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Fontana SDA Church

Janelle Shives

Testimony of Janelle Shives

Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for giving us another Sabbath day.

I thank you for working in our lives and for giving us stories that we can uplift other people with.

I thank you for working in my life and I pray that someone somewhere would be blessed by hearing this testimony.

Lord please be with me help me not to be the 1 speaking but you speaking through me I just pray for your Holy Spirit to descend here now be with everyone in this room.

Okay, so as you look at me now, you probably wouldn't guess that I actually went through a pretty bad time in my life.

I'm glad that when people look at me now, they think I was always a goody-two-shoe type person.

And I wish it had been that way but unfortunately it was not.

I want to start off with a text in Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes chapter 12 verse 1.

Any there say Amen yes Ecclesiastes 12.1 Ecclesiastes is just after Proverbs Amen Ok, Ecclesiastes 12.1 says, Remember now, thy Creator, in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.

So remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.

This is really important because a lot of people will say, oh I'll come to God later in my life, after I've had my fun and you know seen what the world has to offer now later I'll get serious and I'll come to the Lord well ladies and gentlemen I would suggest that you do not do that God wants you now to remember your Creator and give Him the best years of your life, not the last and the worst.

And there's really no guarantee you'll even get those days.

So that is my plea, that you'll remember your Creator now.

Even though the first 19 years of my life I was not remembering my creator.

I was raised in the SDA church but I was in the church not really a Seventh-day Adventist.

And my brother, I had 1 younger brother named Lance, and he was baptized at the same time so he was 8.

So I would say that we were way too young.

We didn't really know what we were doing.

And actually the reason I gave for getting baptized was just that I could become a member of the church.

I didn't really say anything about committing my life to God.

So I think that just goes to show that I was not really converted at that time.

During my youth I can only remember 1 time that I actually read the Bible on my own for myself.

I was going to church, I went to church school from kindergarten all the way through college.

But only 1 time I read the Bible by myself.

And actually my father walked in on me as I was reading the Bible.

And I got embarrassed because I didn't really know what I was doing.

I sort of got my Bible, opened it up to some spot and just started reading.

I was so embarrassed that I don't think I ever read it again.

It's probably not because of that, but I think that just goes to show for parents, when you guys become parents or parents out there, teach your children how to study the Bible.

Don't just expect them to learn that in school because it's an art to reading God's Word and it should always be done with prayer as well.

I wasn't a really bad kid but definitely not a spiritual kid.

In my junior year of college was the first time I ever got drunk.

And it was a spring break and I remember telling my friends, Let's not make a habit of this.

Well, they didn't listen and I sort of forgot that as well because it definitely became a habit for us.

Continue through our senior year of high school just getting worse and worse and also my first year of college as well.

My first year of college I stayed around Orlando and that's where I grew up, near Orlando.

And I lived with my 2 best friends and I worked at SeaWorld.

Yes, I really enjoyed working at SeaWorld but I was a really bad witness at SeaWorld because I had asked to get Sabbath off which they granted to me but then I would go out with my coworkers drinking on Saturday night.

So they knew I was a Seventh-day Adventist and I could have been the only Seventh-day Adventist that they knew and that's the example that they saw for me.

So I regret that thoroughly and I would suggest that anyone who is claiming to be a Seventh-day Adventist but not actually living like it, don't tell people that you are because you're just being a hypocrite.

And It hurts the rest of the church that are really trying to live up to the name that they are claiming to go by.

So that is something I definitely regret.

1 thing, my first year of college, I decided, or not I decided, my friend decided to quit drinking, 1 of my best friends.

And I remember just wanting so bad she would come over.

And that just goes to show you that People are going to try to drag you down.

If you're giving up something, if you're living for the Lord, Satan is not going to give you up without a fight.

And don't let him, do not let him take away that conviction from you.

My friend stuck up and I'm so glad that she did.

And Satan didn't give up, or Satan was fighting for me, but God did not give up on me either.

He wanted me to attend Southern Adventist University.

And there was a couple of miracles that happened to get me there.

My spring break that first year of college, I went and visited Hawaii to see the friend that had actually quit drinking.

So I wanted to go there for the rest of my college and do marine biology there.

And the first school I was applying to was the school that my friend was at, which is BYU Hawaii.

And it was so funny because I filled out the entire application except for this 1 page that had to do with your Mormon training.

I made it very clear in my application that I was not a Mormon.

So I figured that I would need to fill out that page.

But it came, it turned out that they didn't accept me because I didn't turn in that page until the spring semester.

So that fall semester I didn't get in because it took me too long to realize that I had to turn in that page.

So I was also applying to another school in Hawaii and while I was there in my friend's room I was filling out the application online and 3 times I tried to fill out that application and the computer would just erase the whole thing.

So I figured I would just, you know, do it later.

Later on I found out that my mom was actually fasting and praying that I would go to Southern.

After that first year, I had friends that went to Southern and they really liked it.

And I had been in gymnastics since I was 10 years old, and I had taken a year off and I really missed it.

So I was like, okay, well I have this semester that I didn't get into the Hawaii school.

So I'll go to Southern, check it out for a semester, try to do some gymnastics And then if I don't like it I can always go to Hawaii.

So I agreed and I went to SAU and I did make it on the gymnastics team.

I think that was a blessing from God because I did end up turning me towards spiritual things.

But first, before the spiritual things, it was more of the same.

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Testimony of Janelle Shives

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