Where it all began

           I have been a Christian all my life.  My walk with the Lord has been steady and strong all of my days , however I did not begin to pursue a serious and real relationship with Him until this time last year.  It is AMAZING how this changed my life.  In the one short year I have grown closer to Him than ever before, and learned more things than I ever could have dreamed of.  This is really what this blog is all about, my daily walk with the Lord of ALL things, the God of the universe.  This is my God, and this is my walk.
      
         I grew up Catholic and regularly attended Mass.  I felt good when I went, and occasionally walked away with something new after hearing the homily (or sermon for you Protestants out there!).  I went in, did my thing, and left returning to my life without any real change.  I rarely felt God's presence, and felt like I was going through the motions a lot of the time instead of truly engaging in worship with the living and awesome God.  Communion, however,  was and always has been different.  It is the one thing that felt real and powerful to me growing up.

      For about 23 years of my life, this was it.  Did I believe in God?  Yes.  Did I pray?  Sometimes, but is that all there was?  To quote Paul in his letter to the Romans, by no means!  One Friday night last October, Christy and I were over at our friends house, the Fogles, attending a Bible study on a series called the Truth Project.  This is a twelve part video series designed to help us as Christians to see the truth in the Bible and apply it to our daily lives.  I have seen about half of these, but highly recommend them!  After one of the videos,  we had a group discussion about our thoughts from the video.  There were about 10 or 12 people at the Fogle's house that night, and they all seemed to have stuff figured out.  It didn't seem like they were just going through the motions, they seemed to have a real relationship with God.  They said a lot of things from the Bible that I had never heard before, a lot of stuff that made sense to me.  They used the word "saved" a lot, which I hadn't really encountered in my Catholic background.  That night I got to thinking about whether or not I was saved, and I couldn't really answer that question.  I asked some of them how they knew, and they described awesome testimonies of how God stepped into their lives and turned it upside down.  This caused me to look back in my life for a defining moment when I felt like that, and at first I seemed to come up blank.

     The next day, Christy and I were talking about salvation and the Bible study from the night before.  I didn't know this at the time, but she had been saved a couple weeks before.  Praise God!  She had been spending a lot of time with God, and not very much time with me.  When I wanted to hang out and watch tv, she wanted to read the Bible.  I had never really read the Bible before, and assumed she would read through it once and be done with it.  I asked her if this was going to be something she did all the time, and luckily she said yes.  At the time, I was frustrated, and wasn't quite sure what was going on.  "It was just a phase" I told myself, things will go back to normal before long.  I allowed myself to pout inside for a couple minutes, then decided to take it to the Big Guy.  I prayed for answers, if I was saved, let me know, and if not... help me get there.

    We were attending Statesboro First United Methodist at the time, and Thad, the preacher was giving a sermon about God's grace and love.  I had heard these things before, but had kept it at surface level.  Thad, like myself, had some issues with alcohol in the past.  I was never an alcoholic, but my drinking had gotten out of control and I was playing a dangerous game.  Thad had said that due to God's grace, not only was he forgiven, and loved, but that God continued to use him to reach others.  At this point, I lost it.  I started crying, not because of shame, but because of hope.  At that moment, I knew God had big plans for me, and that He was far from being done with my life.  It was then that I got my answer from God... yes, I am saved! I tried to hide my tears, and although I am "in touch with my emotions", there is a time and a place for that, I thought.  The sermon had just ended, and we headed out to the car.  I got in the driver's seat, and started crying again.  I filled Christy in on what had happened, and felt spiritually alive for the first time!  She ended up driving home that day, and I remember texting my friend Brice Fogle from Church in the Boro about it.  He and his wife Christine had been really loving on me, and teaching me about God for a while. They took the time to share the Good News, which we are all called to do by Jesus in what is known as the Great Commission. (Matthew 28:16-20)   They couldn't be more pleased!

   About three years before that, I was still living at home with my parents.  I was attending a local university, and was struggling with grades, drinking, and lack of direction in my life.  All these problems fall under one head honcho problem, the lack of God in my life.  It was during this time in my opinion that I was actually saved.  My life was not going  in the direction I had planned, I was single and lonely.  This for me was my rock bottom, and I realize a lot of people have to get lower than that to make room for God, but I'm thankful this was as far as I had to go.  I decided to transfer down to Georgia Southern University after taking a semester off to do some soul searching.  Once at GSU, I found my major, cleaned my act up, and most importantly, met my wife!  The sad part is it took me about 3 years to acknowledge God was behind ALL this.  This did not strike me until that fated Sunday morning where I got my answer from God.  The whole time I accredited my life getting back on track to my own merit, but it was God all the way!  It is amazing how He works in our lives, even when we might not realize it at the time.  

   This is where I truly began my walk with the Lord.  I had some unreal expectations about what it meant to be saved, and have gotten a deeper understanding for it in the past year.  I thought at that moment everything would be perfect, and I would be done changing,  as perfect as I could be this side of Heaven.  This is not the case.  It is about a daily walk and surrender to the God of all things.  It about us sharing the love of God with all people.  In Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus says ..."Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself..."(New International Version)  Now my life is in God's hands, and I couldn't be happier! Let go, and let God!

Jeremiah 29:11-14  "I alone know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you..." (NIV)

Thanks for reading and God bless!

Scott