Life Above Reproach – My Testimony

By Rynell Marion Baker

I was an only child raised in the Logan and Sherman Heights area of San Diego, California.  I grew up with a Baptist spiritual background under both of my grandmothers’ by going to church every Sunday as well as Sunday school.

At the age of ten, the grandmother who raised me passed away.  Her passing really affected me with feelings of abandonment, resentment, anger, pain, fear, and guilt.  I had already been influenced by street-gang members and turned to them as these men took “big brother” roles in place of my father who was never around.  At this time, I was mad at God and everybody in my family.  I ended up joining the West Coast Crips and conducted myself in criminal activity going back and forth to Juvenile Hall.  To make a long story brief, I committed 1^st degree murder in retaliation of my cousin’s murder.  I am serving a sentence of 26 years to life.  However in 2011, my life changed for the better.

In Proverbs 3:5-6 the word of God says, “To trust in the Lord with all your heart.”  As I began to trust in the Lord, He started to reveal Himself.   When He began to reveal Himself to me, I followed Acts 26:16-18, “Now get up and stand on your feet, I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you.  I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles.  I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”

As a Christian my way of living today is now only in Christ Jesus!  It has been a long journey; however, it was worth it for me to glorify His name!!  Amen!!!

God bless you!