Before Jesus Changed My Life

From an early age, all I remember is going to church, from attending Sunday school and youth group every week, to memorizing bible verses to get candy. While this all gave me a head knowledge of the gospel and the Bible, God was far from my heart, and only a far and distant genie that I tolerated on Sundays and Wednesdays in order to get what I wanted. In my heart, I thought that God at a base operated on a good-works-karma operation, so as long as I did enough good things, I could impress Him and get my free ticket to heaven. This legalism even went as far as to respond to altar calls and say the prayer that the preacher told me a total of twenty-five times, simply out of paranoia, and even applied to my own thoughts and opinions of myself. If I performed well, then I was happy with myself, but the second that I failed in any way I quickly resorted to bad-mouthing myself and beating myself up relentlessly to punish myself. Sadly, this happened quite often, which only led me to find comfort in anything that I could get my hands on. This led me to a “christian” life marked by sexual sin, idolatry of myself and other people’s opinions of me, and a hatred of other people and God Himself. However, no matter what nothing was ever enough and I only fell farther and farther into the pit of sin that I had doomed myself to. I constantly felt alone, isolated, and completely unloved in my life, and no matter what I did, I could never get enough laughs or approval to make me love myself. During the year 2020 my family dropped off the map of church completely and never went back until 2022.

How Jesus Changed My Life

This deep seeded hatred, lust and pride only continued to blossom until Jesus broke into my life and completely turned my life around. Eventually by the grace and sovereign hand of God in my family's life, my family started attending church again, simply picking the biggest church we could find in a nearby radius, eventually picking Veritas, and I soon began to attend Veritas Youth as well as Sundays. One day in the spring of 2023, I remember feeling especially hateful of myself and others, and felt a complete isolation from any love at all. Once the sermon began, I remember simply sitting in my chair, feeling like a complete failure in life and like I deserved absolutely nothing in this world but the death and abandonment that so closely clung to me. But then the preacher gave an analogy of the cost of Christ’s death, and that was when the Gospel broke into my life for the first time! Christ did not simply just come into this world to serve us, though we were undeserving of that, but He came to serve us in the ultimate way, by bearing OUR punishment and OUR crimes on that old Roman cross! Christ, though the fullness of God, and being perfectly, beautiful, endlessly powerful and loving, came into this world to be whipped, beaten, mocked, scorned, pierced, crucified and abandoned by His own Father and disciples, all because He loved me even when I didn’t even love myself! Jesus knew every sin that I would ever do, every word that I would ever utter against Him, and every idol I would bow down to, but He still chose to suffer and die in my place! Just as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Now, despite my sins and grievous crimes against Him, God looks at me, declares, that I am “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). Now “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20)!

My Life After Jesus Saved Me

My life is completely different now because of Jesus! Although my flesh reminds me of every way that I have ever fallen short of God’s commands and profaned His name, God reminds me of my new identity in Christ, because no matter what I know that Christ is all-powerful, eternally loving, and now he’s my Father! The grace of God has freed me from my old Idols of hatred, lust and pride, and given me a new identity in Christ that offers superior love and care and is found only at His right hand, and has taught me the joy of sharing that with others! Serving and loving other people is no longer an annoying and painful thing that I have to do, but a complete joy that I get to do now in sharing the love of my all-powerful Father with his fellow sons and daughters! One way that God has been sanctifying me recently is by reminding me of His sovereign hand and how He is COMPLETELY in control over ALL things! Although I can’t see it, and I don't understand it, God is showing me that He is still the ruler of all, and that all that I need to do is trust Him! Just like Paul says in Romans 11:33-35, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’” And like David says in Psalm 139:7-10, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” Although I do not, and cannot, understand what God is doing or why He is doing it, I know what he’s done for me, and I know that he will always be with me, until the end of the age, so now I rest content! “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36).