Believe in Christ

I think I first came to believe in Jesus Christ when I was sitting in a tree. It was personal study time at Girls' Camp (a week-long church camp), and I was fourteen years old. The feeling that I needed to believe in Christ was overpowering, and (like thousands of other people before me) I felt inclined to write a poem about it.

I don't remember all of the words to the poem I wrote that day. Tragically, I might not have it anymore. However, some lines are engraved in my memory: 

I know not what things I'll do 
that will yet cause you pain. 
I know not what things I'll be
that will yet cause you shame. 
But this I know: 
You are my Savior and Redeemer
My Brother and my Friend,
and I have not power without you
to bring this to an end. 
In my changing heart, I've learned
you'll be there to hold my hand
when I'm in my own Gethsemane,
and when you died on Calvary, 
my happiness was planned. 
You are my Prince of Peace, 
and I will seek you forevermore. 

When I was fourteen, I was just learning about Christ's role in my life. At twenty-two, I am still learning every day about His power to heal me. However, that overpowering feeling of gratitude is still a part of me. I have come to know Christ's role for myself, as Elder Bruce D. Porter puts so elegantly:

Whatever binds us—sins, circumstances, or past events—the Lord Jesus Christ, the great Immanuel, came to set us free. He proclaims liberty to the captives and freedom from the bonds of death and the prison of sin, ignorance, pride, and error. It was prophesied that He would say to the prisoners, “Go forth” (Isaiah 49:9). The only condition of our freedom is that we come unto Him with broken hearts and contrite spirits, repent, and seek to do His will.

--Elder Bruce D. Porter, Come Let Us Adore Him