January 27, 2006
Excerpts from Henry Hatch’s testimony
I was born into a loving Latter Day Saints family. I was ninth generation Mormon on my Dad’s side and seventh generation on my Mom’s side. Needless to say, I had many Mormon influences in my life. As a young Latter Day Saint, I followed the ways taught by my parents and the church. I was baptized at eight years of age; I received the Aaronic Priesthood at twelve. Later I held the Deacon’s Quorum presidential position. I advanced to the Teacher’s Quorum at fourteen and into the Priest Quorum at sixteen. I graduated from high school and LDS Seminary in the same year. At eighteen, I received my endowments and the Melchizedek Priesthood in the Jordan River Temple. I can remember how the temple shook me up with its ceremonies and chanting. However, I also remember the pride and sense of accomplishment I felt as I strove for exaltation, fulfilling my parent’s desires for me.
At nineteen, I accepted a call to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Santa Rosa, California. About nine months into the mission, I learned my girlfriend back home was getting married to someone else. I needed to decide whether to stay on my mission or go home. As I labored over this, I decided to complete my mission.
During this crucial life-turning time, I came to a place I had never been before. Listening to other missionaries share their testimonies at a Zone Conference, I realized that their testimony sounded just like my testimony, and I began to question whether my testimony was gained by my own right. That night, I decided I had to gain a testimony of my own to become the best missionary possible. During these personal studies, the Lord plainly showed me the many contradictions of LDS scriptures and religion.
As I continued to study, I found other scriptures that contradicted the doctrine I embraced growing up. More contradictions, more questions. But I had about three months left on my mission. I completed it so my parents wouldn’t be blacklisted as a family that had unrepentant sin in their home. After returning home from my mission, I immediately abandoned my LDS roots and moved back to California to escape from underneath my parent’s wings.
While in California, I grew bitter and angry at God and at the LDS Church. Like cancer, my discontent grew, spreading onto other denominations and faiths. I was so angry that I began to hate God. I wanted nothing to do with church or God.
In 1991, I moved back to my Utah home, married in 1993, and began raising a family. God was so far from my mind and heart that I actually started to deny He ever existed. Then one day in September 2000, God used a Christian woman from work to speak to me. Her boldness planted a seed in me that God grew. She even invited my family and I to church. Two weeks later, on a Sunday morning, my wife suggested we accept the invitation. You could have knocked me over with a feather.
I will never forget that day: October 1st of 2000. We walked into church and I cannot remember ever being so uncomfortable. I felt I had no business or right being in church, especially after the way I treated “religious people.” As I stood reading the worship music displayed on the wall in the sanctuary, God moved in my heart. I remember the overwhelming feeling that covered me. My eyes welled up and my heart began to ache for forgiveness. I stood there a “big, bad construction worker” (so I thought then) crying like a baby. The God I hated was showing his overwhelming love for me: a pathetic sinner.
I felt the message that day was intended directly for me. I do not remember it exactly, but I know the Lord was revealing himself to me the whole time. As the Pastor was finishing up, I remember thinking, “what is going on with you, you big baby?” Then the pastor gave an altar call. I remember thinking there’s no way I could stand or even raise my hand. Who would do that? I had the overwhelming desire to receive more of the awesome love I’d just felt. The next thing I knew, I was asking Jesus to forgive me, take my sinful life and become my Savior. I know without a doubt I was baptized then-and-there with the fullness of the Holy Spirit. I acknowledged—for the first time—that the Lord was real and alive. My experience that day was exciting and new. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
Since then, I have gained a testimony—my own testimony—of who our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ really is and what he did for all of us. Most importantly, I know that I have a personal relationship with Him and if I had been the only man on earth, he would still have died for my sins.
Two Scriptures that spoke to me in an amazing way at my conversion and continue to speak to me each day are in John and Romans. John says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). In Romans we learn, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
It is not about religion, it is about relationship! Jesus desperately wants you to know Him intimately and have a relationship with Him.
The Lord is my strength and my life and in all I do I try to honor and glorify him. He’s brought my life and my family’s lives more joy than any person can imagine—unless they too have put all their trust, faith and hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scripture that keeps me focused when I’m tempted by old prideful ways and keeps me in check with who I really am is in Galatians. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the Law, Christ died for nothing” (Galatians 2:20-21).
I love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul and with all my mind and I put all of my trust, hope and faith in Him—and Him alone!
Henry Hatch is the Lead Church Planting Pastor with the Utah Partnerships for Christ in Layton, Utah.