I Surrendered My Pride and He Gave Me Purpose for Living!

My name is Melissa Lehman. I was raised in Abilene, Texas and married my husband, Lynn, in 1989. He is now retired from the military and we love living here and serving the Lord.

The Lord has worked in such wonderful ways in my life. As I think back over my life, I think I always had a heart to know God. I knew He was there and I wanted to know Him, but I just didn’t know how to go about finding Him.

My brother and I would walk to a nearby church for Sunday School, but it wasn’t anything we did that regularly. So, I went through my life doing my own will. I gave little thought to pleasing God. I mostly had the idea that if I was good enough, I could go to heaven.

As I entered my college years I experienced a devastating relationship break up and found myself calling out to God to help me. Although I was a totally lost person, I look back on that moment when I sensed His love for me and He gave me the help I needed. I will be eternally thankful to God for that.

A year or so later, I met my husband Lynn. We didn’t go to church very often but we promised each other that we would, when children came along. After the birth of our first child, I found myself in prayer constantly, just thanking God for the precious gift of this child. I was as lost as I could be, but I knew that it was only the Lord that could have given me such a perfect little gift! About this time, I began to seek after a church to go to. What I found was so watered down. I always left them feeling empty. I look back now and see that the Lord used them to begin teaching me some of the basics. I had been taught throughout my life that baptism was necessary for salvation. Now I was learning that baptism had nothing to do with salvation. It is just an act of obedience.

When our oldest son, Alex, was four years old, he acquired a lot of bruises all over his body. It turned out that his platelets (the clotting factor in the blood) were so low that he was bruising spontaneously. They took an x-ray to rule out a tumor in his chest. They saw something on the x-ray that concerned them and they medevaced Alex to another hospital. They thought he had leukemia or some other cancer. I remember thinking, “Lord, I know he is Yours and just on loan to me. Thank You for whatever time You have given me, with him.” As it turned out, God took care of this scary health crisis and everything went back to normal. I was so grateful to God!

Finally, the Lord led us to NTBC. I remember not really liking it at first. (There was that old pride thing again…) I liked Pastor and believed he spoke the truth, but I didn’t like the dress standards or how the Sunday School and Children’s Church were run. I am horrified to admit it now, but I confronted Mrs. Shaffer about it once. She was quite gracious about it! I wasn’t satisfied with her answer and I went so far as to seek a different church. (More pride…) We just were not impressed with any of them and soon came back to NTBC.

Now, all this time I thought of myself as a saved person. I was a good person, wasn’t I? Pastor would preach and name a sin, and I would think, “Well, I’ve never done that!” I never murdered anyone and I never committed adultery. I was good enough for heaven, wasn’t I? (more pride…)

Then the precious Holy Spirit began to do His work on my heart. He would convict me and convince me of my sin. I would get a flash of a sin I’d committed and see it the way God saw it. It began to horrify me!

I remember when the Lord showed me what I had done in attacking Mrs. Shaffer. I went to her and apologized. She told me that she never held it against me at all. I told her I felt as though I had been asleep spiritually and was just now waking up. The truth was…I was just waking up! I was seeing myself as the real sinner that I was.

Then I heard the Pastor preach something that I had never heard before. It was about a word called, “repentance”. It was a new concept to me. I learned that it was a turning from my sin. I was counseled with after that and told that it was a complete turning from sin. I couldn’t stand sideways looking back at my sin and also be looking forward, toward salvation. I had to be willing to completely turn my back on my sin and completely turn toward the Lord’s gift of salvation! I had to have real sorrow over my sin and what it actually had done to Christ as He hung upon that cross. Every vile, wicked thing I had ever done and would ever do in the future, was poured out upon Him! He bore the punishment of it all! He did that--all for me! It wasn’t enough just to want to escape hell. I had to really change my mind about all sin and see it the way God did.

It was at this time that I really began to read the Bible and to diligently seek to know the Lord. I really struggled with seeing my sin the way God saw it. I had justified my sin for a long time and convinced myself that I wasn’t really that bad of a person.

I remember hearing a horrific story on the news one day about a man who had charged into a church youth group meeting and murdered several teenagers. How horrible! The Lord used that to show me that the smallest sin in my eyes, was just as evil as what that murdering man had done to those teens.

That’s when it hit me that God sees ALL sin that same way. Sin is sin.

There are no big sins or little sins. They are all bad and deserve to be punished by God. I remember when my heart finally broke. Pastor was preaching about a people that rejected Jesus Christ as Lord. I recall how my soul cried out to God, “I don’t want to be one of those people”!!! You couldn’t hold me down when the invitation came! I wanted nothing more to do with my sin! I wanted Jesus and Jesus only!

After that day, my entire life changed! It was like night and day. I had new desires and new goals for my life. I only wanted to please the One who died so that I could have eternal life. And I still do!