Before Jesus Changed My Life
I grew up in a home where church was a priority. My dad was one of the pastors at the last church we went to. My family moved to Cedar Rapids when I was 6 years old. My dad had taken a job offer at Veritas. At about 10 I had started down the path of lust. Lieng was getting to be a problem as well. A couple years later I had lost a ton of battles with lust. I was a liar, especially with school. Porn became like a drug that I sought out to provide temporary pleasure in the moment and it was like that for a while. Then I started reading through the book The Death of Porn in a discipleship context with someone from church. God was really working in those meetings. God used YTH Con as well, just hanging out with my friends and talking about God was great. The last night of YTH Con we were in one big group and just talked a little more personally.
How Jesus Changed My Life
God put some awesome people in my life. God used people to disciple me, my D-group, and my dad, all of whom kept pushing me to fight against sin and pursue God. I could not have done it without these guys. Even more importantly, it would have been impossible without God. God even used people in certain situations through small conversations, like Alex Trunnell when I got angry at work, or my youth leaders who would talk with me when I did something weird or dumb. I'm so thankful for these people who pour into my life and to God who put these people in my life in the first place. I have come to embrace and believe that the gospel is all about putting God first in my life. Putting him on the throne. Making him the prize. The problem is that we sin again and again. Like Ephesians 2 makes clear, we keep on "following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that Is Now at work in the sons of disobedience." We missed a button on our shirt. We missed that one Lego piece, and now we have to take our build apart and look back at our instruction booklet until we find where it goes. Only through Jesus can we find where that piece goes, which button or step got missed, and only then can we address and resolve the issue.
My Life After Jesus Saved Me
I now love reading my Bible! I can't believe it! I am pursuing my role as a godly man more than ever. I'm still falling short more than I'd like to, but by God’s grace I'm continuing to grow. This is just one of the things that God has changed in me. I don't have to lean on my shortcuts to feel good! I shouldn't, but I also just don't have to! And even when I do fail I know that, I "have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." This is something I took advantage of in my younger years, but now I am no longer living for cheap grace, I want to obey God because I know the love He has for me and I know that He is worth it. My favorite passage in the Bible is Daniel 4:34-35 which says, “At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”” This is an awesome passage that often encourages me and reminds me of God’s perfect plan!