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A testimony of God's Amazing Grace to me

I’ve written tracts about God’s Mercy to others, so now I’m writing about what He’s done for me.

You see, in February ’25 I marked my milestone 70th birthday and the next month it was 50 years since He saved me from my sin. This seems a good time to share great things He has done (Psalm 126:3)!

I grew up very poor in Newark, NJ in 1955 and my single mom was tempted to abort me, but by God’s grace I was allowed to live!

The first 15 years of my life were filled with bitterness and despair because my dad left us and was replaced by a cruel step-father. I thank God for loving grandparents on my mom’s side—the only adults in my life who were not alcoholics. Largely through their example and support, I never got into drinking, drugs and many other sins that I was exposed to, and I resisted temptation to suicide. I also praise God for Christian classmates in high school, beginning in 1971. They were very good influences (though I was not yet saved, myself).

That very same year, an uncle of mine drank himself to death at age 29 and a non-Christian friend died at 16 in a car crash. Death’s “one-two punch” really hit me hard!

I decided I should start going to church, lest death should suddenly come upon me and I might go to the Hell my Christian friends warned of.

There was a Catholic church near my house that I started walking to and I met many wonderful Catholic couples who treated me like family. Over the next few years, I really got into formal Catholicism and its system of works righteousness, prayers to Mary and “the saints,” and of confessing to priests rather than God. I became like the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like other men (Luke 18:9-14) and I was proud that I was not like other guys in the neighborhood, or my dad and step-dad who were always drinking and sleeping with girlfriends.

I did not realize that PRIDE is a terrible sin in God’s sight and He “resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). The Catholic Church’s teachings FED my native pride, unfortunately, and I was FAR from God, while thinking I was near!

A Christian man, a former alcoholic attending a Bible College, became the Superintendent of my apartment building and invited me to study the Bible with him in January 1975. You see, as a Catholic I was taught that the Church was “the Only True Church” and all Christian denominations were regarded as “separated brethren.” In my pride as a Catholic, I thought it would be a “good work” which earned God’s favor if I would condescend to study Scripture with this “separated” older brother.

We met weekly and boy, Bob began showing me how Catholic teaching departed from Scripture on so many points! He particularly zeroed in on HOW DO WE GET SAVED?

Is salvation by grace alone or by our own “good works?”

I had no answers from the Bible (neither did my Priest), only from Catholic Tradition, but Bob showed me how God’s Word must always trump Tradition. Finally, he shared that “all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6) and if I wanted to get right with God, it must be by GRACE that I’d be saved, not of works lest I should boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).

My pride “did me in” because that’s why I’d ever agreed to these sessions … my PRIDE! But God mercifully used those studies (backed up by Bob’s consistent Christian life) to deliver me from my pride which would have kept me out of Heaven.

After a three month “fight,” the Lord brought me to surrender my pride and accept salvation as a humbled beggar on March 13th, 1975.

For you see, it’s by God’s grace I was ever BORN, and also by His grace that I was born AGAIN (John 3:3).

By nature we are ALL proud. Some are proud of good things they do. Some are proud of bad things they DON’T do, or of doing bad things that God in Scripture calls Sin! Pride, which is a sin of the heart is often considered an “acceptable sin” whereas sins of the body (fornication, adultery, drunkenness, homosexuality, etc.) are more often unacceptable in society. Pride is #1 on the list of Seven Deadly Sins God hates (Proverbs 6:16-19)!

If you are proud, go to Jesus Christ in prayer to confess your sin and to get saved—based on what HE did—on HIS Righteousness ALONE. Dear reader, don’t let Pride keep YOU out of Heaven! Let Jesus carry you IN.

Chet Jelinski

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