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Episode 3: What Was Your Life Like Before Jesus? — The Question That Unlocks Your Testimony

Before you can share where God has brought you, you have to be willing to look honestly at where you started.

In Episode 3 of Sharing The Gospel Of Jesus Christ, host Maranda Forney opens Chapter One — the chapter that asks the hardest question first. What was your life like before Jesus? Not the cleaned-up version. Not the version you share at church when someone asks how you are doing. The real one.

Because here is what Maranda wants you to understand: your before is not something to be ashamed of. It is the first and most essential chapter of the most powerful story you will ever tell.

In this episode Maranda walks you through the searching — that restless, nameless longing that no achievement, no relationship, and no amount of forward motion could quiet. She opens up about the broken places: fractured relationships, financial anxiety, and the deepest wound of all — not knowing who you are because you have been looking for the answer in all the wrong places. And she brings you to the moment of turning — the revelation that the thing you were searching for had already been searching for you.

What you will take away from this episode:

The restlessness you feel is not a flaw — it is a signal. Saint Augustine wrote nearly sixteen centuries ago that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. That truth has never expired. The gnawing sense that there must be something more is not evidence that something is wrong with you. It is evidence that you were made for something your current circumstances cannot contain.

You were made for God Himself — not religion, not ritual, not a checklist of behaviors, but real relationship with the One who knew you before you were formed in the womb.

Maranda closes the episode with five reflection questions designed to help you excavate your own before — and she issues a listener challenge: write your answers in a journal this week. Do not edit. Do not perform. Just tell the truth.

Because your story — exactly as it happened — is exactly what someone out there needs to hear.

This episode is for you if:
You have ever felt like your testimony is not dramatic enough to matter. You have spent years running from your before instead of letting God redeem it. You want to share the Gospel but do not know where your story begins. You are ready to stop performing and start being honest about where you have actually been.

"God saw you in your before. He loved you in your before. And He came for you in your before. That is the Gospel."
— Maranda Forney

Listen to Episode 3 of Sharing The Gospel Of Jesus Christ wherever you get your podcasts.
Have a testimony to share? Visit marandaforney.com/testimony — you could be our next guest.