Similar to your mom, I grew up catholic. My parents weren’t heavily involved with the church and I’m sure I didn’t make it easy on them to want to stay committed to it. At some point in my youth, my mom wanted to make a jump over to a Southern Baptist church where some of my cousins were going. I’m sure my mom and dad discussed this but my dad ultimately quit going to church with us and quit going to the catholic church as well. Instead he used that time to do work around the house or fix up the cars or just get a break from us. I always thought it was weird but I kept going to church because I liked the kids I had met and we played fun games.
As I got older, I took little initiative into actually getting involved at the church but I did still attend regularly with my mom, sometimes because I felt bad for her and didn’t want her to go alone but also because I enjoyed the singing. I remember thinking to myself the night before I turned 13, that I would pray to accept Jesus into my heart the day I turned 13. Days, weeks, months, and years went by and to this very day, I don’t recall if I actually remembered to say that prayer on my thirteenth birthday but I have prayed it many times since.
I remember going to a church camp that changed my life forever. Most of the camp I had spent chasing girls around and didn’t really care too much about all of the “God stuff” but I could sense myself starting to feel a little different, something was beginning to change in me. One night, as we were all singing around a bonfire, they had a cross brought out in front of us. They handed all of us a sheet of paper and a pen, told us to write a sin we were struggling with on the paper and then walk up and nail it to the cross. At that moment, God became very real to me. All the things I had heard about how Jesus died for our sins now meant something.
I had been struggling with pornography for a very long time and when I wrote that on that piece of paper and nailed it to the cross, it was as if a huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders. I continued to struggle with my addiction for many years beyond that but that was the pivotal point in my life towards a true understanding of what Jesus did for us.
Later on in high school or college we switched churches once again. This is when I started getting actively involved. I was part of the drama team and we performed a rendition of Lifehouse – Everything similar to the video below. I played Jesus and I could feel the crowd’s reaction as I acted silently in front of them.
Towards the ladder part of college, I basically stopped actively volunteering because I just wanted to finish my degree in 4 years.
After graduating I moved to Houston and lived with Aunt Kristin for awhile and started attending their church. Once again, I didn’t get too involved. When I finally moved out on my own and got an apartment, I started attending a church called The Loft and began to understand somewhat what it meant to “follow Jesus”. It was really the first time that I actively made an effort to start following Jesus. Many of the posts tagged “the-predictable” on this site were from that time. I spent a ton of time trying to help others in any way I could but I typically would fail to bring the name Jesus into the conversation when helping them.
A little while later, I married your mom and we started attending community groups, we eventually led a community group here and there but I was still uncomfortable for whatever reason sharing about the gospel with people that had never heard the gospel. Sharing the gospel with like minded believers was easy, sharing with people that had heard of Jesus but chose not to follow him was easy, but sharing with people that had likely never heard was something I still struggled with.
When your mom and I moved to Austin we started attending a church called Austin Stone. Here is where I found out more about God and Jesus than I thought I ever would. We took a deep dive into who Jesus was, what the Bible said, the meaning behind a lot of it, and ran through practice scenarios when a friend comes to you in need and how you can lead them spiritually. We read through a book called Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem.
This class gave me the confidence to sign up for my first mission trip. I was so excited to go on this mission trip to Italy and share the gospel with refugees that had likely never heard of Jesus and in a relatively safe environment. But God had other plans for me as the coronavirus pandemic halted all mission trips that summer.
Through all of this, I am continuously reminded that my children are meant to be my focus and I am meant to lead you spiritually.