A Year Ago Tonight…

November 24, 2004 | 4:28 PM

Today is kinda like a one year anniversary for me. Sometime during the summer of 03, I really started going through some spiritual issues. Questions about predestination, and the idea that, maybe, whether I chose God or not, maybe He didn’t choose me. Could it be that I could never be sure of my salvation? Combine that with continual sin issues that I still struggle with to this day, and you get someone who is on the verge of brokenness and most definitely on the confused side of things. I talked to Jamey Crosson about it, and man he was good at telling me what the issue was. And that might have been my first talk with someone about Lordship. Well, I felt better for a while, just secure in the knowledge that I wasn’t alone. That other guys I knew had been there. And so maybe in my false comfort, I didn’t actually do anything about it.

Well I got those predestination things straightened up, but that brokenness persisted. I can look back now and see what the issues were, but I think that’s getting ahead of the script, so I’ll continue on. During the Fall, I talked with several people about what I was going through- the drama at FBTC didn’t help, for sure, but that couldn’t be the only thing getting me down. I had become so bitter. I found little or no joy in anything. One person’s advice was “get over it.” He would eventually learn the pain that comes through this kind of brokenness. I searched for answers, and while I’d almost completely stopped reading the Word, one day I turned to it once again. It took everything I had to read it, before anyway, but sometime in early November I truly understood the concept of Thirsting for the Word, and I read Romans in an entire sitting, just trying to grasp some kind of understanding of what was happening to me. Again, I realized I wasn’t alone. Paul went through the same things.

And so I didn’t feel any better. Would I ever be free of this pain, this frustration? I concluded the answer was no. Jeremiah was depressed pretty much his whole life. But then, he preached to a deaf nation, and was taken into captivity. He had a real reason to be upset. And the context was different. So what about me? I’d heard so much about having to get yourself fixed before you should help other people- turns out that’s a load of crap shoved on us by a self-absorbed culture. But where am I going with this?

During that depression, and it was a constant depression, intertwined with a few days of happiness, I realized that I had lost touch with God. Personal relationship? God was a thousand miles away even if He were right there beside me. There was a huge feeling that God was absent from my life. And so, because during that time anything could set me off into a huge downslide, the night before Thanksgiving, I hit probably the lowest low I’ve ever felt before in my life.

Up all night, I wept. I begged God to change me, to make me different. To save me from myself, to make me someone who wouldn’t do the things I do. And at the bottom point of my depression, I felt nothing. I heard nothing. There was no voice of comfort. Hell is a place absent of God, and this was the closest thing I’ve ever felt to that. And the next day wasn’t much better.

Took a couple months of healing. Sometime in late February I started to get back onto a path that was right. Heard some good messages. Realized a little more of who God is. Went through some intensive learning about myself and about God. Heard a lot of stuff. Been able to help a lot of people. Didn’t get that Lordship thing really figured out- it didn’t click- til sometime in the end of February and beginning of March. Was listening to Louie Giglio or Andy Stanley talk about Moses standing before God, and God saying essentially, “I AM, you aren’t,” before I started to see what it was really all about.

So you see, I go through these things with ya’ll. I’m just another guy on a journey… a quest even… toward righteousness… toward God. I don’t want to run parallel with God. I want to run TOWARD Him. And so the journey continues. And out of the grace of God, I got an email from Justin Hase today saying God had put me on his heart today, and he appreciated me. I’m thankful today, once again, for the Truth that God has revealed to me. For my friends and my family. And I pray that I can help others in their journeys as well. Cuz we’re all just people, trying to get home.

Posted in Life