Steven Blanchard

I grew up going to church and I learned a lot about God, but I didn’t really think much about it until I was in junior high school and I took my first biology class where they were teaching the theory of evolution and that God and Religion were against science. I started wondering if what I had been taught my entire life about God was false and science and evolution was true. But the more I thought about it the more I was convinced that it actually took more faith to believe in evolution and that everything that exists in this world and in the universe all just came together and happened by chance, even given billions of years. Things don’t naturally tend to get more and more complex and advanced. From my experience, it’s just the opposite. I was fascinated with how complex the design of everything is. Like just think about how complex the human body is. It’s amazing how all you have to do is think about moving your hand and it happens! I was studying the human cell structure in the biology class and all the different parts that all work together to make it function correctly. Back then I had a telescope and I was in the Boy Scouts and studied a little bit about astronomy and how physical laws in the universe kept stars and planets all in their orbits and how amazingly large the universe is with billions of stars and galaxies, etc. So the more I pondered all these things, the more I was convinced that there really was a God up there somewhere who designed it all and created such an amazing universe. I also figured that if God did exist and he created me with a mind to think with and the ability to communicate, then He must want to communicate with me. There was just one problem. I never felt close to God, I never really had any supernatural experience with Him, I never had any prayers answered that I could remember, never saw any miracles, so I was left wondering if God really did exist or not. I didn’t want to live my whole life following a bunch of religious rules of dos and don’ts if God didn’t even exist! I’d rather be having fun “sinning” with drugs, sex and rock and roll like my non church going friends were, if there wasn’t any God to be accountable to. Anyway, one night I prayed something like this: “God, I don’t even know if you exist or not, because I never feel close to You, and you’ve never answered my prayers, but if you do exist and you want me to believe in You, You had better do something to reveal Yourself to me and to prove to me that you exist.” So I didn’t think much about it after that, but two weeks later, my conservative church, that wouldn’t even let my friend play worship songs with her guitar in church (back then they thought guitar music was of the devil), sponsored having a Contemporary Christian Rock Concert out on our church lawn, with electric guitars, drums and everything! So a friend invited me to go and I went. The music was great, but I also noticed something really different about the musicians who were singing and playing in the concert. They were different from any other Christians I had met before. All the other Christians I knew were just like me - mixed up and confused and not very happy or very nice. The musicians seemed to be radiating peace and purpose and compassion. I didn’t know what they had (I do now!) at the time, but I wanted to be happy like they were. At the end of the concert they shared how they had come to know God in a very personal way through repenting of their sins and inviting Jesus Christ into their lives to be their savior and lord. They quoted Revelation 3:20 where Jesus says: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” They said anyone could come to know God personally if they believed in Jesus Christ and invited Him into their life. I thought maybe this was the answer to the challenge I gave God two weeks earlier about Him proving Himself to me. I sat there for awhile wondering if it would work, and if not, then what? I finally decided that it was worth a try and if it didn’t work I could still drop out of church and just live a hedonistic lifestyle. But when I prayed that prayer, at the end of it, when I said Amen, I could actually feel the presence of Jesus with me. That was over fifty years ago and I still feel His presence with me every day. An Interesting thing happened after that too. I had a burning desire to go home and start reading my Bible. I never really had much of an interest in doing that before because it was boring and I didn’t really understand it. After I asked Jesus into my life, it was literally like He was sitting next to me explaining to me what I was reading and what it meant and how He wanted me to follow Him and how to respond to it, or change things for the better in my life. When I got into college, I got involved with a Christian group on campus where I learned how to be filled with the Holy Spirit and how to witness for Christ. I used to go witnessing to college students on campus with a friend a couple times a week. It was awesome! I went on a couple all summer long mission trips with that group as well and saw many people come to Christ. Recently, in 2018, I went on a mission trip to Cuba and the Lord started giving me prophetic words, words of wisdom and words of knowledge for people. It’s miraculous! It takes faith to trust that the impression or thoughts that I get actually come from the Holy Spirit, and it takes faith to be willing to tell the people that I get these messages for, but it’s amazing to see what they say when I tell them what I heard God tell me to say to them. I volunteer at my church two times a month to pray for people who come in for prayer. It’s amazing to see how many people get healed and to hear their stories of how that happened after we prayed for them. One lady had w confirmed diagnosis of endometriosis in her uterus and was going to have to have it surgically removed, but after we prayed for her, she went in for the surgery and they couldn’t find any evidence of the endometriosis! It had disappeared! She emailed us that a couple of weeks after she had come in for prayer to thank us for praying for her and to praise God for His healing!! That’s how I came to know Christ and what He’s been doing in my life ever since!