I don’t want this to sound like a pitch. I’m not selling anything. I don’t want anything from you but your ear. I’m writing this more for myself than for an audience. It’s how God works in my life and how I work for Him. It’s a story that may have definite beginnings but no definite end. To start with, I was not raised in a Christian household. My mother is a good woman and says that she believes in God, but we rarely (if ever) went to church. My first exposure to faith and religion was “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” This movie instilled in me a sense of mystery when it came to spiritual subjects. Seeing the Ark of the Covenant on the screen did nothing more than make the relic appear fantastic and glittery. I had no idea what the thing was or why peoples faces melted when they looked at it. All I saw was what Hollywood wanted me to see. With the thoughts of religion growing in my head, I began searching for answers. Being so young at the time I first watched that movie, I grew with a lot of misconceptions about what faith was. I didn’t know what the difference was between a Jew and a Catholic and I didn’t have access to a bible of any kind. I can still remember finding this little New Testament sitting on a pile of boxes at my elementary school, probably left there by a janitor. I took the tiny volume home with me and opened it. I didn’t know what it was telling me, if anything. I just tossed it aside and let the thought of it roll off my brain like it was nothing.
Years went by and I found myself slipping into the role that most teenagers play: the lost sheep looking for a flock. I palled around with some guys from my school, played in the marching band, and basically tried to keep my head down. I was neither the big man on campus nor the outcast. I just existed. My mother raised me to be a good kid, always instilling in me that I was never to be sent to the principal for any reason at all. I never smoked, drank or swore. Other kids my age were doing all of the above and it started to catch on that Justin didn’t want to have “fun” as they did. They were into all these things and I so desperately wanted the same. I started to dabble late in my high school career, going to a party here and there. It started to take root when I went to college. I lived at home throughout my metriculation at JCCC and KU but still somehow managed to drink four nights a week and stay out till all hours. I went to bars like most people went to work. We played trivia, told dirty jokes, and watched all the girls come and go. They mostly went. I never had a girlfriend, resigned to thinking that I would never meet the one for me. I was in a general state of denial, depression and angst. Mostly, I was just angry at myself, my world, and my life.
In the spring of 2003, I met someone that would change all that for me. We met online, in a chat room. It was a Saturday and I was so bored that the only thing I could think to do was sit on the internet for hours at a time. I was off work, didn’t have any school work to do, and needed to be completely and utterly useless. I was good at that. When Stacey responded to my introduction, I was in heaven. We chatted for a little while and decided to talk on the phone. The reason for our phone conversation is something between us and we’ve since seen the error of it, but the conversations we had led to our meeting three months later. When we saw each other for the first time in real life, we knew. Well, I should say that she knew. I wasn’t in it for the long haul back then. I wasn’t interested in brains. It was body all the way. It’s ridiculous, the way the male mind works sometimes! Despite a massive amount of things working against me, we are still together to this day.
I got sidetracked somewhere. How’s this my testimony and not just the story of two people coming together? Before Stacey, my wife, and I met I prayed. Who I was praying to is not exactly clear to me now, but thank God He was listening. I got the idea to pray one night when I came home from a bar. I was totally wasted, the kind of condition where you wake up the next day and can’t remember how your car got home. My head was spinning and I thought the bed was going to dump me out of it. No one else was home at the time and I yelled out “God! Why do you let me do this?!” The question echoed through the empty house and was not answered. Feeling like utter Hell, I got up, drank some water and went back to my bed. It was 1 in the afternoon. I laid back down, closed my eyes and clasped my hands together. “God,” I said, “please help me.”
There is a point in these testimonies when the person telling it says something like “and then, I prayed the prayer to ask Jesus into my life and I was born again!” I did pray the prayer and was baptized in a lake just south of Bemidji, MN which I assume means I was born again. Wait, I assume? At the time, I thought mostly that the water was freezing cold and I wanted to put my clothes back on. Looking at that point, I wonder who in their right mind would believe that that was the day I accepted Jesus into my life. To be perfectly critical and honest, it wasn’t. That day was a show. I wasn’t anymore born again than I was the day before. I did that because I wanted to experience baptism. I have been going to church, off and on, ever since. Now, though I sit here writing this and think to myself that I’ve been fooling myself and lying about the fact that I am a Christian. My faith stands as a testament to Jesus who died on that Cross for my sin! God knew of me and chose me before I was born! I am a child of God and want to show my love for Him in every way and with every breath! Lord, I believe that you died for my sin and that you were resurrected! I believe this with all the power and the glory of your Holy name! Jesus, saviour, save me from the flesh that hold in it so much awfulness. Tonight, I die to this sin of not fully believing your Word. Lord, lift me to your right hand!
