This is my Story

I like to start at the beginning. God’s grace was manifest in my life before I was born. I am the son of a teenage mother who could not raise me. I was adopted at birth into a believing family. From my conception onward, God orchestrated circumstances for my good. I ought to have been aborted, but I was adopted. An unbelieving family could have taken me in, but a believing family did.

These realities, however, did not mean that life was easy for me. My adoptive parents divorced when I was eight years old. They were amicable and mature about it, and I split my time equally between them. But as I grew older, I became increasingly angry as I recognized the deficiencies in my family life. By the age of 14, alcohol had become a part of my life. I had learned that $10 to any drunk bum behind a liquor store could get me whatever I wanted, as long as I gave him the change and a bottle. Adding to the foolishness of my teenage years was an addiction to pornography. I didn’t understand then what I know now—I was hurt and angry, but instead of dealing with it God’s way, I self-medicated with alcohol and testosterone. These influences shaped the world I was living in. I had become a hedonist, concerned only with minimizing my pain and maximizing my pleasure.

Ironically, I lived this way while still attending one of the largest churches in my community and being deeply involved in weekly activities and mission trips. I wasn’t very good at hiding my waywardness, but neither were the men at my church particularly good at calling me out on it. By the age of 17, I had become a model hypocrite—practicing in church what I was denying in my daily life. Always quick with my tongue, I picked fights with my high school teachers and administration until I was eventually expelled. I was dating a Catholic girl, convinced we could make it work despite my Protestant leanings. I had become consumed by the very things I was trying to flee. I had become an angry man.

But Christ…

During the spring break of 1997, my best friend, who had graduated a year before me and had attended one semester of Bible college, came home. One evening, he came over to my house with the intent of confronting me about my hypocrisy in the church. He told me he thought I was an unbeliever because of my lifestyle. Even though I knew he was right, we argued for a while. Our friendship ought to have ended that night, but instead, we agreed to read An Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount by Arthur W. Pink. This work was instrumental in bringing me to faith.

In the section on the Beatitudes, Pink explained that one way to understand each of the clauses beginning with “Blessed are…” is to see them as fingerprints on the heart of one whom God has taken hold of. No blessed fingerprints, no grasp of God, no salvation. I knew that was me—I was lost. I fought God for another two weeks before I finally surrendered in June 1997.

As I recall, it was a Friday night. I had come home late from my girlfriend’s house. My conscience had been increasingly afflicting me because of the totality of my lifestyle. I drank harder, played harder, and tried to drown out the voice in my soul telling me I was in the wrong with God—that He was opposed to my lifestyle but was willing to grant forgiveness if I would only turn around and repent. After two weeks of this, I was exhausted. That night, on my knees, I confessed that I was a sinner in need of the saving grace of Jesus Christ and mercy from His Father. I asked for forgiveness and believed by faith that the Word of the Gospel I had heard from Scripture was true: that Jesus was the Son of God, sent into the world to save sinners by becoming sin on the cross for us, so that the punishment that was rightfully ours fell on Him instead. He died to pay the penalty, rose from the grave to demonstrate the victory, and ascended to heaven to show His supremacy—that all the benefits of Jesus would become mine if I confessed Him as my Lord and believed in my heart that He had been raised from the grave.

When I got up from that time of prayer at 2 a.m., I did so with a quiet conscience for the first time in my life. That’s when I knew I was saved. Nothing has the power to quiet an afflicted conscience like the word peace spoken by the Prince of Peace.

I believe that on that night, I was granted salvation—peace with God instead of wrath. I was born again into a living hope, with a regenerated heart and a renewed mind. I understood that if Christ had paid for my sin, and my whole life had been sin, then He had purchased my whole life. I was no longer my own but belonged to Christ. I was now His possession, to do with as He willed.

I went on to attend The Master’s University, where I majored in Biblical Studies. I wanted to know the Word of God for myself and learn how to teach it to others. The summer after graduation, I married Amy Bird, and we have now celebrated 22 years of marriage. Together, we have been blessed with three outstanding young men who aspire to be an airline pilot, a firefighter, and a cybersecurity expert.

Today, I pastor a church, provide biblical counseling, and give leadership to an association of churches in California.

I say without reservation that the only thing that makes sense of my story is this: salvation is by faith alone, through the grace of God alone, because of Christ alone, for His glory alone. Here I am—an unworthy servant—and so I shall gladly boast all the days of my life.