If you’ve met Jesus, I hope you’ll share your story. I’d love to hear it. If you haven’t met him yet, I hope you will seek him. He promises you will find him.
This is my story.
I grew up in the suburbs of Nashville in a traditional family. I was enrolled in a small, Christian school from the 1st – 11th grades and attended the local Baptist church three times most weeks.
I had three Bibles when I entered the 1st grade. Soon, I was able to list all the books of the Old and New Testaments, had learned all of the major stories and characters and could recite verses from memory by the handful. I have believed in God and the Bible for as long as I can remember and never had cause to doubt what I’d been taught about them.
It was an easy decision for me to commit my life to Christ when I was thirteen and to stand in front of the church to be baptized. After all, everyone I knew did the same thing.
My upbringing gave me every advantage for a great relationship with Jesus. But for whatever the reason, it stalled at the maturity of a thirteen-year-old.
College came and I was introduced to people who hadn’t grown up in my bubble. A few had different religions, but most people just didn’t care. I never abandoned my faith but didn’t rock the boat. I tried to lead a good life and left it at that. After all, I had already done what I understood was necessary to get into heaven. That’s the point, right?
As soon as we graduated, Kim and I got married. We got good jobs. We worked hard and built solid lives. We had two children and our days filled up quickly. We received God’s blessings and offered the thanks a polite kid would give his father for an allowance.
My comfortable world would be shaken in an unexpected way.
Holding my small children in my arms, I would daydream about the lives ahead of them. I tried to envision the very best lives possible so that I could invest in making those dreams into their realities. I carefully considered each blessing to ask on their behalf.
Money? Doesn’t seem to bring happiness.
Beauty, strength? Too fleeting.
Big family? Either way.
Powerful or famous? Too much temptation and corruption.
If not these, what did I want for them?
I wanted them to be loved by many and to give love freely in return. I wanted them to receive every good thing that God had for them, not just in heaven but for all of their days. I wanted them to have a life of impact. Last, I wanted them to love God passionately and worship the Savior who died for them.
I imagined these lives stretching ahead of them and smiled with satisfaction. That is what I would work to provide them.
My dreams were crushed with a single thought. “How could I give them something I didn’t have?”
Outside of family, I didn’t love well. I only spoke to God occasionally, and that was usually just to ask for something. I actually avoided worship, associating it with liturgical verses from a Baptist hymnal that never seemed to end.
I had grown and matured, but my spiritual development was stuck in junior high school.
I began to search for Jesus because I was scared that my children would never recognize him. I tried to find him so that I could show them the way.
Jesus entered my life through a door I had opened for someone else.
I prayed for understanding. I prayed for my heart to soften. I made lists of things I was thankful for. I read the Bible from cover to cover a couple of times.
What I found wasn’t what I expected. I found real people with real struggles, not the caricatures and platitudes I remembered.
The themes didn’t match what I expected either. Without realizing it, I had absorbed a perspective of a disconnected god who was equally content with destruction or blessing. The isolated verses I heard thrown around didn’t match the tone of the Bible as a whole.
I found grace over judgment, passion over protocol, inclusion over isolation, and life in abundance.
I abandoned the two-dimensional, man-in-the-sky God of my childhood. I let go of what I thought I knew and embraced something real.
Jesus is a real person who always wanted a real relationship with me. He speaks to me in whispers, comforts me in pain and walks with me at all times. He fills my heart with truths that bring me ever closer to him.
I am the son of the High King and enjoy the full favor of that position. My life has been redeemed and all my sins are forgotten, past and future. The same power that conquered the grave lives in me. I am loved more than I can imagine.
The love I receive flows out of me and into others. I worship in a loud voice with tears of joy streaming down my face. My life is his and I will go bravely wherever he calls me. I want everyone to meet the real Jesus.
I don’t have a story where everything changed in an instant. Candidly, I’m jealous sometimes of people who have those really cool testimonies.
My story is a love that grows stronger every day.
I have found the same life I wished for my children.
Thank you, Jesus.
IF you have already found Jesus, I hope you will share your story, too. You will find freedom and be a voice of truth.
If you have questions and want to talk more, I’d love to hear from you.
