Deceived

by Susan Nemoseck

I grew up in California.  My Mom and Dad took us eight children to church every Sunday but it wasn’t until I was fifteen years old that I was introduced to the Bible.  I knew nothing about the Bible or what being a Christian was all about.  All I knew was what the Catholic Church taught me.  I thought that since I attended a Catholic church and did what they said, that that made me a “Christian”. 

My first contact with true Christianity came when I met Raymond, my future husband.  He was not saved at the time but his parents were.  There was something different about them but I had no idea what it was.  It was later that I learned that what I was observing was real Christianity being lived out before me. 

Just before I got married, Raymond joined the Air Force and we were moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming.  The first time my in-laws came to visit they wanted to go to church.  We located a Baptist church in town and attended.  Oh my, was that uncomfortable!  I felt like the preacher was talking directly to me and I didn’t like it!  An usher gave me a card to fill out and I folded it up and put it in my purse.  I did not want that man visiting me!  A friend told us of another church and I started going there by myself.  I made a profession of faith and from that time on thought of myself as a “Christian”.  We were not faithful church attenders and I had some pretty erroneous ideas about myself and sin.

In 1981 our son David was born and our daughter, Jennifer was four years old.  My husband was hot for an overseas tour so he put in for places he was interested in.  Japan was first on his list. I did not want to go because I wanted a place where I could understand the language.  I thought England was the place for me but God knew better.  He had His own plan.

It was in Japan that I came in contact with Lynn Shoemaker who put us in touch with the people at Yokota Baptist Church.  We began to faithfully attend church and we began to hear much preaching with an emphasis on sin, repentance and faith and I began to doubt what I had done five years earlier.  The Lord was working on my heart, peeling back the layers and preparing me. 

One day we got a letter from Raymond’s sister Marcia.  She wrote that she had just gotten saved.  She saw herself as a sinner before a Holy God and repented of her sins.  God used her letter to open my eyes to my own sin condition.  I always thought of Marcia as a good Christian.  She was always in church, never gave her folks a hard time and lived a Christian lifestyle.   She even went to Bible College and taught in a Christian School.  Her conversion shook me to my foundation.  If she wasn’t saved, for certain I must not be.  A longing began to grow in my heart.  I wanted to know for sure if I was a true Christian.  I began to beg God to show me and then I started searching the scriptures for answers.  The Lord led me to start reading the book of I John chapter 1.  Verses 8-10  just jumped off the page at me.

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

It was then I realized that I was calling God a liar since I was saying I was not a sinner.  God was not the liar…I was.   These verses showed me that I was a sinner.  Now I had to make a decision.  Will I remain in my sins and die without Christ?  Was my sin worth holding on to?  I started going over what I thought I had done in my profession of faith years earlier.  What did I do?  I agonized for days on this.  I had so many confusing questions but in the end I had to ask myself if all the questions were going to keep me from doing what I needed to do and that was REPENT!  I was miserable.

Finally, on April 4^th, 1983 I responded to an altar call at church.  I wanted so badly to have my sins forgiven and know it.  That day, I got down on my knees and asked the Lord to forgive me of my sins and to be my Saviour.  Praise the Lord He forgave me!

Romans 10:9-10  “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved.  For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness: and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

Since then, my heart’s desire has been to please God in everything I do.  I am not perfect for I’m just a sinner saved by the Grace of God.  I’m so thankful that I know it!