Testimonial

My name is Justine Danielle Hunt, I was raised in a Christian family. My mother and father are Sue and Phil Hunt. I grew up in Williams Lake, BC. As a child my parents had regular bible studies and prayers with me so I do not remember when I first gave my life to God as I was very young. But, I had a definite moment in my life that affected my life greatly, this is a moment that made God real to me. But of course there is a story behind that moment that I feel cannot be left out.

Starting around age 13 I started going to a Pentecostal camp in the summer with a good friend of mine. This camp was called Cowichan River Bible Camp and it had a great impact on my faith. The views and teachings that this camp had where what made God real to me. In the chapel services the speakers talked about spiritual gifts and the supernatural. During the worship times I saw people healed by God, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, and given the gift of tongues. There were many other supernatural occurrences.

During the preteen and young teenage years of my life I was obsessed with the supernatural powers of God. I saw angels and demons, I prophesied, and I prayed for healing. There where good and bad things that came along with this obsession. The good was that I became closer and closer to God and strived to know him more. This was the pinnacle of my spiritual walk with God, I had never been more close to Him in my life. The bad thing about it was that spiritual gifts became something of a competition with my close friend. I felt that I was never good enough. I felt that to be loved and considered important and special in Gods eyes and important to him I thought that I must have every spiritual gift and I must prophesy, heal, see angels, and see miracles in every shape and form. It became a competition of spiritual "powers". This opened my spirit up for anything supernatural, and it became dangerous as it opened up doors for evil spirits as well as good spirits to get in. This opening up of the spirit was happening to my best friend, whom I will keep anonymous. She let evil spirits get in and it resulted in her becoming very depressed, which led her to physically hurt herself. Because she was my best friend I usually followed her in everything we did as we where very emotionally close. This caused me to also fall into depression and I also started hurting myself by cutting.

Being in this state of depression and competition to be loved by God, my friendship was shattered. I felt that I was not as good as my best friend and I felt like she wanted me to be like her and that if I wasn't like her, I wasn’t good enough. This resulted in many conflicts between us that were happening for other reasons. By loosing my closest friend I fell even deeper into depression. I started to close my mind off to anything positive, even though I had two very close friends at the time. I did not appreciate them and I felt like I was alone.

This resulted in me getting into the popular but dangerous trend of being "emo". This caused me to, in a way, enjoy being depressed because that is what "emo" people do. I started doing everything I could to fit this persona. I had to listen to the right music, dress and act a certain way, talk to certain people among other things. So I started making online friends on a website called myspace because that was the thing to do. These where people I had never met in person and I became too close to someone online which was very dangerous. I thought that this "person" was my only true friend who really understood me. I became so attached to this person that nothing else in life mattered. I was dependent on this friendship that wasn't even real. This relationship that I thought was love effected me greatly emotionally. One day over the internet I was told that this person had died. To this day I do not know who this person was, or if they were who they said they were. But at the time of hearing that they had passed away my world was shattered. This caused me to draw farther from God and from the people who loved me. I became very serious about suicide.

In the midst of this deep depression I decided to go back to Cowichan River Bible Camp for the whole summer. I felt that it would take a long time for God to heal me. I am surprised that I was even open to coming to God at the time. I believe that he put this desire on my heart. I ended up going to camp and I was surrounded by worship and love, yet I did not take it in. I felt useless and unwanted, until the last night of the first week of camp. I began participating in the worship. How could I not? It was so spiritually intense. I began to hear angels singing as I smelled the sweet smell of God’s presence. I was soaked in the river of the Holy Spirit. It was rushing over me, I could not ignore it. I began to sing, and as I sang I heard the still small voice of God in my mind. He said "your singing brings people to praise". I thought that I was just making things up in my mind so I stopped singing; when I stopped the people around me became silent. So I started singing again and the people around me sang louder and began jumping up and down. I thought it was weird so I did it a few times to see if I would get the same result, and I did, every time. Again and again I would hear God say "your singing brings people to praise". I heard it until I truly believed it. It was at that point in my life that I found unexplainable joy.

After this spiritual occurrence I felt that I had to go home. I felt that God wanted me to go home and I didn't know why. I soon found out why when I came home and started to find a new group of wonderful friends who are still my friends to this day. I had been praying for a fresh start with new friends for so long, and that summer God answered my prayers.

All I had to do was reach out to God. He was there all along, I was just ignoring him. I am glad that I finally came to God with open arms knowing that He loves me for who I am. I have realized that God will love me no matter what I do. It is not a competition about who God loves more because he loves us all equally. I know that if God can pull me out of deep depression He can save me from anything. He loves everyone and longs for us all to come to Him. He is holding us, He has a firm grip on our hearts. He loves us more than we could ever know. So why would we ever want to ignore His love? His love is more powerful than any earthly thing could ever be.

These are lyrics to a song by Flyleaf that I feel really speak about my walk with God and how he saved my life, literally.

Here I stand

Empty hands

Wishing my wrists were bleeding

To stop the pain from the beatings

There you stood

Holding me

Waiting for me to notice you

But who are you

You are the truth (you are the truth)

Outscreaming these lies

You are the truth (you are the truth)

Saving my life