Mormon Missionary Meets Jesus--Powerful Testimony

well good evening everyone we are grateful to be here where Adams Road and we are from Florida so we are a long way from home or from the other coast and as a ministry we've been touring the country for about six years and this is actually our first time in the state of California so we praise God and we have received a very warm welcome from the body here so we appreciate it my name is Micah and I am privileged and honored to be able to share what God has done in my life and how he transformed me from a very religious man to a trophy of His grace I grew up in the state of Indiana and a very strong and faithful Mormon home where I was taught that it was in and through my works and in and through my religious acts that I could make myself right with God Paul writes to the Romans and Romans 10 he says that they had a zeal for God referring to the Jews but not according to knowledge and that they were ignorant of the righteousness of God and that they sought to establish their own and that described me as a young Mormon man as I did not believe that God gave me his love freely and I did not believe that I was saved by grace is a free gift I believed that I had to earn my way into God's love and prove myself to God and show him that I was worthy enough to be saved and I was very much like Saul before he became Paul it was a very zealous religious young man and Galatians Paul says that he was advancing in Judaism beyond many people his own age how extremely zealous was he for the traditions of his father's and that was very much the type of young man that I was when I was a teenager we actually picked up and left the state of Indiana move right to the heart of Mormonism to Alpine Utah which is a city that is no exaggeration about 99 percent Mormon and my mom was actually a professor at Brigham Young University if you guys are familiar with BYU it's a private Mormon School in Utah and it just kind of goes to show the type of zeal that our family had for this religion so I graduated from high school and I went to semester at BYU and when I turn 19 I did what's customary the more Church and that's to go on a two-year mission trip raise your have you guys seen the Mormon missionaries raise your hand don't be shy okay white shirts nametags ties okay I'm sure you've seen them riding their bicycles and they might have even knocked on your doors and you might have even spoken with them well that's tradition in the Mormon Church because you want to go out and convert people because we were taught from the time that we were children that there was no salvation outside of the Mormon Church and the only way to be saved was in and through the religious action works and ordinances that were provided through that particular religion we were not taught in the the sufficiency of the blood of Jesus Christ to save us from our sins and so when I was 19 as you can see that I went into the Missionary Training Center in Provo Utah and went on my two-year mission trip and I actually got sent to Orlando Florida and what you may or may not notice that Orlando is a very evangelical in Bible based area and I didn't understand this at the time so I was a little naive as a young Mormon missionary but I was convinced that I was just going to get to Orlando and convert everybody that I saw and be the greatest mission or ever and so I got there and I was being very zealous and trying to convert people into my faith and riding my bicycle and knocking on doors and I'd been there for a few months and I got a little you know what you might say overzealous in my attempt to convert others because I actually attempted to convert a Baptist minister in his whole congregation to the Mormon Church which I was unsuccessful in by the way um but it did open an opportunity for God to begin an amazing work in my life and as I sat down with this Baptist minister to share with him the Mormon gospel it opened up an opportunity for God to speak through this man and to share the true gospel with me for the first time in my life and that's what happened as I sat down with this Baptist minister as after presenting the Mormon gospel and telling him that there were works and ordinances and Commandments that had to be followed in order to be made right with God this this pastors response was that the gospel of Jesus Christ is it the only way to be made right with God is through Jesus Christ and through the blood that He shed on the cross of Calvary and like it says in Titus chapter 3 that when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared he saved us not because of works done by us and righteousness but according to his own mercy and this was the love of God that I did not know but it was a love of God that I always wanted but my God only loved me as far as I prove myself to him but like it says in Romans five the God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners the Christ Jesus died for us that that was the good news is that even though we've all sinned and we've all fallen short of the glory of God that we are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus and that's the good news that Jesus Christ paid the price he paid the debt that I owed as a sinner and he made a way for me to be made right with God and that I could have peace with God by the blood of his cross and when he shared this with me he also shared Ephesians 2:8 and 9 that says for by grace you have been saved through faith that is not your own doing it as a gift of God not a result of works so that no one could boast and I did not understand the grace of God as a religious young man and this pastor for the first time told me that salvation was a free gift Jesus Christ had paid the price for me on the cross and all he was asking with open arms was for me to lay my religiosity in my works and my sin at the foot of the cross and allow him to take it and that he had done the one work the one act of righteousness that could bring justification of life to all men and my response to this pastor was to completely and totally reject the gospel because I was a religious man and I was a saw and I did not know the power of the message of the Cross it says in 1st Corinthians 1:18 for the message of cross of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God and to me at that point in my life it was foolishness and so I ended up arguing with this Baptist minister and contending for my faith which was a faith of works and we ended up kind of getting into this confrontation and as I was leaving his office I was extremely frustrated and even angry this pastor stopped me and he said elder Wilder I challenge you to go home and to read the Bible as a child and I promise you that if you'll do that that God will change your life and he will open your eyes and show you for the first time in your life what the gospel the true gospel of Jesus Christ really is and so that seed that was planted in my heart as a young Mormon missionary of nineteen years old started to change my life because I took that Baptist ministers challenge and I started to read the Word of God as a child for the first time in my life and I started to pour over the pages of the New Testament and every day that I did God washed me with the water of that word and he consumed me with this amazing love that I did not know that my religion could never offer me and he unveiled to me his grace in a way that I had never before seen in the book of Romans chapter 8 it says who shall separate us from the love of Christ and then Paul goes on to say that I'm sure that nothing else in all creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord and this was a love that I did not know this love like it says in first John that was manifest in Jesus Christ and that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through him and this is love not that we have loved God but that God loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins and so as a Mormon missionary for about 18 straight months I read the New Testament and God slowly changed my heart it was not you know any epiphany that happened overnight it was certainly wasn't one verse or chapter or even one book it was 18 months of poring over the Word of God and God slowly transformed forming me and showing me what Jesus Christ had done and like it says in the book of Colossians chapter 2 that Jesus Christ cancelled the record of debt that stood against me with its legal demands this he set aside nailing it to the cross Jesus paid the price and all I had to do is accept him by faith and Ephesians 1:7 says that in him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace and I came to understand the cleansing and amazing power the blood of Jesus Christ and how that cleanse me of my sins and brought forgiveness to me for the first time in my life and it wasn't because of who I was what I had done for God it's because of who he was well he did for me in sending Jesus to be the sacrificial offering for my sins to be my substitute on the cross and to satisfy the demands of God's law that stood against me and he took it for me and the work was done and all my religious works were like filthy rags to God because I was not accepting Jesus Christ alone by faith and so I got to the point with only three weeks left of my two-year mission trip for the Mormon Church and I actually became a born-again believer and the Lord Jesus Christ all praise and glory and honor to God because I can tell you I was not looking to walk away from my religion but God pursued my heart relentlessly until I just had to give up because I was so broken in my sin and realized that Jesus was the only thing that could heal me of my sin and so I now found myself in a very difficult predicament because I'm a born-again Christian and a Mormon missionary and it doesn't work that way like Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 5 if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation the oldest passed away the new has come and I was a new creation and I had to change that I could not hide that and I remember just praying to God saying well what am I supposed to do now you know who do I tell how do I come forward with this to my family my friends and my religion and that God opened a door for me and it was in a very terrifying an unimaginable way and that was a mission system about three weeks before you go home from your to your mission trip you have this opportunity where you're supposed to stand in front of your missionary peers and your leadership and share your testimony of what you've learned during the course of your two-year mission trip everybody always knows where this is going and so I remember it was my turn to get up and share what my testimony was and I remember standing at the pulpit in this Mormon Chapel and just trembling in fear but Paul says in Philippians for I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me and by the power of God and by His grace I was able to share a very simple testimony I'm Joseph sitting back here to my left was one of the Mormon missionaries who's sitting in the audience at the time but I shared this testimony so you might be able to guess what happened to him I praise God and so I got up there and my testimony was simply that the one thing that I had come to know over the course of my two-year mission trip was that Jesus Christ was all that I needed that his blood and his grace were sufficient for my eternal life and that I knew for the first time in my life that I was saved not because of my works but because of the free gift of grace that he was offering me and when I shared that there's a very awkward hush over the audience and two days after I publicly shared that testimony I received a phone call from my Mormon leadership and they said that they wanted to have a chat with me and I very quickly realized why they wanted to sit down and talk with me and I can of course laugh and smile about it now but this was probably the single most terrifying moment of my entire life and as you know things about religion and about the world that they can have a hold on you and this is who I was my mom was a tenured professor at BYU my dad is a high priest of Mormonism I had two older brothers that were both you know returned Mormon missionaries I had a girlfriend who's Mormon I had a scholarship to BYU I mean this was my life this is everything that I was and wanted to be and God had called me out of that and into a relationship with him but Jesus says that what is a profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul and even though Mormonism had the whole world to offer me I knew that I did not have salvation security through my religion I could only have that through faith in Jesus Christ and before I had to go into this meeting I remember just you know pleading with God to give me strength and grace and help and I was reading the Bible and I somehow by the grace of God was led to the book of Matthew chapter 19 verse 29 and it's Jesus responding to the Apostle Peter and he says that anyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my name's sake will receive a hundredfold and shall inherit eternal life and that was the Word of God that he laid on my heart and I realized so quickly that if I lost everything in the world for the sake of gaining Christ that it was worth the cost because I was gaining something that far surpassed anything that the world or my religion could offer and that was a relationship with my Lord and my Savior my god and so I'm like Jesus says in John 6 he says I am the bread of life whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst and Jesus Christ has satisfied me and quench my thirst in a way that nothing else in the world could and when Jesus was with the Samaritan woman at the well he said if you drink of this water you will thirst again but if you drink of the water that I give you you will never be thirsty and I have found that I'm not thirsty anymore because I have Jesus and he's all that I need and so I went into this meeting and sat face-to-face with my Mormon leadership and God just put words in my mouth and I told them that I did not need the Mormon Church or any religion or organization or man or prophet or anything to stand in between me and God the Father but like Paul says in 1st Timothy 2:5 there is one God and there is one mediator between God and man the man Christ Jesus who offered himself as a ransom fraud and knew that he had bought me and paid for my salvation with his blood and I was his and when I shared that witness to him he told me that I was filled with the Spirit of the devil that I was being deceived by Satan they threatened me with excommunication referred to me as an antichrist and the worst insult he gave me this is true by the way she said I sounded like a Baptist I don't know what that means and so at that point of course I was kicked off my Mormon mission that was the inevitable result so I had to go back to Utah to face my family my girlfriend who is at Brigham Young University over the course of my two-year mission trip she and I had been corresponding through letters and I was sharing the gospel with her as I was coming to know it by reading the word of God and God led her on an amazing journey and she also came to know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and so she is now my wife and we have three wonderful and amazing little boys for whom I praise God and so I got home and then had my family to face Matt over here at the piano is actually one of my older brothers so you might be able to guess it happen to him and it was at that point that I just very simply and with as much love as I could have just shared with them the simple gospel and invited them to read the Bible as a child and allow God to do a work in his life as he had done in mine and I praise the Lord because that seed was planted and there were many people that watered it but it was God and God alone in his time that did the growth in the last of my family members and to this day both my brother my sister as well as my parents have all come into a relationship with Jesus Christ so my mom and dad are actually here tonight that's them and God has done an amazing thing in their life so my mother the former BYU professor is actually here tonight and she's going to come up and share word and so if you guys can just praise God and welcome her

Channel: Adam's Road Ministry

Views: 799,176

Rating: 4.3047457 out of 5

Keywords: Micah Wilder, Adam's Road, ex-mormon, Gospel, Jesus Christ, testimony, grace, Mormon missionary

Id: D569x5TqtVk

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2013