Pastor Chris Heaps

Pastors Testimony

I grew up in a standard home. Standard that is to the day and age in which we live. My parents divorced
before I was born. I spent the first 12 years of my life living with my mother on the reservation. We lived in
a small town, 300 people in all, in the northern mountains of California. My grandmother was full-blooded
Karuk Indian, and she looked it. I recall asking her once in my youth why she never showered, on account
of her God-given skin tone. My mother told me later that it took every ounce of my dear grandmother’s will
not to slap me. Praise God for that.
In those 12 years I lived with my mother, she would take me to church irregularly. I remember one
overnight outing with the church. It was dark, I was very young, and there was a campfire made. A lady
asked me if I knew Jesus. I said I did not, and she told me to ask Him to come into my heart. I remember
it vividly; I can clearly recount how the moon looked in the sky. One thing I can say of my mother who
passed September 2022, she did instill in me the notion of God. The12 years I lived with my mother were
not productive for a young man. Eventually my mother went to a prison for women, where the state lent
them out as cheap labor for civic duties.
This led to me moving to Greater-Sacramento to live with my biological father and his new family.
The suburban life was vastly different than that of a rural mountain town. I was an angry young man,
striving for attention and acceptance in the wrong ways and places. During this time of my life, my father
would take me to church. It was much more regular. Looking back no one ever asked me about my soul,
never presented a clear gospel presentation, never told me about Jesus and His sacrifice. I drifted further
and further away from family, faith, and God. These subsequent actions of my teen hood resulted in me
becoming a ward of the state, I was a foster child.
At 14 I was placed into a home with loving godly parents. For the first time I felt I had a strong
male role model. My adopted dad, Matt, is a great man. My adopted mom, Sunshine, is a great woman.
They asked the foster-adoption agency for a newborn baby girl, and they got me, a 14-year-old boy. Oh
how God works! We were a family that regularly attended church, extra-church activities, Bible-studies,
and I loved it. On a teen trip to Mexico to build hospitals, we stopped at BIOLA university to stay the night.
There, one of the students asked me while we sat outside if I was going to Heaven. I was sitting on a
wooden bench, typical of a park, and it was all too familiar. I looked up at the moon, just as I had before,
and the student said to me, just ask him into your heart.
After high school, I enlisted in the United States Navy, where I served 9 years active duty. It was
during this time I met my wonderful wife, Erica. She is a sweet woman, a Bible-believer from her youth.
She is the one who initially got me to go to church on “big” days, 11 years ago. What I came to realize
from attending a church the preaches the Word of God, is that I was not saved. I had trusted in a prayer,
but there was no understanding behind it. I had asked for Jesus into my heart, but I did not ever
understand the Gospel. I was Biblically illiterate. I was headed for hell. God worked on my heart, and in
December of 2018, I bowed my head and asked Jesus to save me from the penalty of my sins.
This has been a long testimony, I felt led to share this much because it is important to know me. I
pray that this shows whoever reads a part of my heart. My life was filled with pain and grief, struggle and
strife, misery, doubt, fear.
Luke 7: 47
“Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to
whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”
I am yielded to God, that whatever He requires of me, that will I do. I am dedicated in this
because he has done so much for me, my love for God is great because His love for me is so Great.
Luke 7: 48
“And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.”
Praise God for His Salvation! God bless.