The church told her that she was saved, but she didn't see any holy fruit of the Spirit of God

“And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.

And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.

If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;

And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:

Then will I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.” (Lev. 26:38-42).

“For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform My good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

Then shall ye call upon Me, and ye shall go and pray unto Me, and I will hearken unto you.

And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.

And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.” (Jer. 29:10-14).

“According as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue: whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” (2Pet. 1:3,4).

This testimony is a precious story of someone who couldn’t rest until she was changed into a new creature. This sister, Shantel, had a very honest and unrested heart until she could be fully at peace with God. Her conscience recognized her sin problem until she fully surrendered to Jesus. She was like the lost sheep in Christ’s parable; she knew she was lost, but had no idea how to get home. She wandered in the wilderness for ten years before coming to the natural point of total sorrow and fear for her sins. She said the sinner’s prayer so many times that it was like praying the rosary. The sinner’s prayer is designed to lead people to repentance. Yet each time after praying the sinner’s prayer she kept on living the life of the unholy, unsaved with no power to change. Finally she felt so convicted of her false profession of salvation that she had to seek Jesus with her whole heart. Her whole heart’s cry was the key that opened heaven’s door and Jesus’ gift of His Spirit.

Although Shantel has learned from the Sunday churches the false, unbiblical glossolalia, that doesn’t negate the true conversion and sanctification of the Spirit that she has received. We shouldn’t let that create prejudice in us toward this sister of ours. In time the Lord will convict her of the true, biblical gift of tongues. Even Paul had to deal with the Corinthian believers and their pagan misconception of that gift (see I Corinthians 14). Despite their need to learn that lesson, Paul still called them saints. “But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” (1Cor. 6:11). Justification, sanctification, and being washed have been Shantel’s experience from above. I truly appreciate her definition of the gift of the Holy Spirit—that the Holy Spirit is first and foremostly for the purpose of overcoming sin. Now that’s biblical!

“Hello brothers and sisters. This is Shantel. I didn’t think I was going to be making another video at all. But the Holy Spirit really put this on my heart to make. It’s not a message of any sort. It’s kind of a testimony, I guess you might say. Back in 2002 I asked Jesus into my heart. I did the sinner’s prayer and asked him into my heart. But, I kept sinning. I kept fornicating. I kept drinking. I kept on doing sin.

So I thought I was saved. I went to church. I would go to church every Sunday. And then I would continue going to church every Sunday and listen to the word. I started to change. I no longer… I stopped cussing. I stopped taking God’s name in vain. I started to be kinder and loving towards people. But like I said, I was still fornicating. I was still drinking and doing drugs. But, like I said, I had said the sinner’s prayer. And every time I watched a program I would say the sinner’s prayer over again. And I never really felt any change.

And then in 2004, when I sent to Iraq for war I was baptized in the Euphrates. And even then, I still would sin. I was still drinking and I was still sinning, willingly sinning against God. I hadn’t received the gift of the baptism of the Holy Spirit at all. I guess because maybe my heart wasn’t into true repentance. But I would say the sinner’s prayer and…for ten years I lived like this, for ten years! I lived the same life, drinking, and smoking weed, and started smoking cigarettes again. And yeah I didn’t cuss and I would go to church. I would go on Wednesdays, I would go to Bible studies, different Bible studies in people’s houses, and women’s Bible studies. I would be in church and raise my hand, and [be] praising God. But then I’d go home and I’d sin, and I’d drink, and party, like the world.

So I never got a clear understanding of what being saved was. That to me wasn’t saved, but I thought it was. I looked like the world, I looked like the other Christians that were sitting in church with me, they were doing the same thing. [I knew] because a lot of them were my friends! But then I seen other families that I wasn’t around a lot, but they would be the same way that I was. But who knows what was happening in their homes on the side?

And I even was in a women’s group, a women’s Bible study, and we were sitting there and we were praying and the women started praying with tongues. And I asked one of the older ladies, I was like, you know, ‘What…What is that? What are you guys doing?’ And she said, ‘We’re praying in the Spirit. And it’s part of the Holy Spirit. When you have the Holy Spirit, which you have in you to pray this way.’ and I said, ‘Well I don’t.’ ‘Well just keep on saying the same thing over, and praying faster and faster, and it will come out.’ OK. So I started to, and it came out. But it was false. It was a lie. It wasn’t tongues. It was...that’s something you can’t teach somebody, I learned later on. It comes from the Holy Spirit living in you, being baptized with the Holy Spirit. It’s even in scripture, it’s in Acts. But it’s when you get the gift of the Holy Spirit, you speak in utterances. It’s a prayer language between you and the heavenly Father because the Holy Spirit knows what you need. So it’s your prayer language to the Father. So it’s not something you can learn or somebody to tell you to do over and over, and hey it will come out this way. So that was false.

So for ten years I lived like this, thinking I was saved and going to church and doing everything to try to change in the flesh. And it never worked. It never worked. I still fell to different...if you see any of my other testimonies you see that I went to the New Age kind of stuff. I was into that, and I was thinking that was part of God and part of Jesus. And I would still pray and still thought I was saved, seeking the Lord. But yet I looked like the world.

And I never separated myself [from worldliness], I just kept on going on my business, going to church, thinking I was saved and every now and then I would say the sinner’s prayer over, just to make sure. I guess it wasn’t true repentance. God knows our heart. He knows a true repentance. When we say that prayer He knows whose heart’s real. He can’t come into His temple, His holy temple that He calls holy, He can’t come in there if it’s not true, if it’s filthy with sin. I’m living proof of that. He didn’t come in at all. I mean I thought He was there, because everyone says that when you say the sinner’s prayer you automatically get the Holy Spirit. Ok. And so I just never felt any different. And I would listen to other people say how much of a change, and they stopped drinking and smoking and doing drugs, and it totally changed them. And I’m thinking to myself, ‘I never had that experience. Why isn’t that happening to me? Why am I not getting that?’

And so I would read scripture here and there, and, like I said, go to church. I’d raise my hands and be on my knees singing and praising the Lord, and go home and pop open a 40 [beer] and drink. And so it was all wrong. I didn’t have the Holy Spirit. I wasn’t saved. God told me. It wasn’t until September, September 2012 that I started seeking Him with my whole heart. My whole heart seeking Him and crying out. [I started seeking Him more. He told me I was on my way to hell, I wasn’t saved. And so I started seeking Him with my whole heart. And then December 22^nd, 2012 is when I received the wonderful, glorious gift of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.]

And He changed me. He took those desires of drinking and smoking cigarettes, I mean smoking weed, out of my life, right instantly. I started seeking Him more. He told me I was on my way to hell, I wasn’t saved. And so I started seeking Him with my whole heart. And then December 22nd, 2012 is when I received the wonderful, glorious gift of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And I stopped smoking cigarettes that day and never had a desire.

And my whole heart changed, and I became a new creature in Christ. And I don’t [desire to] sin. I separated myself from the world. I don’t have any of those desires whatsoever, even to sin. If I do sin, not willingly, if I do sin without knowing it’s sin, something happens. The Holy Spirit will convict me and I will ask for forgiveness and I will repent. But not willingly like I used to. I used to willingly sin and think I was going to heaven. And it’s not true. And there is so much scripture to back it up. And I’m not really looking into that right now, and I can if anyone asks or anything. But I’m just telling you that I’m living proof that there are so many people out there that just play church and think they are saved, and don’t know about the gift of the Holy Spirit, that they need that in them to change them.

And I’d read the scripture about being free from sin and all the other things. And I’d be like, ‘Well I’m not. What’s going on?’ It’s because I didn’t have the gift of the Holy Spirit working in me, to change my heart, to live in me. And now, so now I do, and know the difference. And like I said, for ten years I thought, ‘Hey, I was saved!’ and I would say the sinner’s prayer over so many times over that last ten years and go to church. And do all the things I would see, and think I was saved. And wonder why when I talked about the Lord to people, nobody ever got saved. Cause I was a hypocrite.

So I just wanted to share that with you. So, really, check yourself. And just because you go to church and might have said that sinner’s prayer, make sure you have the gift of the Holy Spirit. The true...it’s part of the Godhead. It’s the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It’s three in one. Just make sure you have that in you, so that you do. It changes you. It’s not just something you read in the Bible about, and then, ‘OK. I have the Holy Spirit’, and think you have it. Ask for that gift, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, knowing that you have it, it [gives] utterance to speak in tongues. And when I received the Holy Spirit, I spoke in tongues. And it was different than from what I was practicing, and kept on doing and thought I was. And I repented and asked for forgiveness because falsely doing it is—oooh— I don’t know, I read so many things [about] how bad that is. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t tongues. It wasn’t until I received the gift of the Holy Spirit [that I had the true thing].

So I just wanted to share that and tell you all that I love you all and I am praying for you. And God bless you. And Jesus loves you. And if you don’t know Jesus, ask Him into your heart, and ask the Holy Spirit to come live in your heart.”