My name is Giovanni and I am 30 years old. I was born in an evangelical Christian family. I’ve been attracted to the things about God and the Biblesince I was a kid. My mother was a teacher of the Sunday school (a Bible school on Sundays). I had a Bible for kids, with a lot of pictures inside of it. One day, (although I was just a six years old kid I could read) I asked my mother to buy me a Bible, but one of those adults read. And my mother bought me it. From the day I started to read it, I’ve never stopped. Even if I was a child and I didn’t understand everything I read, I was fascinated by this wonderful book.
The more I read, the more I learned new things and I liked what I learned. Later on, I began to act in a different way, like an adult and I regret it a little today. I began to stand out from the other kids of my age for my interest to the word of God. I was the only boy in my community that listened to the sermons and took notes. I didn’t read the Bible only; I also read Christian writers and at the age of nine, I made my first biblical in depth-analysis correspondence courses. I spent the whole day studying the Bible, and I played always less. I know that it all seems weird, especially for a kid, but nobody compelled me to do it; actually there was someone who tried to persuade me to live and behave as a kid, like all the others used to do. The Bible was my favorite pastime, it was my passion and my joy and Jesus was my best Friend. I have a very closed and introverted character and I was avoided by the other kids because of my passion for the Bible. I experienced loneliness, but I couldn’t help it; it was far stronger than me. The real problem was that I had become only a religious man who believed to be right in God’s eyes, but I really hadn’t ask God to come into my life before. So one day, it was August 22nd1997 (precisely the day of my 11th Birthday) somebody asked me to tell him how I had given my heart to Jesus. I recognized I didn’t have a testimony to tell because I hadn’t experienced the New Birth yet. In that moment I didn’t want to be honest with that person; I didn’t want him to lecture me, so I lied. My conscience has been accusing me for two whole days until the Sunday of August 24th. I went to church and I listened to a sermon, a sentence that caught me and made me resolve to give my life to Jesus right then. Since that moment, I’m sure I have eternal life. You can have this certainty too. God doesn’t want religious men, actually He wants men to recognize themselves as sinners which go humbly to Him, asking forgiveness, giving Him the leading role of their lives. If you’ll do that, you’ll be a true child of God.
Peace in the Lord.