Before Jesus Changed My Life
I was raised in the church. My parents taught my brothers and me about the Lord. I went along with it. Partly because that's what everyone I knew did, but also because of all the plays we saw about heaven and hell. I wanted nothing to do with hell so I did what I thought I needed to do to go to heaven. However, I did not have faith, a relationship with Jesus, or the desire to pursue any of that. When I left my home and joined the Marines around age 18, I completely abandoned any Christian activities. I'm going to do everything my way and just stop trying to pretend. I was focused on pursuing girls and sex and physical prowess. I wanted to prove to myself and others that I was strong and powerful by joining the Marines. I was seeking my own ego and mainly just doing whatever felt good to me.
After the military, I made a poor choice in who I married, and I was not a good husband. I experienced a volatile relationship and I managed it by abusing alcohol and disappearing into video games and online communities. I joined my ex wife in her distaste for Jesus and faith by going further away from God and participating in challenging the existence of God. I struggled to see how God could exist and allow for all the hardships I had experienced and had been seeing others experience.
My life was a mess. I was full of rage, rage against God, rage against the military who I saw as abandoning and wronging me, rage against “the system”, rage towards whoever happened to be near me. There was no semblance of love or joy in my heart. I had a mentality of them versus me. I was in constant physical and mental pain. I was living life my way, absent from God.
How Jesus Changed My Life
My journey of faith and being called by Jesus started incrementally. In 2021, I hit my rock bottom after I was medically released from Marine Corps Officer Candidate School due to an injury, which also led to other discoveries. I was ready to throw my life away and my ex wife decided to leave. I moved back home to Iowa and eventually filed for divorce. As soon as she left I moved back home. At this time of hitting rock bottom, God began stirring in my heart to stop living for myself, and start living in accordance with God's word. I was stirred to start going back to church and to start praying.
My Life After Jesus Saved Me
I have complete or usually complete trust in God (98% of the time at least) and what he's doing. Like all Christians, I still have my struggles. I struggle with dealing with the past and chronic pain, however, God is walking with me through these situations and has taken the anger about it from my heart. I'm able to now enjoy the life that God has given me. I find myself praying with people and sharing about God, which is not something I had the courage to do before. I've seen God work in my life, in my heart, and in my wife's heart. He is the only way. I've been blessed to see the fruit of walking by faith.
I talk with Jesus routinely and ask Him for help. I talk to my kids about my relationship with him and the importance of faith. My family and I serve God.I now take my role as spiritual leader, husband, and father seriously as it says in the Bible.
I pray for the work I do and to be used however God wants to. My marriage is now shaped by the Bible and trying to reflect God's love in my marriage, work, and parenting.
I see the blessings of God's work in my life and am forever grateful. I no longer focus on thinking I can be a good enough person to deserve or earn love. I'm focused on building a deeper relationship with Jesus that produces fruit as a byproduct of faith. Daily prayer and meditating on His word are now the source of wisdom. I no longer hide or shy away from my faith or how I live it out. God has enabled me to give up a desire to fit in with the world and to instead trust in his plan. Doing things my way resulted in pain and suffering, not all of which can be undone. But life of pursing Him has produced joy and has sustained me in going through hard things.
This doesn't mean I don't have any struggles or that choices from my past have do not still have consequences in the present. God has taught me to trust Him and relinquish any sense of control. I've changed tremendously, all owing toGod's work in my life. I'm a completely different person than I was five years ago. None of that is my doing. God has saved me and my wife.