The Testimony of Zach Kadish

Zach shared this with us during our Easter 2012 service. It blessed a lot of people so here it is:

My testimony is a long one; not in its duration to tell but in the breadth of time it has taken me to become a Christian.

Before I accepted Jesus I was a sinner and if you ask me today I would say I still am. However, my life has changed much since that time. I was an open hater of God for much of my early life. From almost the time I can remember I hated God. Probably from about the age of 12 to 22 I would openly speak out against God, his people and his ways. I remember trying to read the Bible and not understanding it and being baffled by its mysterious words. There was also a time I remember that if I found out you were a Christian I would stop what I was doing and would try and talk you out of such a stupid way of seeing the word. I was also very rebellious, not listening to any authority or my parents. At this time in my life, my friends would even say, "Zach always just does what Zach wants to do".

Then one day God sent a man into my life. This man’s name is Douglas Knight. Knight as in a knight in shining armor who fights for a king. This man was a street preacher (I will not get into his story today for there is not enough time to explain such a man). Funny thing is, I never saw him preach on the street - not once. I believe God shielded me from such an encounter, as it would have most likely been very confusing for me to witness at that time in my life.

I would like to say one thing about Doug before I continue (or rather I would like to relate 2 things he would tell me over the years). First, that he was and is the most spit on man in history. As he would preach the Gospel and get spit on, he would tell the people spitting on him that they were causing giant gem stones to be created in heaven for him. Sometimes they would threaten his life and when they did he would turn and tell them. "my name is Douglas Knight and if you want to kill the Christians that they should come and kill him first". Later in life he would confess to me that he didn’t go to San Francisco so much to preach as he went to be martyred.

While in college at the San Francisco Art Institute I needed a sub-letter to rent the vacancy left by my college roommate as he went home for the summer. Doug answered the advertisement I took out in the SF weekly. After a brief meeting, I liked him. He was an artist who played guitar and had a very pleasant wife. A few days after he had been in my apartment for a day, I remember him greeting me one morning with, “So … do you know Jesus?” Another question he would ask, which I remember shaking me out of my spiritual comfort zone was, “So … how does it feel to be Jewish?” 

One year later after much political debate, and philosophic questioning about the very nature of the universe and its existence, I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart as personal Lord and Savior. I know he became my savior on that day, in the very moment I asked him to be my Lord and Savior. Now I know, and can honestly say that before the foundation of the world I was chosen to be in Jesus. I was saved in 1992 after I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart and I am now in the process of being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

There is no doubt that my life has changed much over the last twenty years. These changes in me are a result of my relationship to Jesus Christ. There have been many times in my life where I threw up my hands in despair for the things I saw myself doing and had absolutely no power to change. Things which had such a grip on me that there was no doubt in my mind I would die someday doing them.  However, I am not dead, but alive in Christ and God has found a way for me to change.

I have given up the abuse and use of drugs, I have stopped seeking out relationships for the sake of sex, and I have sought out having a loving relationship with my parents. I strive not to be lazy but to work and work hard for the good of those around me, fulfilling the tasks I have been given to do, even if I don’t want to do them. I desire to serve and help those around me. I strive to be objective to see the world and people as they are not what I want them to be. I desire to be in a community working and striving together to love and be honest with one another. I desire to love with the love of Jesus, and not to rely on my own self serving love.

Above all else I am learning to share the love I have for Christ and the love he has for me with other people who need his saving grace.