My Story

I am writing the Story of my life to be a testament to the Grace of God in My life. (If anyone reads this understand that it is written from my point of view only and I don't touch on what was going on in my families lives during this story, their exclusion does not mean that they were not important to me. My marriage to Stacey and the birth of my three sons remain pillars of my life.)

I was raised in a Christian home; I got saved when I was five, (or so I have always said) Our pastor gave an invitation at the end of a sermon and My cousin and I went forward together, form that point on my life has been filled with a performance based religion where I thought that everything I did from sin, to missing my devotions in the morning effected how much God loved me (I did not know that about myself until a short time ago) my life was a spiritual roller coaster with a lot more downs than ups, It was characterized by sin and defeat which fueled my certainty that God could not love a “Christian” like me. About eight years ago I left the church I was raised in, I was certain something was wrong with the pastor, his messages were full of judgment and had no hope, no love, everything I did was a disappointment to him, he even told me that I deserved a series of bad accidents and financial trouble, and were due to the fact that I listened to Contemporary Christian Music, the churches standard was that music with any drums in it at all was offensive to a Holy God. The church had become extremely legalistic and I was not growing at all. So my family and I left the church. We found a wonderful church about 15 miles down the road where the Pastor preached the Word of God, I started to grow again a little at a time but the besetting sin was still there nagging at me that “how can a person live this way and be saved” but it was the best time of my life, I became good friends with the pastor (Jon Speed). We hung out on an almost daily basis which kept me happy and feeling that God was still in my life. Later on Pastor Jon invited me to a hear a minister where I listened to one of the most powerful messages I've ever heard. Pastor Jon made a decision for Christ, I felt nothing. Pastor Jon wasn't sure he had ever truly been saved. I realize now that this was a pivotal point in my life, It was here that God made it plain to my soul that I was not saved, My pride rebelled against this thought, how could I tell my friends, my family that I was not saved. So I brushed off God’s conviction and told myself that I believed all the right things, I knew I was a sinner, I knew that Christ lived a perfect life and that He died to take my place on the cross. I was even remorseful for my sin. A few more months past with Jon making radical changes and talking about eventually leaving the church; I really didn't think He would because God wouldn't take His biggest influences out of my life. God had already called my best friend Tim Crawford to go to Word of life. What God has shown me is that I had been relying on Tim and Jon as Spiritual Crutches to keep my soul happy in mediocrity. God then called both of them into an evangelism ministry in Texas, and my two best friends moved out of my life. This spiraled my life out of control. They had been my two biggest allies against sin and any part of a godly life. God removed my crutches and I fell hard into sin, I devoted all of my time and energies into fulfilling all of my passions. I could not get away with this type of sin with them in my life. They loved God and their influence on me

Kept me from total depravity!
From that day on I had no one to rely on and I believed in my heart of hearts that God had abandoned me to my own demise. Sin ruled in my life and I was helpless before it. So my life continued that way for the next five years, it’s a terrible thing to know the plan of salvation and know the punishment of hell that waits if I didn't get my life right. I awoke each morning knowing that I was a sinner and that if I didn't change I was bound for an eternity in Hell, because how could God love a person like me. My marriage was broken and almost over with so I knew something had to change I did not want my family to leave me. What God has shown me since then is that because Tim and Jon left God was able to show me the total depravity my soul was in, so when I sunk as low as I could go without causing permanent damage to my soul and my life God graciously allowed me to seek counsel from an old friend from grade school to pray for me and meet with me around Christmas 2008, I told him about every aspect of my life and opened up my life for his inspection crying out for help. We spent hours talking, he kept coming back to the fact that I had been raised with a wrong understanding of The Grace of God, and that he had gone through the same sort of thing about 2 years before, and recommended the book Holiness by Grace written by Brian Chapell which helped correct that. We finished up and when I got in the car and cried out to God praying that He would not give up on me. That He would not let me die before I knew whether or not I could be saved.

I said amen and turned on the radio and heard for the first time Tenth Avenue’s song

By Your Side and these are the words

Why are you striving these days
Why are you trying to earn grace
Why are you crying
Let me lift up your face
Just don't turn away

Why are you looking for love
Why are you still searching as if I'm not enough
To where will you go child
Tell me where will you run
To where will you run

And I'll be by your side
Wherever you fall
In the dead of night
Whenever you call
And please don't fight
These hands that are holding you
My hands are holding you

Look at these hands and my side
They swallowed the grave on that night
When I drank the world's sin
So I could carry you in
And give you life
I want to give you life

 

It was this act of grace by God that gave me hope. I cried most of the way home, when I got home I ordered Holiness by Grace. I started reading it right away and read that when God saves you he not only forgives you of the sin you already committed but he forgives you for the stuff you haven’t done yet and from that moment on He looks at the righteousness of Christ first before he sees us. That sin although it still disappoints God does not affect our standing before God. I now know that my conversion when I was five was false. God miraculously saved me in January 2009. I had been standing on my own righteousness and pride to save me I thought that I had to do something for God to love me and forgive me, now I know that it is only His Grace that allows us to repent of our sin and only by His grace can we stand and live in this life.
So now I can say like the song writer Steven Curtis Chapman in his song Angel’s Wish

I have seen the dark and desperate place where sin will take you
I've felt loneliness and shame
And I have watched the blinding light of grace
Come breaking through with a sweetness only tasted
By the forgiven and redeemed.