The next year I graduated from high school and also received a cosmetology degree. I always wanted to be a hairdresser and then have my own salon. I worked for about three years in a very prestigious salon. I couldn’t help but think that God had a better way of living. I thought a lot about religion because there were so many types of people with different religious backgrounds coming in and out of the salon. I thought, “Surely they couldn’t all be right.” During those three years, I’d started to become a very good hairdresser. My boss sent me to New York City to further my education, and I became increasingly more materialistic—just plain money-hungry. Shortly after this time, an opportunity came up for me to manage my own salon; man I met needed someone to run a salon he’d  bought as an investment. In the back of my head, I always thought I could buy the salon from him later. Well, God had a much different plan for me.

I started to work at this new salon, but God wanted me to hear His plan of salvation again. The owner and his wife were born-again Christians. What was this new term I had heard? “Born-again” what? God had been using this couple to water a seed that had been planted years ago back at that youth activity. Since this was a new business, things were slow. So my boss’s wife took every opportunity to witness God’s Word to me. She would read me parts of the Bible and explain how I needed to be saved, to be born again—not physically born, but spiritually born through Jesus. I found myself later reading the Bible and wanting to know more about God.

I started listening to some radio preachers, and they too said I needed to receive the Lord as my Savior. One morning I bowed my head listening to a preacher on the radio, and asked Christ to come into my life. I knew I had to clean up my act, and I decided to “turn over a new leaf.” I quit smoking, cursing, and some other things, but I was still in control of my life. By this time I had married, moved to a new state, and even started attending a Bible-preaching church. It was there that my husband came to know Christ as his Lord, and he had a personal relationship with God. He then started growing as a Christian. I noticed he had something more than I did. There was still some ingredient missing in my life. To my husband, God was the Lord of his life. As for me,I saw God as my puppet. I was able to take my puppet “off the shelf” when I wanted him and put him right back when trying to live a Christian life was too hard.

We moved back to our home state and found another church preaching the Word of God. After years of being under good Bible preaching, I began to question whether I was really a true Christian. You see, the people who had told me of God in the beginning said only that I needed a Savior. They didn’t say why. At our new church, I saw from God’s Word what I needed to be saved from. The Bible says that we are all sinners and deserve eternity in hell if we don’t turn to Christ for salvation. I thought, “Surely, God won’t send me to hell. I already asked him into my life.” But did I really? The first time I prayed, I didn’t believe I would personally be put in hell because of my sin. I didn’t see myself as a sinner in need of a Savior from anything. Remembering back to my prayer with the radio preacher, I realized that I just wanted to clean up my act. And acting I was.

For seven years I had played the game of Christianity. I was good at playing church. I praise God that He showed me that my good works weren’t justification to enter heaven. It wasn’t until I humbled myself before a righteous God and admitted I was lost, bound for hell unless I got saved, that Christ did truly save me. I prayed on October 25, 1992, and asked Christ to forgive me of all my sin. Knowing that I would go to hell with my sin, I asked Him to save me and raise me to heaven when I die. Christ rose from the grave, and I believe He will raise me also when I die. I now had that personal relationship that I had been looking for. No, I’m not perfect, but I know I am saved by God’s grace, not by trying to keep up a good act. I’m only a sinner saved by grace!

Are you keeping up a good act too? Why not let Christ be your Lord—not just a friend, but Lord of your life—today?

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. (Isaiah, chapter 1, verses 18–20)