My Testimony

Psalms 107:4-6, “They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses.”

THE STARTER’S GUN

I was kind of late to Christianity. Although I was baptized at a young age, it was more because I was a joiner. By the time I left High School, I was the president of the Baptist Youth Fellowship at my small church. These things can happen in small communities; the one who raises their hand gets the job.

I went to college not because I had a life plan but because it was the next step. I worked full-time during college; my goal was to get a diploma, not an education. If you don’t know what you want to be in life, what is the point in getting too educated on stuff you may never use? Sorry parents, there are a lot of kids in college with this plan.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games, exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore, I run in such a way, as not without aim.”

THE TURN

After college, I packed up all my stuff in a Chevy Vega and headed 750 miles south to get a job; I didn’t know a person in town, had no business connections and had no direction. I was working on the next step in life; I got a diploma now get a job. A man has to eat. At this point, life was just a series of checkmarks. Next on the list was marriage and family. There wasn’t any real passion or objective to being alive. I was insanely insecure, insanely angry, and insanely driven. This mental state was a tightly joined lethal cocktail. My insecurity drove my anger which forced me to overachieve. I look back on it now, and it seems so illogical, but it all made sense at the time. The good news for me was that I was an ambivert, you know, the guy that fits well in a social environment but has to go home to hide. I could mask all of my daily issues and feed them when I was alone at night.

The weird thing was that I thought this was all normal; it was just life. Everyone was fighting to get ahead. But it was a formula for disaster; still, I didn’t see it. Even when I was in the lifeboat watching the last of the ship as it dipped below the waves, I thought, this is life; everyone has problems. A wrecked marriage and a pacemaker at thirty, stress was the fuel. Stress kept me focused; it fed the anger to be someone.

Jeremiah 12:5, “… you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out,”

THE STRETCH

Finally, I had to agree that this approach wasn’t working. I couldn’t keep it up for a lifetime. There had to be better way.  Back in childhood, there was this book that was supposed to have the answers. So I got a copy, it was the Bible; I started to read. I wasn’t looking for salvation; I was looking for a better life. Up to this point, life was a sprint that turned into a marathon; I wasn’t prepared for it. I read the Bible from cover to cover eight times. Every time I learned something new about how God made me and the way I needed to live my life. I was convinced God existed; Christ was still a little iffy.

Proverbs 4:13, “Hold on to instruction, do not let it go; guard it well, for it is your life.”

I started going to church. Over time there grew a desire in me to become something bigger than just me. I began to question my existence. Just why was I driven to achieve, and what exactly was I to achieve? Then I read the book “A Case for Christ.” From both a historical and factual standpoint, it was almost impossible to deny Christ’s ministry. He had to be who He said He was; what did that mean to me?

My conclusion; I was dead in my sin. Christ did die for my sins. He did raise from the dead. Salvation was real. I rededicated my life to Him. With that rededication, I am a new person in Christ no longer driven by anger and insecurity; I was created in the image of Christ. But I was still internally driven, still focused on worldly standards. It was still easy to separate my Christian beliefs from my material efforts. The scoreboard was about using everything God had given me to become a better me. I started out embellishing my worldly resume, then I turned to embellishing my spiritual resume.

THE FINISH

I remember the day that I finally saw God’s truth. I was on the way to the airport in the early morning. I traveled five days a week almost my entire career; it was a typical Monday morning. A friend had given me a tape of a one-person play called “The Bema.” The essence of the play was to answer the question; What have you done for Christ since you knew Him? My answer was simple, nothing. It has always been about me; it went from me-pleasing-me to me-pleasing-God. But I was still the center of the story.

2 Corinthians 9:8, “And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in good works”

The epiphany was that it has never been about me. Everything God created, myself included, is for God’s glory, not mine. Everything I have, had, or ever will have belongs to Him; I’m just a caretaker of those things.  I bring glory to God by taking what He has given me and serving others. This concept was a pivot point. This was the point in my life that I started to become the man God had always created me to be. This was the start of a life worth living.

Isaiah 40:31, “but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.”

Since then, I have tried to be more outward-focused. I want to see the opportunities God is giving me to serve others through Him. By the way, it took me several years to consistently give Him glory for what I was doing. I would serve someone, but I would forget to tell them that it wasn’t me but Christ in me who had served them. The first step in sharing the Gospel is living the Gospel. I’m getting better at a lot of things; I still have further to go.

Life is a marathon; within that race you can find a calming cadence provided by Christ that guarantees that you can finish the race confidently. My focus is not the road ahead, but the God of the Universe that created me to not only run the race but run it with hope and joy that the race is not in vain.

Hebrews 12:1-3, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”