NEXT

I also got the chance to share my own testimony at Next. Here it is:

Ricky Alcantar Testimony from Sovereign Grace Ministries on Vimeo.

Ricky Alcantar
Cross of Grace Church, El Paso TX

My name is Ricky Alcantar and this is the story of how Jesus Christ changed my life. By God’s grace, I have a boring testimony.

A few years ago I was sharing my testimony with some other guys from my church and it seemed like everyone but me had been saved in a radical and amazing way. I prefaced my testimony by saying, “Well, I don’t really have an amazing testimony…not anything like some of the other testimonies here.” One of my friends stopped me right there. He said, “Anytime someone goes from death to life it’s amazing.”

For the first ten years of my life I grew up surrounded in the gospel. I read about it in storybooks involving raccoons and other forest animals. I heard about it in audio tapes involving prodigal ants. I saw it in largely frightening animated adaptions of Pilgrim’s Progress. I probably heard it sung by a huge singing and dancing blue songbook. But despite the best efforts of my parents, my heart was hard. I held on to everything I was supposed to “do” for God and never understood what God had done for me. 

I learned quickly how to follow the rules at home. I committed a few blatant sins but I wasn’t the rebellious child…I was the one who did what my parents told me to and looked down on other kids. I enjoyed Sunday school, Bible club, and the rest mostly because I could give the right answers better than the other kids.

In Sunday School I was known by my bitter classmates as, “The Bible Guy.” When our class would have contests trying to find Bible verses I won so much my teachers started banning me from participating. But I didn’t love Jesus, I loved being the best in class. I loved church for the attention it brought me and because I could just follow the rules.

So as a kid I knew a lot of scriptures, I knew a lot of the right things to say, but all that head knowledge didn’t translate into a love for Jesus. Phrases like “Jesus died for my sins” were nothing but phrases to memorize, recite, and get commended for. I was the littlest Pharisee, making a show of scripture memory dominance without the scriptures ever penetrating my heart. I was proud and selfish. But more than that I was dead in my sins. And even then there were seeds in my heart that, if I they’d come to fruition later in life would have resulted in sins that I shudder to think about.

Until one Sunday, a Sunday like any other Sunday, I was sitting in class at a bright red table staring up at felt boards and sheep. For the hundredth or thousandth or millionth time my teacher was explaining the gospel. I tuned out–I already knew this answer. But that day something in my heart changed. I listened carefully. Then the teacher said the five words I knew so well: “Jesus died for your sins.” And the words cut to my heart like a knife.

I didn’t understand everything fully but I understood that they meant that Jesus was on the cross because of my sin. They meant that the wrong things I did had to be really punished…but Jesus said he would take the punishment for me. They meant that I was the Pilgrim with the burden on my back that I could leave at the cross.

I don’t remember anything else the teacher said. But I remember that when she told people the class to pray along if they wanted to be forgiven of their sins, I prayed. This time not to put on a show, but because I wanted to talk to God, my father, my savior.

Since then I’ve been far from perfect–I’ve fought legalism and moralism, I’ve fought self-centeredness and lust–but my struggles are different because of the gospel. When I have run toward sin Jesus has faithfully stopped me by opening my eyes to the see the cross again. And when I’ve run toward Jesus and Jesus has met me powerfully it has been most often when I see once again the beauty of the words, “Jesus died for my sins.”

I didn’t break down cry in the classroom that day but I’ve cried many times since then. I didn’t see the dramatic change the day or week or month after that day, but I’ve seen dramatic change in my life since then. Many of my friends have seen God’s love I their lives as God has pulled them from addictions or violent anger or sexual immorality. But in no less amazing a way I’ve seen God’s love in that he kept me from all those things. Every year God has drawn me closer to the cross and I see what he did for me that day in the classroom as even more amazing. Every year my God has become bigger and bigger. Now the thought that I’ve gone from death to life is amazing, because a boring testimony is never boring to the one who’s been saved.