Randy Hillebrand's Personal Testimony

In my teen and early adult years, I was a very success oriented person. I wanted to be wealthy, climb the corporate ladder, and later to have my own business. I also wanted to own expensive things and live on the edge. I owned a very expensive and beautifully customized van that had everything. I was involved in things like Scuba diving, sky diving, the martial arts, and I owned a motorcycle and a fast sport car. A woman that I worked with once asked me, "You do not fear death, do you?" I thought for that a moment and said, "No!," because I didn't. "Why should I," I thought, "There was no God, no life after death. It was all over once you take that last breath."

Because I thought this way, the night before I was married to my wife at our wedding rehearsal at the church, I asked the priest who married us to take all references to God out of our marriage ceremony. I was very opposed to the idea of a God, because by this time I had become an atheist. I didn't mind being married in a church because all I wanted was the end result -- my wife Annette.

Why was success so important? Why were owning expensive things, and living in an adventurous way so appealing to me? As I look back, I believe that some of my behavior re-sulted from an inner need I had to feel important and successful. I enjoyed adventurous liv-ing, that is my nature. But as I look back, I never felt very important or successful as a child, but more like a failure. I felt that I could not live up to the standards that were being placed upon me. So many times, I strived to fulfill my needs by living for myself, in a way that brought me the attention and satisfaction that I desired, and by setting my own standards of right and wrong, and of success. Therefore, in my eyes, I had never sinned, because it didn't fit with my standards and how I defined life. This way of living I thought would make me happy and successful, and then of course, I would not be a failure.

To get my attention, God used various things in my life, such as a friend of mine named Mike. Though Mike told me about Jesus, it was more his commitment to what he believed at first that impacted me, though both were important. Mike lived out his faith while not trying to force me to believe what he did. He simply presented me with the facts and let me make my own decision.

Another way in which God got my attention began just before my wife and I got mar-ried. Though at that time I had accepted a job as a Quality Control Engineer with a Chicago firm, we also got involved in a business out of our home. It was this business that was part of my quest toward my first million. When my wife Annette and I would go to seminars associ-ated with our business, we would hear some of the speakers at times talk about their personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This did not please me, because by then I had completely re-jected the idea of a God. My pride was such that I didn't want to hear about Him. I was go-ing to live my life my way, and no God was going to tell me what to do and how to live. My theme song in life was probably, "I Did it My Way!," by Frank Sinatra.

So what did God use to ultimately get my attention? Well, after seeing various people in the business who were successful and where I wanted to be who claimed to be Christians, I decided to check that out. Maybe there was something to all of this. I had always viewed Christianity as a crutch for the poor and down and out. I never viewed it as a belief system for intelligent, wealthy and or famous people.

So I approached one of the more successful men in the business in a hotel lobby before a meeting and asked him about his faith. I asked him if I could be like him and relate to people the way he did without becoming a Christian. He said, "No." I told him that I cringed at the thought of a God and was an atheist. He told me in response to read the gospel of John and call him. So I purchased a Bible and did that. I had decided that after this investigation I would make my final decision once and for all about this issue. That started a four month search for the truth. It is worthy to note that around the time I began my search, my wife An-nette, unbeknownst to me, became a Christian through the influence of a woman that she worked with. After an argument one evening, Annette went into the bathroom crying and prayed, "Lord, don't' let Randy become a millionaire. Make him a Christian instead." Thus my search for the truth then began.

As I read through the New Testament and portions of the Old Testament, I understood that what I was reading was true and that Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be. Because this was true, there had to be a God. I also came to realize that as the Bible said, I was a sin-ner on my way to hell, but that God had made a way for me to be saved. Good deeds are im-portant to the Christian life. They are evidence that a person is a Christian. But as I saw in the Bible, salvation is not attained by good works as I was taught as a child. Salvation is a gift of God which is received by faith when a person trusts in Jesus' death on the cross and His resurrection from the grave. Once I accepted the free gift of eternal life, then I could live in a way that pleased God. Not before. After my study of the New Testament was complete, I prayed and trusted Christ, asking God to forgive me of my sins, saving me from hell and giving me the free gift of eternal life. I did this in August, 1982.

Since that time I have grown in my faith in Christ. This has been important because I usually no longer feel the need to prove myself before others. Instead I have come to realize that God loves me just the way I am, I do not have to jump through hoops to attain His love. Because He forgave my sins and saved me from an eternity in hell, I can feel secure in who I am, in my future and in eternity. I do not need to do those things that people in the world says makes a person important and successful, for I am important in the eyes of God. This is what is important. I am not saying that I am completely free of this, but I have come a long way. And as I continue to know God better, I can feel even more secure in Him than in my-self. Security is important in a person's life. Therefore, knowing that the Bible teaches I can be assured of eternal life is a precious truth for me. May this be true for you as well.