Why I chose Christ

In my last post I talked a lot about magic, or a wizard that does magic. I don't believe in the type of magic that Harry Dresden does in the books nor in the kind that is in Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. I do however believe in other supernatural things. I believe there is a supernatural realm that we can't physically see and that there are things battling over our souls, but most importantly I believe in God and his son Jesus Christ as my savoir. This post will stating my decision to follow Christ and why I made it and everything that has shaped my faith into what it is today, I promise I will try not to be too preachy in the process.


The Early Years.
Let me start off by saying that I don't have some super dramatic conversion story, it all came about more subtle than that. My parents had already been going to church for a while before I was born, in fact that is where they first met, so I was pretty much brought up in the teachings of Christianity. When I was a child church to me was where I would meet up with my friends and sing, learn a little about God, but eventually run around and play. For the most part it was fun except for the fact that we had to go on Wednesday nights, that was the last place I wanted to be after going to school all day. Also I wasn't allowed believe in Santa Claus or watch some cartoon shows like  The Care Bear, The Smurfs, and He-man because they used magic. But that was the eighties church I guess and things were a lot more legalistic back then and looking back on it I don't think I missed out on much on those cartoons, except for maybe the care bears. When I was eight, I'm not sure if it was an Easter Sunday or what, but the pastor did an altar call for people to come up and get saved. I thought it was a good idea and I thought my parents might like it so me and some friends when up and got saved. At eight years old I pretty much knew the basics, if you get saved, you get into heaven where all your loved ones are. Also, Jesus died for our sins so we could get in to heaven.

When I was ten my family was a attending a different church that was a little more laid back. I could go out trick or treating finally and dress up, I could watch most cartoons an most importantly, power rangers. Ten was also the age when I got baptized and I remember it was a pretty good experience. I observed and studied the reasons for baptism and it all made sense to me, basically it meant washing your old life away and cleansing your spirit to live a new life for Christ.

Teenage Years...
Twelve and Thirteen were some pretty awkward years for me and I remember being a huge brat. My parents enrolled me into a private Lutheran school because they thought it would be better than a public school..... I made it through though and then in high school I ended up going to a public school anyway. I was never to concerned with God in the beginning of high school because I was more worried about trying to fit in. Eventually I found my niche with the theater crowd  towards my junior year I also started attending an early morning prayer group with a handful of other students in the high school, I started to understand the bible a little more and I was getting closer to God. My senior year trying to figure out my faith was interesting to say the least because I did stupid things to represent what I believed in and I stupidly dumped my girlfriend who did nothing but support me. There is this thing that I like to call "New believer Fever" where people who find their faith in God or rediscover their faith tend to start telling what their friends believe is evil....There is a right way to witness to people and there is a wrong way to witness to people, you're never going to win someone over with a threat, let's just put it that way. All of it pretty much flew out the window after high school though.

After High School and my early-ish 20's
The September after I graduated I had been back with my girlfriend for a few month and I was on the fence about school. My parents announced they would be moving to Massachusetts and I of course was not cool with that because I had established my life in Minnesota. My parents worked out a deal where if me and my brother paid the mortgage like rent than we could stay in the house, so that's what we did. It was going good for a while, my girlfriend and I were going to a church called Woodland Hills and it was awesome. It was probably the first time where I had a pastor that challenged us to believe that God actually wants us to think in Church. Challenged us not to just take someone's word on something but to really get down to the nitty gritty of how God works and works through us and all sorts of intellectual ideas.

The deal with the mortgage crashed though and my parents had to sell the house after 9 months of us trying to pay it. In June I moved to my friends house where his parents said I could stay until I found a place, well tow months passed with no luck and I was feeling the pressure to get out of there. I admitted defeat and moved out to Massachusetts to live with my parents. At that point I went into a depression and I was pretty mad at God for the way things had turned out and I again pretty much put him at the back of my mind again. Some times the discussion of faith was brought up and I would say yeah I'm a Christian, but I didn't live the life of one.

Living the life of a Christian? What does that actually mean?

There is the stereotype of the Christian person, someone life

Ned Flanders, or a Bible Thumping evangelical and don't get me wrong

those people exist, but I view it differently. To me when God calls us

to lead a different life he is asking us to leave things behind that

we already knew weren't very good for us in the first place and

other things that might be considered destructive to an individual.

I got a job and then I enrolled in a community college. I started hanging out with some people at work who I didn't fit in with very well but hey it was something to do, I also started drinking a lot. In college, or I should say in that college I made some pretty good friends but I also participated in some very questionable behavior and things got messed up for a little bit. Then I moved to Salem and I was going to try and do school and live with some roommates, but we just ended up partying and spending our money at the bars and doing other stupid stuff. It was a confusing time, very confusing time and God was pretty much no where to be seen. Then I met a girl who offered something different and I moved away from that kind of life especially when I found out I knocked her up. Having Ethan changed things, but even though I thanked God everyday for Ethan things for 3 years between his mother and I were not that great for a variety of reasons. There were times when I was just so angry with where I was in life that I would yell at God in my head. His mother and I split up and I moved back to MA and at this point I didn't know what to do, here I was 26 years old living at my parents place with a child that lives out of the state and no job to support him.

Something changed though, my sister who has always been a big Jesus freak had recommended a book by Brennan Manning called "Ruthless Trust" all about trusting God and how freaking hard it was to do so. It was about half way through where I realized that hey, maybe I should actually listen to God  and once I did that, one I made that decision, things went from night to day almost immediately. Sure things were still a little tough, but I had gotten a job and was able to support my son and I also met my wife during this time period. Eventually I moved down to Georgia to be with her and we built our relationship using God as a foundation and he's proven to be solid. I enrolled in school again and that is going exceptionally well because I have is support. Just because I follow Christ doesn't mean I'm always going to be happy, it doesn't mean I'm always going to be successful, in fact God says in the Bible that "In this life you will have trouble". Going from 8 to 28 my thoughts about heaven and hell and life and death have totally evolved and I'm sure they will continue to evolve. In the end I chose to Christ because he has always been there for me, no matter how far away I got he was always there to say hello again. I'm sure in the future there will be things I struggle with about God, but that's normal, as humans we are suppose to do that, it means we are learning to understand him better, the very name Israel means "To wrestle with God". He'll always be there though if you let him.