Sinner! I'm no sinner. At least, that's what I believed. I grew up in a Presbyterian home, and I was a good kid. I stayed away from drugs and respected my parents, family, and authority figures. I was courteous, and I always tried to help friends in need. I was adding up all of those good works on the positive side for judgment day. However, not every thing that I did was good. I was a social drinker and a curser of God's name. But my good works far surpassed my faults, right? Wrong! How can I be a sinner? Well, God's Word, has taught me the answer to that question.

The church I grew up in was a nice friendly church that was easy to attend because it taught that "God is good" and that "you should love your neighbor." The church was ritualistic: we read the prayer out of the program, sang songs, and a verse from the Bible (which I usually didn't understand) was read from the pulpit. I couldn't wait to get to the long prayer, then I could shut my eyes and take a nap. I was young and immature at the time. I don't want to be misunderstood… this is not what church is like for everyone, but that's what I found "church" to be.
 

"Family Life"

My wife, Lisa, and I were married at this church in 1986. In the pre-marital counseling, the minister asked me if Jesus Christ was my "Lord and Savior." I responded with a "Yes" to save myself from a long religious lecture that would have bored me or made me look guilty for not knowing anything about the real God. But in my head I was asking, "'Savior?' What is a 'Savior?' Saved from what?"

From 1987 to 1992, my family grew to three children. Life was good: a big house, a well-employed spouse, and a social life filled with recreation and parties. I do remember that at parties I would bring up the questions, "Why are we here? If there is a God, why would a God create man, let man live a life, and then let him die. What's the point?"

My wife and I had many fights about my time spent away from the family, so I would find some way where I could go to a softball or baseball game and dump my young children on some unsuspecting teammate's girlfriend or wife. If they wanted me in the lineup, then they had to babysit my kids. As my kids became older, the drinking and profanity became too intense for them to witness. It was about this time that my in-laws started taking the kids to church on Sundays and to AWANA youth activities on Wednesday nights. I believed my kids were much better off going there then to be with me, and it was right for them to get that "religious thing." Don't get me wrong, throughout this time I loved my kids. I just loved me, more!
 

Emptiness, Discomfort, and Guilt

As the 1990s started to fly by, I was playing ball whenever I wanted, but I began to experience an empty feeling at the same time. I was doing all I wanted to do, but I still wasn't feeling fulfilled. In the winter of 1996, I was looking for a close place to play basketball for free. My father-in-law suggested that I play in a league at the First Baptist Church of Lake Orion. The only stipulation was that I attend one service a week. No problem--I was a churchgoer from way back. So I played basketball and I attended church, but for months I never listened to a message. Then I found out that the church had a softball team. Wow! I could play another night a week and my wife or in-laws couldn't complain. Well, I seemed to fit right in. I started making friends with "church people." I was being invited to join these church people doing the things I loved to do: play basketball, volleyball, softball, and watch football. Wow! Church people have fun too, and all with out getting drunk.

One day a basketball teammate asked me to come to the Sunday school class that he taught. I agreed, and some things that I hadn't seen before began to come into view. I felt uncomfortable and guilty, for although I was going to church more often, I still acted the same way when I was in my other environments. There wasn't a quick fix because I was a stubborn and stupid man.

Those feelings of guilt I attribute to the fledgling work of the Holy Spirit in my life. At church I was being introduced to words like "grace," "holiness," "testimony," "salvation," "sin," "sanctification," "redemption," "eternity," and "hell." I still didn't understand the terms, but I began to hear them even more frequently. The kicker was this question: "If you died today, are you sure that you would go to Heaven?"
 

Beginning to Understand

This idea of God in my life still hadn't hit me (what I needed was a jack hammer), but the work had begun. The church's softball team went to play in a tournament up north at Camp CoBeAc . Through the preaching of God's Word the door to my mind and my heart was opened. After that time I started to hear and understand. When we returned home the sermons at FBCLO began to make sense, and the terms that had previously confused me started to have new meaning. However, these sermons didn't make me happy like the sermons of my youth (God is Love, be good to your neighbor). These sermons made me feel uncomfortable and guilty. "Why is this preacher talking about me all the time?" "How does he know all these bad things about me?" First it was the preaching of Pastor Steikes, and then there was the new guy, Pastor Moreno. The questions in my mind (Why do we exist? What's the point?) were now starting to be answered, not by my friends at a party, but by God's Word.
 

The things I had to give up to repent and turn my life over to Christ seemed difficult at first. I expressed to God that if he accepted me as one of his disciples I would quit drinking. That was actually the easy one; I haven't had a drop since 1997. Some things, however, were more difficult. The social life and big house were a little tougher to give up.
 

Life Change

After I had given up drinking and swearing, I wasn't quite as appealing to my old friends, so they began to distance themselves from me. My wife resigned from her job due to some difficult circumstances and we lost more than half of our income. We enrolled our kids into the new Lake Orion Baptist School and now we had to deal with tuition payments. I learned that God puts trials into our lives not only to teach us lessons but also to make us stronger because we learn to depend on Him. We ended up selling our dream home, but we found a much smaller house that has served our purpose just fine. We don't argue about money anymore, and we are much happier today than we were a decade ago. What we have learned here at FBCLO is that we are not controlled by the "master of mortgage," but that we are servants of God. He provides all that is needed. We are so much happier now that my wife and I are not spending countless hours working overtime but spending the time at home.

These days my wife invests her time at the new school, and I am the school's baseball coach. We are very involved in our children's lives, and so is God. The kids are involved in so many activities in the school and church that they don't have time to stray. They and their friends stay accountable to each other for their words and actions. Every Sunday we see a group of forty teenagers sitting together in church; they are quiet, well-behaved, respectful, and attentive. It is an awesome sight! What a great place to bring up teenagers.

I still deal with sin and temptation every day. I fight that with a daily personal relationship with God. This relationship began slowly, very slowly. In fact, I had incredible anxiety to pray in front of others. Going to Wednesday evening prayer services conquered this problem. I am still not very good at it, but I've learned that you don't go to pray for "show," but to humble yourself, because God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. I still don't understand everything that I need to, and I probably never will, for I am finite as all humans are. I'm glad that I serve an infinite God!
 

A Life Invested

The last part of my finite testimony has to deal with faith. Faith is to believe in something that cannot be seen. In the endless span of time, your lifespan of 70-100 years is but a vapor. You may choose to live for today. You may choose to eat, drink and be merry, for you only go around once in life. You may believe that at the end of this life your soul disappears into nothing, but you are only fooling yourself.

I have chosen to have faith in the fact that God created me for the purpose of wanting me and all humanity to honor and glorify Him for giving us life. I choose to have faith that someday after my time on earth is through, God will grant me eternal life. I choose to have faith that since I am not perfect, I cannot have fellowship with Him in this new life, except through the sacrificial blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. I choose to have faith that this blood has cleansed me of all my sins and made me pure without stain once I placed my faith in Him and repented of my sin. My choice is faith in God; I choose eternity with God in Heaven rather than being a vapor in time.

In closing, I pray that this testimony is not viewed as a personal brag account, but that all the honor and glory be given to God.