My Testimony
This letter is and will always be incomplete, as my life (as well as my art) is a living, growing and ever expanding testimony.
Words are like waves, always in motion and on a journey, never fully arriving and just when you think you’ve grasped its fullness, it crashes and transforms.
There is however, one Word, one truth, that is completely anchored, carved and set in stone: “The Word (Jesus) became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
I loved the path of being a seeker and exploring the many different pathways in the spiritual realms. I always felt that life has a deep(er) meaning, that we’re created with purpose and I believed in God and wanted to know Him. And this world offers an incredible library and wide selection of pathways to either find god or become like god by discovering the divine within your self. And because of Free Will, we are free to explore it.
God has always been in my life.
He never left.
I left Him numerous times.
Without knowing it.
I left Him to explore different pathways of the ‘self’. I believed in oneness, divinity in all, because if God created All then ‘all is divine’, God is found in all of creation, in every here and now moment. This god-experience slowly leads to the deception of an unpersonal God (since He is the ‘Universe’, He is ‘All and Nothing at the same time’).
It slowly leads into becoming greedy for the mystical experience, thinking that this world is an illusion and the spiritual realm is what truly matters. But God created body and spirit together, they are interlocked.
It also slowly leads into the deception that human being is divine and therefor humans are ‘god’ in their ultimate ascended enlightened state of be-ing, creating a ‘new earth’ with a higher-conscious-self that is actually just self-centered.
And once everything becomes self-centered, you will attempt to be your own savior, your own god.
And so, exploring the different pathways of the ‘self’ became a spiritual jungle.
Until one day my heart was broken open and I found that with Jesus a Great Turnaround happened. With Jesus, God has done something incredible in restoring our humanity & human hearts. We long for Home, and He brought Home to us. And this story is different from all the other narratives in the world. It is a category of its own, there is nothing like it.
"Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in."
Jesus is not a religion
This inner conversion didn’t happen because someone told me to, although there have been Christians who tried to convince me in the past, their words never touched or convicted my heart. It is never our duty to convince anyone’s heart. Only God can speak and stir up someone’s heart in the right way. His way.
He designed His ways perfectly and He has a perfect design for every heart.
He knows exactly how to stir our heart and use all the chapters of our life story for His glory.
Following Jesus is not a religion, it is dying to our old self and being reborn in the Way, the Truth and the Life. It is coming Home to our Father, finally, after doing it all on (y)our own strength, after searching all different pathways (that are actually dead-ends) in the world and in the spiritual jungle.
Art is my way of expressing what my heart is full of, it is deeply inspired by the beauty & splendor of His glory and kingdom.
- Tamara
"Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in." (Psalm 24)
"We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."
JOHN 1:14