Testimony: Catherine Snyder | Supporter Appreciation Episode

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I'm John Snyder, pastor at Christ Church in New Albany, Mississippi, and author of The Behold Your God Studies.

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Some time back, we recorded some podcasts on evangelism, the heart of evangelism.

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How does God really deal with the soul? How does He bring us from just complete ignorance or antagonistic atheism or even kind of a sentimental religion, from that to really knowing

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Him through His Son and walking with Him. And after those episodes, we thought it would really be nice just to hear from some people that God has dealt with and that His mercy has brought them from death to life.

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And this evening, we just finished a Wednesday evening service, so you might hear some little voices from the children running around out in the front yard of the church.

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This evening, I get to introduce you to my younger daughter, Catherine Snyder. She's starting a master's degree at Ole Miss in speech pathology.

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And it seems like a million years ago, but it wasn't that long ago, that the Lord dealt with you.

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So I'm really tempted as your dad to give my version of it, you know, what mom and I saw as you went through waves of conviction and how happy we were to see when you, you know, just were brought out into the sunlight of His mercy.

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But I'll leave that to you. So Catherine, just tell us in your own words how God dealt with you and brought you to Himself.

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Well, I don't remember the first time that I heard about God or any time that I didn't know about Jesus and the cross and really most of the entire

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Bible. I imagine I was told that from the time I was born. So growing up, my older brother is 17 months older than me.

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And so a lot of my life was comparison with him. He was very open and bold about his disobedience.

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He would weigh the consequences of, OK, if I do this, I'm going to get grounded and spanked and it's worth it to me.

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So he would be very open in his rebellion. And I found out that if I was more quiet in mine, that just by comparison,

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I became the good girl. And eventually that image became into a good young woman at around 11, 12, 13, that age.

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So most people would look at me as if I was a good person to some degree.

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And that made me very self -righteous to the point that one night my mother came in and knowing that I was self -righteous, told me,

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Catherine, you know that you are a sinner. And I was so appalled that I was holding onto my bedpost like, what are you talking about?

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John David's over there. He's the sinner. My brother's the sinner. And I thought that at any time

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I wanted to, I could seek God and get his attention and he would be happy to save someone like me.

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The only time that my sin really bothered me was when it, at times when people could tell that I was not a

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Christian and it was pointed out. So in the setup we were in at that time, the Lord's Supper, the believers would get up and walk out, walk down the aisle and take communion at the front of the sanctuary.

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And so if you were an unbeliever, you were left sitting in your pew or your chair. And it was very obvious that you were still rejecting

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Christ. And that made me angry and embarrassed, especially when other people that were my age would get up because I thought

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I know so much more than them and I am so much better than them and God's rescued them, but he hasn't rescued me.

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So that was pretty much up until I was around 11 and 12.

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I didn't care anything for God other than at some point thinking I would become a

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Christian because that was the right thing to do. When I was around 12, John David, my older brother, went to camp and he came back a completely different person.

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He was 13 and he was still a 13 -year -old boy, but he had been converted and was completely different in how he reacted to you and Mama and how he reacted to me.

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Just the, it was, it blew my mind. And I saw that and became so jealous and so angry because he was the bad one.

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He was the bad kid and everybody knew he was a bad kid. And I was the good kid. And it made me angry that he, that God had chosen to rescue him and I was still unconverted.

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And so at that point, my, my envy of Christians and wanting what

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John David had and that did cause me more to seek after God.

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And also during that time, a lot of the young people in the church who are now probably 30, but at that time were older teenagers, were being converted.

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And I would listen to their testimonies and, um, I, all

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I heard was that they sought God and they were convicted and they prayed and they felt bad about their sins and then

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God rescued them. I really think at that time, even though I had heard the gospel for my whole life, that if you had asked me to tell you the gospel, like how do you, if you'd said, how do you become a

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Christian? I would have said, you feel bad about your sin and you read your

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Bible and you seek God and he rescues you. Which that's not entirely wrong, but it is because it's a

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Christless gospel. There was no Jesus Christ in my idea of how a person became a Christian.

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So when I began to seek the Lord, I thought that, you know, I would read my

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Bible more and read some good books and pray more and that God would take notice of me and rescue me.

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So it really was a workspace salvation. Although if you'd asked me that, I would have known to tell you that was wrong. But in my mind it was,

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I do A, B, C and God has, is obliged to do D. So I tried that.

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I tried to read my Bible. I was bored. I tried to read some books by Tozer and I rarely got through the first chapter.

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Praying just made me angry and frustrated and feel sorry for myself. But I did begin to notice during that time in the church, we were going through the attributes of God and I began to see that there was a gap growing between me and God.

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And what I thought would be an easy process of just, okay, I'll seek you and you'll rescue me. But as I began to read, I began to see that he was holy and that he knew everything about me and that he was the blessed

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God who needed nothing and didn't need Christians and didn't need this world or anything he had created.

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And as, as I listened to the sermons and tried, you know, in my own efforts to reach up to God, that gap just grew into this giant chasm that I realized that there was no way for me to reach

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God. And so I felt confused because, you know, in my mind, becoming

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Christian was doing something and I couldn't figure out what to do. And whenever I asked the answer, which is often heard in this church is look to Christ or look to Jesus.

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And I just ignored that and thought, yes, but what do I do? Tell me something to do. And God in his grace did not leave me there for long.

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And I think that it's, looking back, I think that I wasn't left convicted for very long because I would be tempted to look at it as some form of penance.

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So in some way paying for my forgiveness, buying my forgiveness, which I still feel as a believer today, a temptation towards.

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I don't remember, I was around 13, I don't remember an exact day, but I was in my room and it had been a few months of being stuck of,

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OK, I'm going to seek God and then I see who he is. And I realized there's nothing I can do to get his attention, to, you know, plead my case before him.

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And I think I was sitting on my bed trying to pray and the words of my mother's testimony came to my mind and which are, look to Christ, how, as your mediator.

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And it, something clicked in my mind that mediator, that means middle or the middleman.

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And it's such a simple picture, but I'm a visual person and it worked in my mind that Christ was the one who bridged that gap.

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And that was really the only thought that I had at that moment, that Christ is the one that brings me to God.

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Christ is the one who reconciles us. In the later months, as spring came around,

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I began to notice that things that I had just heard in religion, I wanted to be true. So things like, do you want

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God to be your Lord and Savior? And I thought, and I began to think what those words really meant. And I really did want him to be my

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Lord, my ruler and my Savior. And then one day, one

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Sunday, we were having the Lord's supper and I didn't really think I was a Christian at that time.

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And so I remained seated as the Lord's supper was happening. And one of my friends who's just a little bit older, older than me, who

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I used to look at, and it made me extremely angry that she was a Christian while I was still not.

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I was watching her, Annabeth, get up and take the Lord's supper. And I remember being so happy and so almost excited that Annabeth was, and all the other people, all the other believers there, they wanted to see

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Christ honored. They wanted to, you know, partake in this together to glorify him.

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And they wanted to, you know, worship him. And I realized, well, the only difference between me and Annabeth right now is that she has gotten up and she is going.

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So that afternoon I wrote y 'all a letter and told what had happened.

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And that picture of mediator from that time had grown not to just someone who brought you from, you know, not just the

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God man, someone who's fully God and fully man and therefore can unite me and God, but also that he is completely righteous and therefore can impute that on me and take my unrighteousness.

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And it just grew from there. But that is the first way that I saw him was as my mediator.

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So Catherine, having been brought to the Lord years ago. So what was that, age 12, or what did you say?

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13. Alright. 10 years ago. Yeah, good. Thanks for helping me because I'm always forgetting your age.

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So 10 years of walking with the Lord, you know, ups and downs, years through adolescence and now, you know, as a young adult.

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So not looking back years ago kind of a thing saying that's what I saw him to be.

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But this month, this 2019, what would you say, you know, what stands out in your mind recently that he has shown himself to be that is particularly precious to you?

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I would say, and this is just probably developed since the time

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I graduated college and has continued for about a year. Just seeing the love of Christ in different way, unfold in different ways, whether it's in my physical life and in my health and just the joys

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I have in everyday living because my life is unto him. And in more recent times, thinking of what he's provided in eternity and the fact that he is the one seated at the right hand of the majesty on high and that we will see him like that one day.

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So I guess the love of God poured out, not just now and not just tomorrow, but for eternity when we see him there.

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Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that with us. Was it as scary as you thought it would be? No, maybe not.

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Okay. Well, thank you for joining us and we will return with other testimonies from folks here at the church to hear how the great evangelist,

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God himself, the great evangelist, how God brings us from a place of complete indifference to, you know, to the awareness of our sin, as Newton said, to his grace that taught my heart to fear, but also how it brings us all the way to him, to hope.