Grace!

This Friday April 27, 2012, after about 37 years of college (even though I am only 34), I will graduate from Florida Christian College with a B.A. in Preaching.  Usually one graduates college around the age of 21 or 22.  Obviously that is not always the case and there are many who graduate college later in life.  I am not one to give a testimony as there are so many more people that have a greater testimony that has a far more impact than me.  But I thought given the week for me, that I would share some things with you.  The things that share now have been confessed God and also to men.  I have nothing to hide and I no longer carry the burden of my sin because of Jesus.  I have been on the right path for many, many years now all thanks to Jesus Christ and my loving Father in Heaven...and grace, mercy, and forgiveness.  God never gave up on me even when others and I did.

I actually never wanted to go to Bible College or be a preacher.  I am not sure that I had a clear picture of what I wanted to do when I graduated High School in 1996 but I do know that I wasn’t going to college.  But as life tends to do…it throws you a curve ball.  We had family crisis in the summer of 1996 which destroyed my plans to stay home and work full time.  I had only one option and that was to go and enroll at Florida Christian College where both of my brothers had already graduated (and mother eventually would several years later).  I want to confess some things and make them clear to you.  I was a lazy, selfish, and a very much unmotivated young man.  And to be completely honest, even though my father was a preacher and I was raised in a very good Christian home, I didn’t care to walk the life of a Christian.  I believed in God and was baptized at 9 but I really didn’t have anything to do with Jesus or being a Christian.  It showed!  From 1996 to 1997, 3 semesters in at FCC and I probably had the lowest GPA of anyone walking the face of the earth.  Truth is I was too enticed with my sinful life. 

This sinful life led me to take a break from college for a year.  I never got caught or in trouble but my choices lead to a horrible GPA which caused me not have enough loan money to stay.  I moved away for year, didn’t change, and only grew worse.  I never paid back my loan so I defaulted.  For some reason I came back to FCC in 1999, worse than before.  My sinful life was in full swing.  Again two more semesters, the same GPA, the same sinful man, the same result. 

The thing that crushes me is I look through my old syllabuses and it angers me that I wasted the professor’s time.  They had so much to offer me and had given me the tools to succeed and in return I didn’t care.  I missed out!  There were people at this time in my life that called me a waste of potential.  I remember when I heard that, it hurt me.  Truth is that they were right.  I was a waste.  I was prideful, selfish, arrogant, and worst of all…a man who had forsaken the cross and instead of being dead to my old self, I let my sin control me.  Paul tells us,

 “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.  Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.  Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”   Romans 6:1-11

I hurt so many people.  I had unholy relationships.  I had so many opportunities to let the Light of Christ shine and instead I used people to make me feel better.  I was liar and a loser.  Instead of glorifying God, I glorified my sinful life which Christ came to destroy and break the chain and instead of edifying my brothers and sisters in Christ, I torn them down.  I was vile man.  I am embarrassed, horrified and ashamed of the things I did to nail Jesus to the cross. 

But that is not the end of the story…as you have probably have guessed.

In the midst of the sin, the lie I was living…I became a paid minister for a church in south Florida.  Yeah, I don’t get it either.  I would like to tell you that my life changed the moment I was hired…but that is not the case.  Only months into my ministry, I was caught in sin. I hadn’t changed.  I should have been fired right then…but I wasn’t. 

The next several years in ministry were a battle.  They were a battle because something happened that I had never experienced.  I began to be abused extremely emotionally and at times physically from someone that I worked alongside of in ministry.  I didn’t stand up for myself and allowed this individual to abuse me.  Now instead of going to God to deal with the abuse…I turned to sin.  It got to the point, I couldn’t take it anymore.  I was done with God, church, people, and my life.  I committed the worse sin I could think of to get fired from ministry, I was walking away permanently.  I was tired.  My life’s choices had done nothing for me and sin wasn’t helping me but making everything worse.  I was going to kill myself.  I thought to myself that I deserved hell…it was true. 

I can only tell you that there are no lost causes with Jesus.  God intervened and I not only didn’t kill myself as I tried to but I also didn’t walk away from God.   It took the lowest of lows, for me to be completely broken to where finally all I could do was to reach for God and God alone.  Psalm 40:1-3a “I waited patiently for the LORD; and He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.  He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God…”  I starting living the life that God had intended me to walk all along.  I finally became the man called me to be.  Scripture became real to me.  God’s plan became real to me.  Jesus’ love was very real to me.  I finally became the minister God called me to be.  I finally became the Christian that I was baptized to be.   

All of this is still a work in progress.  I was man who had reputation as a sinner, a waste, a liar, and a selfish loser.  God didn’t write me off even when He should have.  I have been on the right path for over 10 years.  I am amazed that with all that I have done that God  loves me the way He does but that shouldn't surprise me or anyone as you read His word.  I don’t get it or understand it but God has blessed me with a wife and three beautiful children.  He has helped me restore many broken relationships that I broke because of my sin.  I am an ordained minister in a local church carrying the passion of Jesus to all those that I meet.  I don’t deserve that but here I am.  God is awesome.  My reputation has changed because I have allowed Jesus to change me and people see it…and believe me, I don’t want that to ever change only grow.  I am so grateful that my identity is in Jesus and not my sin anymore.  I am overjoyed that the burden of my sin is gone and that there are no chains latched onto me.  God loves us…a love indescribable. Don't let sin entice you and run your life...it will only destroy it.     

Friday April 27, 2012…I will finally graduate FCC.  I never thought I would graduate.  God had other plans.  As His word says, "For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope."  Jeremiah 29:11  He is God of many “do-overs” and I love Him for that.  He gave me another chance.  We serve an awesome God!  To God be the glory forever and ever.  Sorry for talking your ear off.  Thanks for letting me share this.  That’s my story so far…