone around me were complaining about being stuck at home, I was so pleased that I had this time of peace and stillness.  In particular it was a time of seeking God. This was when I began to understand the term ‘being born again’.  At this time, I began to ask myself whether I was a born-again believer. I remembered the moments twenty-five years before when I first heard the name Jesus and when I realized God is good! Had I been ‘born-again’ back then?

One day I began to ask about  baptism in water; the Bible says we are to believe and be baptised in water and that Lord Jesus is the One who baptises us in the Holy Spirit. It was a declaration of faith and so I told a sister in the Lord  that I wanted to be baptised as the declaration of my faith in Jesus. That way I could make it clear to everyone around me that Jesus is my Lord.  Unfortunately, the churches were still shut and even though I did not want to go to the local church, I still asked them –  out of desperation – if they would baptise me. They said they would have to stay shut!   A few days later however,  the sister in the Lord called me to tell me of a baptism being held at another fellowship which  she could take me to so that I could see a full immersion baptism in action!

The night before visiting the church where the baptism was taking place, I had dinner with my lady friends where I consumed a full bottle of wine – a huge amount of alcohol for me. I am not used to drinking that much and I felt awful the next day with a terrible hangover! Every cell in my body was telling me to stay in bed instead of going to the baptism service but I managed to lift myself up and got there. I sat at the front watching the whole thing.   At the end of it one of the church leaders who performed the immersion came straight up to me to say hello and that was it! I was in tears, telling him that I wanted to be baptised. He then led me in this prayer:  “God I am sorry for my sins, I believe Jesus Christ is Lord, He died for my sins to redeem me, He rose after three days and He will come again to take me back home!”  That moment was the first time I had ever uttered these words. Even though I heard them many times before through my studies, I had not said these things with my own mouth until that moment.

When did the assurance of salvation come?  When did you know you were saved?  Can you describe how that felt?
I accepted Jesus Christ and His good news all those years ago when He first revealed Himself to me as the Truth, when I was completely lost and confused; when I was at the verge of giving up on God. When I heard His name for the first time, I was over-joyed. I didn’t understand who He really was but I knew He was the good news and He was the truth! That was twenty-five years ago and since then, Jesus stayed with me in my heart and in my mind as “good news”, as the key to the hope of the everlasting future with complete righteousness of God.

From that day I uttered those words of prayer with the church leader, I asked God to help me understand and as I prayed, I began to understand truly, what it means to be born again. I came to understand truly that God’s love for me is beyond any other love. I understood that God revealed Himself to me in His Son, and showed me through His Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ died for my sins – so that I may see the proof of God’s everlasting love for me. “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13) –  God showed us that His love is great for us and He gave us another chance, to repent and believe that God loved this world so much that He gave His only Son. As written in John 3:16-17: ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.’

From Then to Now

Since then, can you share a little bit about how the Lord Yeshua has worked in your life?
I am blessed with Christian fellowship in my present congregation as well as a bible study group. I am grateful that there are people around me who I can trust, ask questions and pray together with. Lord Jesus always blesses me with His love, His word and His truth. When I am in distress, I pray and find refuge in Him and before I know it, verses become alive, appearing from different channels, the same verses from the Bible appearing here and there…..I am grateful for this assurance.

I am grateful that both of my children are saved. It is a joy to see them growing in Christ. I am happy to be able to share my faith with them, and to see them responding to God’s grace. My eldest one was moved in her spirit to say the words I said with the same church leader, on her own one day, while she was in her room praying… she gave her life to Jesus, surrendered to Him. The simplicity of her testimony amazes me.

My youngest one was saved by the grace of God working in her through the verses of John 3:5-6: ‘Jesus answered, “Most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit if spirit.” One day these verses appeared to my sight again and again that it made me ask myself why  I kept on seeing this that day.  I even got upset by thoughts questioning whether or not I was saved!  The enemy indeed comes in with lies to try to trick you into doubt.   I  became restless and started walking around the house, ending up  in my youngest child’s bedroom. I shared with her about repeatedly seeing the verses and that I  was wondering why the Lord kept showing these since I am already saved. She said, “I don’t think this is for you…..this is for me”!!! So, I held her hand and led her in praying, ‘God, I am sorry for my sins, please forgive me. I believe Jesus Christ is Lord, He died for my sins to redeem me, He rose after three days and He will come again to take me back home.’

I have a Maths degree and the Lord also enabled me to gain qualified teacher status in the UK around twenty years ago. Since September 2002 I have worked in a number of secondary schools and looking back, I sometimes think this is a miracle on its own. I had no teaching experience in this country and there were so many barriers – the language, the cultural differences, issues with education and more – yet here I am today: a well-respected, experienced maths teacher. Clearly this is God’s work is it not! He gave me a talent to do this job, and it just didn’t matter where I would teach and what issues I would have to deal with, He just helped me so I could do it. I honestly think I could not have done all this without Him.

I see God’s hand in my work life on a daily basis. As born-again believers, we died to our old nature and are born again into new life in Lord Jesus, following Him. However, dying to ourselves and trying to be more like Christ is not a one-off occasion, it is a continuous path. It is wonderful, of course, to share the joy of learning with young people and help them shape their lives but I know this isn’t the only reason why God placed me in this profession. God wants me to be more like Christ every day at school, He wants me to be more patient, to control my emotions better when I am faced with challenges and He wants me to glorify Him by serving young people.

Communicating with young people at school is a skill, requires experience and a lot of patience; it can be very challenging at times due to many factors. I have to pray for God’s wisdom to guide me so that I may speak wisely in challenging situations, not fall short in the required patience and in setting an example of good character. Even though my job can be very stressful at times, I can still cope with it because God rewards me with the joy of seeing my students smiling when they have a sense of achievement in lessons. I can also see the respect and the appreciation that comes from many of my lovely students. Above all, I have to bring Him glory in doing what I do and so the way I see it is that it is my responsibility to use the gift He gave me and to try to multiply it and not to bury it (Matthew 25:14-30).

Within the will of God, do you have any particular hopes for the future that you can share with us?
I hope to see my beloved husband saved one day. I pray that his eyes will be opened and he will come to understand God is true, and that Jesus Christ is his only Saviour. I also pray this for my dear brother and his family.

Last words

Can you share a Scripture passage through which the Holy Spirit has really encouraged, strengthened or instructed you in your walk of faith in Lord Yeshua?
Isaiah 49:16 – ‘See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me.’  This is one of my favourite Scriptures.

Isaiah prophesied this around 700 years before Jesus and the pierced palms of the hands of Jesus is a wonderful fulfilment of this.  Through the words ‘Your walls are continually before me’, God is saying He is watching me and guarding me all the time, He is saying He is my protection and that He will bless me continually.

Finally, how can sisters in the faith of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah pray for you?
God willing, we want to move house in a couple of years and we do not know where. This is a difficult decision to be made, as we will leave the area and therefore I will have to leave my church here. Please pray that the Lord will guide us in choosing the location so that His true worshippers will surround us. Pray for a fellowship that will support us, strengthen our faith and share the joy God gives to His people in my new pastures.   Pray also that we might even be involved in ministry somehow and become fruitful in serving The Lord by spreading His gospel where we will go next.

Finally, please pray that this testimony will inspire someone who is looking to find our amazing God! Amen in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.

To God be the glory, great things HE has done!