Well I’m gonna go all the way back to the beginning for this one.  I was born into a house with two Christian parents who did their best to raise me in a moral way.  Over the years my life was pretty decent, I made A’s in school and I was considered a submissive good kid for the most part… I always “followed the rules and never got into trouble.”  On top of that I had awesome parents who helped me through the difficult times I had in my earlier years.  We used to go to a Wesleyan church that was right down the street from our place where I sat through church just like everyone else did.  I attended Sunday school where a nice older lady handed out little New Testament Bibles to us kids.  I actually looked forward to church at the time because I had a lot of fun in Sunday school.  The pastor eventually moved to a new church that was hours away from our town, so we started “church hopping,” in order to find a new church. 

Over the next 3 years I became more and more disgusted with Christianity… it seemed like a severe waste of time and to me God was just there.  I started to feel I didn’t need God and God didn’t need me.  Under that “good kid” persona I was slowly turning more and more rebellious against God, my parents, any type of authority and anyone who wanted to follow rules and laws.  I began to feel that it wasn’t cool to care or be sympathetic towards anything or anyone (I figured that people would think me weak if I did) so I hardened myself towards people; overall I had a cold personality towards anyone who even attempted to get close to me… I only cared about myself, no one else. 

I began hanging out with pot smokers, “druggies” and just about anyone that wanted to be as rebellious as I was.  Under that “hard” exterior though I was scared, I was just a scared kid.  I saw a few of my so-called “friends” get arrested, and even though I was anti-authority, I figured “Man I don’t want that to happen to me!” I never did touch a cigarette or do any drugs.  I saw what drugs can do to your body… my uncle died a pretty slow and painful death from them. 

One day I was walking in a campground by myself when I saw this board with bulletins and paper all over it propped up between two wooden posts.  I decided to read it since I had nothing better to do and scanned over it.  While looking, I came across this picture put up by a church group that really caught my attention.  I will never forget this picture, it showed the gates of heaven, and an angel was letting certain people past the gates and into heaven.  The ones that weren’t let in were forced to jump off of a tall rocky cliff into the fires of hell.  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that picture… it was just so dreadful and mystifying.  What was so special about the people being let in?  A question popped into my head, “If I died tonight where would I go, through the gates or off the cliff?”  I quickly forced it out of my head, because I knew I wasn’t good enough to get into heaven… it scared me though, I mean who wants to die and go to hell? 

It was about a year later when my mom started reading a series of books titled The Left Behind Series.  I was sort of curious about them because they talked about the end of time… but when my mom said that they were based on a book in the Bible called Revelation, I decided not to read them since it was Christian related and probably boring.  I stuck to that excuse until December 31st 1999. I was watching the TV on New Years Eve when I came across a news-broadcast out of Jerusalem.  There were a lot (I don’t remember exactly how many) of Jewish people standing around The Mount of Olives waiting for something… I didn’t think much of it until the journalist said that they were waiting for Jesus to appear.  I stopped, and just stared as a horrible fear crept into me, “No,” I thought to myself, “He can’t come back tonight I’m not ready, I haven’t made up for all of the garbage that I’ve done in life.”  In a panic I called my mom and asked her if Jesus was coming back tonight.  She assured me that he wasn’t, a few more scriptures had to be fulfilled before he came back.  I breathed a sigh of relief, but my heart felt hollow and empty after that.  I wanted to know exactly when Jesus was coming back that way I was ready for Him (how I would be ready I didn’t exactly know), so I started reading the Left Behind books and a whole new world was opened up to me, that was actually pretty interesting… one thing was very confusing to me though, the author kept on talking about “Becoming Born Again” (aka Salvation).  I didn’t understand that part but I just passed it off as another “Bible” thing.  After that it was the end of winter vacation and time for school again and I began to spend more time with my old group of friends who actually cared about me.  Even though everything was going nicely I began to notice that my life felt so empty and meaningless… I couldn’t explain that feeling other than I had a big empty/hollow spot down in my heart. 

One afternoon in June I was looking through the little Bible I got from my Sunday school teacher ten years before.  There were little classic church songs in the front, which were neat to just look at, but I’d never checked out the back.  So I flipped to the back and looked through it…it mentioned salvation and how to be “Born again.”  It started out by saying that, “God loves you no matter how many times you’ve sinned or how drastic that sin is”….. that was a relief but I didn’t understand how He could love me with everything wrong I’d done in life.  It then said, “man is so sinful that we aren’t worthy enough to see heaven when we die” and then it gave passages to support that…. Wow that was negative, but I had to keep reading. Next came “Jesus changed that with His death on the cross”… I had always known that Jesus came to Earth in the form of a man to die for our sins, but what did this have to do with me?  The last part finished it up with a note that said that it isn’t enough to just understand this… we have to verbally ask God to forgive us and then accept Him into our hearts.  I stopped reading as I tried to sort out this information, “That’s all that salvation was?  All I had to do was ask Christ to forgive me of my sins and then just ask Him into my heart?” 

That night in bed I evaluated my life.  It wasn’t too good, I’d done a lot of things that I couldn’t possibly be forgiven for.  But it specifically said though that Jesus forgives ALL sins.  I suddenly realized why God sent His only son Jesus to die for us on the cross; so that people like you and me would have the chance to just ask Him into our hearts in order to be saved from an eternity in Hell.  It was then that I broke down… I asked God to forgive me of every dirty and terrible sin that I’d committed through life, and then I asked Him into my heart.  I can’t even begin to describe the joy that rushed into my soul, every weight and empty spot felt like it was just filled up, I actually knew that I was forgiven.  One thing I’ve learned over the past four years though is that you have to keep your walk with Jesus strong no matter what… and even though I stray away and still sin, I know that He will never ever leave me.

-Back to Top-