My Testimony

 I have been asked to share my testimony with the congregation at church this Sunday. I am writing out my thoughts now so this is not my wedding speech 2.0. (Yes there is a video and I awkwardly admitted that I forgot to thank my father-in-law, and I also invited my father to live with us when he is old - Not my best moment)

So to the Testimony

To start, I very much dislike sharing my testimony. My attention was recently drawn to a passage in Proverbs, 

"A fool vents all his feelings, but a wise man holds them back" 29:11

And I thought, YES! Justification for the way my sinful nature already seeks to be. I don't have to have those emotional conversations with my Wife, see, Proverbs says so! I oftentimes find myself cheering scripture when I read something that I really wanted to read anyway, as if I want scripture to conform to my personality and affirm that my habits and intuitions are in fact correct and biblical. I have learned to proceed with caution when my inner "applause track" comes to life.  Needless to say, in giving my testimony I will try not to simply vent my feelings, but instead to tell you where I was, what happened in my life, and where I am now. 

So to the beginning. Shortly after being born, my family - consisting of my mother and father, older brother (1 year) and older sister (2 years) moved to Lilongwe, Malawi. This is where my first memories reside, as a missionary kid, playing in the mud. After about 5 years we returned to the states because my Parents sought marital counseling back at home. We moved back to a small town in Missouri where my father pastored a church, but shortly after my parents divorced. You could say this is when it all started for me, this is when my father left the home. 

As hard as we might try, I beleive it is impossible to hear the word, "Father" (Even in the context of our heavenly father) and not associate the construct and meaning of that word at least somewhat to the experiences we have had with our own earthly fathers. And mine happened to be largely absent from my upbringing. 

So my siblings and I were raised by my mother, we attended a Baptist church every sunday morning, and usually wednesday nights. We ate a full sit down breakfast as a family every day before school not complete without a devotional reading. The fact that God created the world and the universe, has authority over everything in it, and sent his son to die so that we might spend eternity in Heaven with him - Is a concept I understood, and having understood this concept and believed in it, I was baptized at a young age. 

I'm sure my childhood was very similar to many others, I attended a public school, played sports, went on family vacations - and every few months or so spent a weekend with my dad. 

This is where things get a little bit difficult for me to keep straight. I know that I was saved, and outwardly I might have appeared as though I had my feet on a solid foundation, standing firm, but inwardly I was sliding down a steep hill greased and oiled with lust and insecurity, which came in a convenient package I could hide from everyone else in my life - 

I remember one moment vividly that set the stage for my highschool, and early college years. I was sitting in the back seat of a car, next to my brother. My dad was driving. I'm not sure if it was me or my brother who asked the question, "Dad, should you wait to have sex until you get married?"The response was, "You should wait for your first marriage, but after that it is okay." 

"Does a fish know that it is wet?" - Aristotle

This question illuminates the impact of Worldview. I was a christian, but my worldview was not biblical, and my tree was not bearing fruit. I was in bed with the culture, and like the fish,I didn't even know I was wet. 

I think I was seeking manhood desperately. Someone to embody it in front of me, someone to clearly define it. The church is not where I found that definition. Though my mother tried her best, there was no father in my home, and thus I didn't find it there either. 

This search for manhood relplaced any search for truth in scripture or a deepening in my relationship with god. 

Luke 6:40 - "A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher." Unfortunately I recieved my "teaching if you will" from the other 16 year old boys I spent all of my time with, movies and music that i wathced and listened to, and what I found was that there are really only two qualifications for being a Man 1. materially successful 2. Sexually successful. 

During these years I slept around, I was addicted to pornography - I still attended church, and I still considered myself a christian , I still beleived that God was God. 

I continued in this fashion for several years, building up a haunting amount of memories and images, that even after being faithfully married for four years visit me. 

Another place I looked to in my life to define manhood was the military. Now there is a place that can make men, I subconsciously thought. I don't even have to do anything, its just a transaction. I join, there is a process, and on the other end the product is manhood, right?

around this time I met Meghan, and we attended a church together. We began to go to a community group that was led by one of the Elders at the church. He began to disciple me. We met weekly and he would sit across the table from me and explain to me things I had never heard before. He pointed me to scripture and applied it to my life in a way I had never been exposed to. I began to understand that believing in God made me no better than the Demons. "For even the demons believe, and tremble" James 2:19 All of my half hearted attempts to go through the motions of christianity were exactly that - half hearted. 

He challenged me to truly take captive every thought to make it obedient to christ - 2 corinthians 10:5

Every thought. That meant what I listened to, what I watched, my understanding of everything that I had seeced to a secular worldview, And god began to show me through his word, through his holy spirit and through faithful discipleship from a Godly man that I needed to take all of these thoughts captive and to make them obedient to him. 

As a young man I always had a picture of what I would be like as an older man. I knew I would be a husband. I knew I would be a man that would study the word diligently. I knew I would have children, have a great marriage. I knew I would not be addicted to pornography, and that I would be wise. 

And I also thought that that would come later. As if one day I would wake up and be the man I thought I would one day be. 

We all know this is illogical. We don't show up to war having not trained and expect to be lethal or tactically proficient. All of us in the Military, all we do is prepare. But I had not applied this to my life. I was not preparing to be a husband. I was not preparing to be a father. I was not preparing to recieve wisdom. I was on a trajectory leading to the all too common and ever deadly nominalism. 

In all of this that has happened in my life, My brother is an aetheist, and my sister is now a Mormon. Only God saves, but the impact of fatherlessness is far reaching.

I can not tell you the exact time that the sun rose this morning. I around about when it happened. I know that at 6 am it was dark, and I know that now it is light, and I know that sometime in between light crested the horizon. Similarly I know that I was living a life distant from God, and I know that now I am walking faithfully in his word. There was not a single day or moment that I experienced a sudden change. But The sun has risen in my life. God gives me all my definitions, he defines what a man is, the world does not. 

Until sin be bitter, christ will not be sweet. I recognized the total depravity in my life, and God's grace is all the more sweet in me for it. I am thankful for the Grace of God, and the Mercy of God. Giving me salvation of which I do not deserve, and withholding from me from damnation of which I do deserve. 

God has blessed us to be in a church led by Godly elders, and one that leads its members to come together in homes to study his word. It was in a church like that I was discipled. God has blessed me with a beautiful wife and two beautiful daughters. We are assiduously seeking after him, and experiencing the freedom that comes to being rightly a slave to christ. We are excitingly sharpening the arrows God has entrusted us with and will one day fire them into the heart of the enemy. Praise God.