Before Jesus Changed My Life
Growing up in the church, sin and brokenness were discussed, but I didn't feel ownership of my own sin until I was around 13. I started to wrestle with questions surrounding the loss and brokenness that I was seeing in the lives of others around me, which in turn led to feeling not enough in many aspects of my life. Life felt heavy, and I didn’t see in anyone around me that their life wasn't broken, too.
How Jesus Changed My Life
At 13, I experienced the weight of my sin in a tangible way, and the gospel was shared with me. It was a realization of all of the things that were spoken to me in the church, but not fully understood until I took ownership and felt my sin for myself, in which the result should be death. But the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, through the exchange of his righteousness for my sinfulness, changed everything. The Lord drastically changed how I saw my life and those around me. There I confessed with my mouth that Jesus was Lord and believed in my heart that He rose from the dead, which meant that I was saved from eternal separation from God (Romans 10:9) and made spiritually alive in Christ (Ephesians 2:5).
My Life After Jesus Saved Me
From that point, I knew the Lord was with me through everything I have and will experience. There are points in my life when it wasn't the easiest to turn to the Lord in times of need. I specifically struggle with depression, and while there have been a couple of deep pits of this in my life, the Lord has never failed to walk alongside me and pull me out of those pits. He has not failed and will not fail to do so. Currently, my family has recently become part of Veritas through a series of what we can only say are moments of being hit with a "holy two-by-four," while this transition has had many unknowns, what I do know for sure is that the Lord provides in every season. I just have to look back in my life to see all the good things He has done to prove that He will continue to do good for those who are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).