My Story

My Story

It is a strange thing in my mind to write about my spiritual journey, not because I don't think the story is worth telling but because I'm still a young man.  In fact, the writing of this chapter has been holding me back from the writing of the book.  Its not a small thing to share the struggles of your life and often isn't the right time to do so but in my heart I feel that my generation needs a word like this more than ever.

I grew up in a Christian household and received Jesus at the age of 7.  A couple of years after that God spoke to my mom to start a childrens program at our church.  She faithfully poured her heart out in ministry and a significant portion of my childhood memories are of being in Church.  Part of the program involved the memorization of Scripture and very often at night my mom would help her children memorize different verses in the Bible so that we could compete to win prizes in the kids program.  Looking back on this now I know that God used this not only to foster in my heart a belief in the Bible as the Word of God but also that many of those Scriptures that I memorized stay with me even today.

After I left the kid's program I started to drift away from the Lord in high school.  I wasn't as involved in church as I had been as a child and I became addicted to pornography.  In my heart I knew I was in sin but I found I wasn't able to stop.  I wanted to quit on some days but that would change a week or so later.  At a certain point I just gave up - I knew that I wouldn't stop and I had come to terms with that even if it meant silencing the conviction in my heart that it was wrong.

I graduated high school and by the mercy of God went to a Christian college to play tennis.  As I reflect on this I see that God preserved me from all sorts of evil by sending me to a Christian college.  The state that I was in spiritually at that time would not have resulted in anything good should I have gone to a place that endorsed the immorality and lewdness like we see encouraged today at secular universities.

I was still far from God my freshman year of college and even wanted to transfer to a party school.  My parents said they would be alright with this though looking back on it now I suspect that they prayed that I would stay.  Their prayers were answered because I decided to return my sophomore year and give it another try.

That summer something changed in me.  On the outside I had everything that pop culture said I needed - I had a good job working for my dad at his mapmaking business, I had a car, I had a girlfriend, I had a bunch of friends and I was in college.  Everything on the outside looked right but inwardly I realized that though I had everything that I had been told was what I needed that it was all deeply empty and boring.  I remember vividly that one night I was sitting in the bed of a truck with my girlfriend looking at the stars and a thought entered my mind.  I said to her, "I want to know my Creator".

The Drawing of God

Not everything changed that night but looking back on my life I can see something happened on that starry summer night that has in a real way shaped my life ever since.  Its not always the wild creative miracles or radical words of knowledge that have the greatest effect on people.  Those things are great and anyone who knows me knows that I'm all about seeing the power of God manifested in the world around us but often times the things that shape us the most are the little mustard seeds of the Kingdom that take root in our hearts until they grow into the most prominent things in our lives.

From that point on I began to devour the Bible and read any book about Jesus that I could get my hands on.  I began to detest my addiction to pornography.  God made me hate that sin.  It became so prominent in me that I took Matthew 5:27-30 literally.  I kept my hands and my eyes but threw away my computer.  That was one of the wisest things I have ever done.  I found out this "strange and mysterious truth" about pornography addiction - you can't be addicted to porn if you don't have a computer to watch it on.  If you are addicted to porn then seriously the easiest thing to do is to cut off your access to the Internet.  Don't have a computer that you are alone to access and restrict the Internet on your phone.  Problem solved.  Do this and tell me it doesn't work.

I found that I was free from porn addiction and was consuming the Bible en masse.  Some of my friends on the tennis team invited me to their church and I started going to the meetings.  I remember loving church.  I was at a Charismatic church in a Baptist town but God had struck my heart with so much hunger that instead of being put off by the practice of the Gifts of the Spirit I was curious.  So hungry was I that I remember always going up for prayer.

One night I went up for prayer after a missionary from Tanzania had just preached.  I had a radical encounter with the Love of God.  The missionary prayed for me and I was pushed back (to this day I still don't know if the man actually pushed me or if it was the Lord) but then I came back and he hugged me but when he hugged me I felt the Love of God like I never had before.  I remember just crying there in that man's arms.  I didn't know what happened for sure but I knew that moment that God was real.  I had tasted of the Presence of God.

I was so excited about this that I literally told all of my friends from high school.  I texted them and sent AOL Instant Messenges to them telling them that Jesus was real and that God was so amazing.  I had a season there for about 3 months where I was filled with joy and peace.  Not only had I gotten free from a sin that had entangled me I now felt very close to God.

Divine Pruning

The next semester I enrolled for a philosophy class.  I enrolled because I thought it would be a fun class.  I loved God and thought it would be cool to see how creation testifies of Him.  I honestly had no idea what God had planned for me in this class.  One of the most fascinating concepts in Scripture is that God will discipline us when we are doing something right.  Its logical and intuitive to consider that God corrects us when we are doing something wrong but it takes a different perspective to understand that God corrects us when He sees our potential.

John 15:2 says that "every branch in Me that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit".  To be pruned means to be cut down to the barest place where all the parts of you that weren't of God are removed so that the small part that was of God remains.  And this pruned branch now is no longer hindered by the dead weight of the excess growth but the good is now free to grow.  The concept is easy enough to explain but difficult to endure through when you consider that it is God who does the pruning and His cuts are often in places that we didn't know need to be removed.

The philosophy class proved to be a giant pruning of my faith.  The teacher assigned us a book called "A Splinter in your Mind" and I read it until I got to the deconstructionist philosophy of Rene Descartes.  Reading the summary of his work made me question everything that I had experienced in the past year and even made me question my own grip on reality.  I put the book down and stopped reading it.  I hardly went to class after that and I think I got a "D" for the course.

I found myself struggling with solipsism and I went into a really dark place emotionally.  I was deeply discouraged and felt that I had fallen into a pit that I couldn't get out of.  I spent that summer reading Apologetics.  I probably read close to 8 different books that offered proofs and reasons to believe in God.  I remember my mom talking to me during that time that I seemed sad.  I don't remember what I told her when she said that but I remember thinking to myself "if only she knew what I was going through".

The TreadMill of Apologetics

The books on apologetics were helpful and had some answers to some of the questions that had formed in my heart but there was a big issue with them.  What I found was that the more books like this I read the more questions I had.  In trying to find answers to my specific questions I was exposed to a whole host of other questions that they sought to answer.

This then had the effect of being like a treadmill.  I was spending all sorts of energy trying to read and reason away these questions that I had and I was at times successful in answering some of the questions.  But in the struggle to find answers to one question another would arise - which would then send me down the same process of reading and reasoning my way to an answer.

While this process was very difficult I did find in that season that I began to dive deep into the study of the Bible.  After that summer I decided that apologetics while being helpful at times were not where I was going to find peace.  I instead turned to the Bible.  I became very committed to the study of Scripture.  I gave myself to studying the Word 5 hours a day.  I found that while I was unable to fully silence the questions in my mind that I found reprieve when I began to consider the truths of the Word of God.  I was still spending large amounts of my energy trying to find answers for my questions but I had now turned to the Bible for them.

That winter I heard that the International House of Prayer in Kansas City was having a conference called One Thing.  I was so desperate for some kind of help from God that I drove up there by myself because I didn't know anybody who wanted to go.  While I was there a man by the name of Allen Hood spoke a word that shaped my life in a profound way.  He said "if you are struggling with doubt then you should throw yourself into Intercession.  And you will find that as you see God answer your prayers that your faith will grow".  There were probably 20,000 people in the auditorium the night that he spoke but I felt that God had given him a word just for me.

So that is what I did.  I dedicated the following season of my life to prayer, fasting, the study of the Word and to Intercession.  Looking back on that season I can attest to seeing God do radically amazing things.  I would have dreams about things that would happen to family members and then pray that they didn't happen only to find out that 3 to 6 months down the road they actually did happen but that God had protected them.  One such dream like this was about a car accident that one of my family members who wasn't a believer said that he had been protected by an angel.  I told him that I had had a dream about that 3 to 6 months prior and had prayed that God would send angels to protect him.  Stuff like that blows your mind.  In addition to that I saw all sorts of people that I prayed for get saved and I saw a couple people get healed.  It was wild.

That season was beautiful and I have never left my commitment to those things (though I don't have the same amount of time to do them as I did in college).  But the real point of transition for me came as I began to touch the Holy Spirit in prayer.  While I had touched God at different times in my life I really struggled with feeling His Presence.  A large part of this revolved around this treadmill that I was constantly on where I thought that peace was going to come by getting answers for every question in my mind.  When an answer would come I felt peace but when I had another question I was back on the treadmill.  When I was on the treadmill I struggled to feel the Presence of God.

The breakthrough for me came as I began to realize something about myself and about God.  Because I had faith in Jesus it meant that God lived inside of me.  All prayer then begins with a mustard seed of faith in that truth.  God lives in me.  I then put my focus on the smallest sense of His Presence in my soul and then I worship Him until something moves my heart.  When something moves my heart I respond and then the small sense of His Presence gets bigger.   A little later in prayer something else will move my heart and then I feel an even larger sense of His Presence.  The more I do this the more profound the sense of God is in my soul.

I honestly could write an entire book about prayer and the above paragraph won't do it justice but what I found about the Presence of God was that it took the edge off the questions that would arise in my mind.  It wouldn't make the questions go away but it would take some of the power associated with them in my spirit.  I also found that when the doubts were really strong - maybe I had read something that day that really discouraged me - then when I would pray that the Presence of God was more readily available.  Psalm 46:1 says that God is an "ever present help in times of trouble" and I can attest to that being true.

The giving of myself to the Presence of God in prayer and to studying the Word over a long period of time has done wonders for my soul.  At the time of writing this book I can attest that my heart at times will soar with belief in the Promise of Everlasting Life in Heaven.  Not all of my questions have been answered - a lot of them have - but I find that I hold them in my heart as secret offerings.  Gifts I offer before the flame of His Presence saying to God that I don't understand everything about this world but by His Strength I trust Him and by His Grace I believe.

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