testimony

 I have always considered myself a Christian.  I was baptized when I was 9 years old.  I believed Christ died for our sins but I truly didn’t understand 99% of it.  I would get lost in verbiage that seemed foreign to me.  I didn’t understand the context of what I was reading and the worst part, I didn’t like to read.  I am a very visual person.  I think in pictures.  And there are no pictures in the bible.  Even the numbers are spelled out which was always curious to me.   Eventually in my 20’s I ended up falling away and started going down my own path.

 

I was born in a town called Vicksburg, Mississippi which is known for the Siege of Vicksburg (May 18 – July 4, 1863) which was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War.   Vicksburg was the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River;  The main attraction is the military park that had a bunch of statues that resembled the Washington Monument.  

 

In 1988 I got baptized.  I remember riding in the car with my dad on the way to church, and he pulled off before we got there, on the bank of the Mississippi River.  He wanted to confirm if I knew the importance of the decision I would be making that day.  I said yes, but truthfully I didn’t, I just felt in my heart that is what I should do.  

 

When I was 10 we moved Huntsville, AL.

 

Huntsville is known for the Space and Rocket Center and extremely intelligent people.  Rockets and Space was another area that always perplexed me.  I always wondered what God thought about our pursuits.  I had a hard time imagining that He was thrilled that we finally figured out how to land on the moon.  My Father has worked for NASA for over 25 years and works on a complex called the Redstone Arsenal, which might as well be called the Arsenal of Mars.

 

I am by no means what people consider smart.  I dreaded going to school everyday.  I don’t think I am dumb, but unless I see how something is applicable to my life, I truly just don’t care about.   I struggled just to stay in the B/C range, and that was with tutors. I remember sitting in Homeroom at the end of every semester when we would receive our report cards.  One of my best friends who was just like me set across the room.  It was the same routine every time. We would have our hands on our head with a feeling of nausea in the pit of our stomachs in anticipation of what it said. We would then open it up, confirm our worry, and then look at each other with red faces of embarrassment, then just start laughing at each other with a sense of hopelessness. Our other friends didn’t have to study and had above 4.0’s GPA’s and the majority of them went on to be lawyers and got academic scholarships. We were trying to get athletic scholarships and doing just enough to get by in the academic field. 

 

This is one reason I loved basketball.  Because I didn’t have to think that much.  It was my escape.  It was my passion and identity. I was fortunate enough to be able to play in college for a couple of years before I injured my knees which cut my career short. I started partying and was in a relationship with a girl that I thought I would end up marrying, so that took most of the pain away from dealing with that, but once I graduated, I had no idea what I wanted to do.  Basketball was the only thing I ever envisioned myself doing.

 

I was fortunate enough to get a job because my dad had a friend who was able to get me an entry level programming contracting position for the Missile Defense Agency.  Something I had no interest in but it was a paycheck. I always felt like a fish out of water academically and then trend continued with my job.  For the first 6 months I would come home everyday completely baffled.  The mental energy I expended everyday trying to understand what looked liked gibberish to me, was taking its toll.  It does not come naturally to me, and the first couple of jobs I had, I was extremely close to getting fired because I was not picking things up fast enough.   I could not understand how in the world somebody came up with all of this.  The people I worked with just got it, and it came easy to them.  They had been sitting behind a computer their whole life.

 

Shortly after that my girlfriend and I broke up so I was looking for a new start which lead me to Nashville, TN.  I was able to get a job at a Healthcare company.  Healthcare is the most prominent industry in Nashville, and I heard there is some music played there as well.  

 

My first interview for a job in Nashville was quite an experience and my friends favorite story for me to tell based on the shear absurdity of it.  It sums up how my life was at that moment though.

 

I had pulled into Nashville with my gas tank on E but I was cutting it close for interview so I tried to remind myself to make sure I filled up as soon as the interview was over.  Well that didn’t happen.  I completely forgot I needed to get gas.  I hopped on the interstate and was heading back home.  I called my parents and told them I was on my way back.  We had been talking about 15 minutes when all of a sudden there voice cut out in mid sentence and unfortunately it wasn’t because of service.  I looked down at my phone and realized it was dead.  Simultaneously I started to feel my car start sputtering.  Not good.  Fortunately for me it started sputtering right next to exit ramp and I saw a gas station on the other side of the high way.  I got to underneath the overpass.  It was about 6 or 7 at night, I can’t remember exactly.  I do remember  that as I was walking up, everyone at the station was walking out.  They said they were closing but they said the pumps were still on and I could use them.  I had a gas container and I went to the pump as they took off.  Wouldn’t you know it, the pumps weren’t on.

 

They just lied and took off.  So now my phone is dead, my car is out of gas,  and I am in the middle of nowhere.  As soon as I get back to my car wondering what I am going to do the bottom dropped out of the sky and started pouring.  This was turning from bad to worse.  I figured there would be another exit a mile or so down so I started walking.  That “or so” turned out to be 6 and half miles.  I finally get to a bed and breakfast at midnight and they were just about to close.  I walk in completely drenched wearing a suit and they looked at me like I was about to try and take them hostage.  They asked if they could help me with anything and I told them my situation.  They gave me the number for a tow truck company and so I called and they came and picked me up.  We started to drive and when we finally get to the place where I had left my car it was gone.

 

Yep.  I just shook my head and starting laughing.  I knew the driver probably thought I had lost it.  He started to drive me back to his work and he started calling other tow truck companies to see if someone else had gotten it.  Finally they found out that no less than five or ten minutes after I started walking that a policeman had driven by and called for it to be towed away.  So I ended up having to pay 2 tow truck companies $250 each.

That probably should have been a warning for what I was about to get into but I proceeded.

 

I bought a condo and was enjoying all the perks a big city had to offer.  Shortly after moving here I met a girl that finally got my mind off the previous girlfriend.  I had made some new friends and the new scenery seemed to be what I needed.  My life had become like an episode of Entourage.  Things were going great.

 

6 months later my girlfriend informs that she is pregnant. We end up getting married and when we go to find out if it was going to be a boy or girl, and we find out something is wrong during the ultrasound.  Shortly afterward she loses the baby.  This was an extremely difficult way to start a marriage.  We both had different ways of coping with the situation and it ended in a divorce.  She ended up moving in with a guy in my same condo complex. I would come home from work and see her new boyfriend walking my dog.

 

So taking account of my life at that point,  it had turned into one big massive train wreck. It had veered off the rails.

 

I had severed my relationship with my mom because of her embarrassment of me getting a girl pregnant out of wedlock, who she had not even met yet. I was completely mentally, physically, and spiritually broken and exhausted. I was ashamed and humiliated. I had so much anger and bitterness towards my ex-wife for what she was doing even though I was equally to blame for all that happened. 

 

One day I was walking around the complex and she was walking our dog. When the dog saw me it tried running towards me, scratching and clawing as hard as it could to run to me, but she held her back on the leash and I kept walking. I loved that dog so much but didn’t I couldn’t stop because I still had so much anger toward my wife and I didn’t want to speak to her.  

 

When I got to back into my condo I hit the floor and cried out to God, “please save me!”.   

 

I was at such a low point in my life that I honestly didn’t know if I could keep going.

 

 My kingdom of me had crumbled to the ground.

 

•  I never rehabbed my knee correctly after college so now I could hardly even run and do the one thing I loved.  
• Every time would try to run my knees would swell up like a balloon.  
• I was stuck behind a desk doing a job I didn’t like.
• I began to wonder why all this was happening to me.
• Everything that gave me any sense of enjoyment was taken away.  
• I was 30 years old and I felt like I had just been drug through the depths of hell.  
• I had never known what true despair felt like.  
• When you reach that point you start asking yourself why you are even here.

 

What is the point?  I will never be able to dig myself out of this mess.

 

At my lowest point I felt God’s hand reaching out to me.  He started to slowly pick me up and started to put back the pieces in my life and repair what I had broken but I still had so much anger and bitterness in me from the divorce.  I couldn’t shake it.  When I finally put everything in His hands and let him take it, I was able to start forgiving her and myself.  That’s when He really started healing my heart and when I  truly started understanding the power of Christ.  I finally started understanding what true forgiveness was and why God hates divorce so much.  When we hurt, He hurts.  He knows the pain it causes us and He hates seeing us suffer.  As He started healing my heart, He also started mending back the relationship with mom.  I still felt a sense of shame though and I wondered how He could use someone as broken as I was and had been.  I thought to myself that not many people could relate with what I have been through.  You think that your the only one.

 

One day at a bible study group I shared my story with the group.  I had shared with others and it wasn’t a problem but this time I really struggled to get it out.  I think it was because it was the first time I had shared it in front of girls.  Our group at that time wasn’t very open about personal struggles either.  I told the story looking down the whole time.   When I got through and finally looked up there were a few faces with really wide eyes, but there was a girl sitting directly across from me who was in tears.  It turns out her and her husband had gone through almost the exact same thing.  The difference being they ended up having the baby and were trying to hold on to the marriage.  As weeks went on and I began to hear others people stories I realized that I wasn’t the only one.   We hide behind facades and put on an act.  I thought what I was going through was tough but I realized it was nothing compared to some others.    We carry all that weight around with us each day.  The only way to get rid of it, and the only person strong enough to handle all of it, was the one who shed His blood on the cross for us.  

 

That’s when I fully started to grasp this:

 

WE ARE ALL SINNERS WHO DESPERATELY NEED TO BE RESCUED.

WE ARE IN DYER NEED OF A SAVIOR.

 

The past several years I have had a hunger and thirst to know about who Jesus is, and what He did for us.  I have gained a lot of biblical knowledge over the past several years.  There was still a lot of pieces I didn’t understand though.  I started praying for Him to give me better understanding of His Word.  I understood that He died for our sins.  I understood we are saved by grace.  Which at a base level is all we ultimately need to know.

But I needed to know more. I wanted to understand what He wanted me to do and how He could use me. I wanted to know the story He was weaving in my life.   I wanted to know he wanted from me.  Where did I fit in his plan?  Why has he placed me in the places I have been?  

• I couldn’t correlate the things I was seeing with the Bible.
• I wondered how space and technology fit in with God’s word.
•  It seemed like all the so-called advancements we have made was starting to make God’s word seem outdated.   
• I wondered where Greek, Egyptian, and Roman Mythologies came from. 
• I wondered why there were so many references to stones and images in the Old Testament. 
• I wondered why NASA was obsessed with what was in space. 
• I wondered what was really happening before the flood and after the flood.  
• How does the Old Testament and New Testament fit together? 
• Why is it so hard for us to understand? 
• Why do so many people have so many different interpretations of what they think it means? 
• Is the bible really the our only source for truth? 
• Why are there so many wars? 
• Why do people suffer? 
• Is there another way?  
• Why did God have in the positions and places I have been? 
• What was His ultimate plan for all of this? 
• How do we have a relationship with someone we don’t see visually? 
• How do we know the bible we have is really true since it has so many versions? 
• Am I going to hell because I am have a job and make money, which is the root of all evil?  
• Who was Ba’al?  Who is Satan? Who is Lucifer? 
• What is the Tree of Good and Evil? 
• Why did Jesus really have to do what He did?   
• The List goes on…  

Most Christians have a descent understanding of the New Testament and can quote some Proverbs and Psalms.  We can tell you about Daniel and the Lions Den, or Joseph and his coat of many colors but that’s about it.  When I got to books like Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Kings…the list goes on, my eyes would glaze over.  

 

We understood some of the surface level meanings but that’s about it.  The God I worship gave us a book that I didn’t understand, which always bothered me.  I couldn’t find any one to give me a solid answer for the questions I was having either.  I felt like the world around me is becoming more or more evil.  And temptation was at an all time high.  That is not a good mix.  I felt like a storm was coming. 

Luke 6: The House on the Rock

 ⁴⁶Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I say? ⁴⁷ I will show you what he is like who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them: ⁴⁸He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid his foundation on the rock. When the flood came, the torrent crashed against that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. ⁴⁹But the one who hears My words and does not act on them is like a man who built his house on ground without a foundation. The torrent crashed against that house, and immediately it collapsed—and great was its destruction.” 

• I did not feel like my house was built on a rock. 

James 1 

5But if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. 6But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. 7For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord; 8a doubleminded man, unstable in all his ways. 

• I was unstable. 
• I felt like every time I stepped out the door,  the foundation I built up was getting blown away. 
• My armor kept was constantly getting stripped off.

Galations 6 : The Full Armor of God

10Finally, my brothers, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. 11Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.13Why take to you the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. 14Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; 15And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16Above all, taking the shield of faith, with which you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. 17And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:  

I had never really felt spiritual warfare in my life until the last several years.  It took me a couple of years to even realize I was in a war.   I just knew my heart felt like it was being pulled in a million different directions. 

 

The worse part though is not being able  to discern where it was coming from or what was causing it.  There were so many questions that I had and questions that I couldn’t answer that were pricking at my faith.    The internet, technology, and entertainment has flooded us with information.  We are constantly plugged into a machine.

 

Becoming more and more disconnected  from our relationship with Savior.  

 

My faith was hanging on by a thread.

 

Add on top of that the fact that I didn’t see hardly anyone walking the walk.   It seemed like we are just all walking around aimlessly.   

I recently gave my friend a bible and after a few days of reading this is what he sent me:

This verse is especially tough to swallow if you don’t understand what it means.   When I started this site, I wasn’t quite sure what it meant,  but I knew I needed to make sure that’s the gate my life was heading towards.  There were so many verses that were in direct conflict with the way I was living my life.  I was desperate to know the truth and His Story.  The things unfolding in the world seem like they are straight out of Revelation.    I felt overwhelmed with how to process what I was seeing and how it relates to my faith.  I felt like the walls were closing in and I wondered how He could use me.    I sit behind a desk all day without much interaction with people.  I was doing everything I could just to keep up but things seem to be moving so fast.  I was having more and more trouble discerning what was even right from wrong anymore.  

2 Timothy 3

In 1988, I remember riding in the car with my dad on the way to church, and he pulled off before we got there on the bank of the Mississippi River.  He wanted to confirm if I knew the importance of the decision I would be making that day, by getting baptized.  I said yes, but truthfully I didn’t, I just felt in my heart that is what I should do.  

NOW I DO.

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