Personal Testimony

At the risk of seeming a bit narcissistic, I would like to share my story with
anyone who has any interest. By story, of course I mean the testimony of my relationship
with the Lord throughout my life.
I must apologize in advance for the shoddy writing, most of this
deals with raw events from my personal experience.

Sometimes the strongest witness we have to others in recounting
our faith is the story of our shortcomings and failures, and the marvelous saving grace
of God in pulling us out of a hopeless moral quandary.

I grew up in a very religious home.
My father was saved when he was in his twenties in a very dramatic way.
My mother, in much the same fashion.
So from a very young age, I can clearly remember exposure to Christian principles.

Time passed, and the church group that my parents belonged to visited with
a number of other churches in the community, and so I was exposed to a number
of denominations and their various nuances of doctrine.

When I was eight years old, my father came into the bedroom and had a very serious
discussion with me regarding Jesus Christ and my choices for eternity.
He made it quite clear that he did not ever want to push me to do something I had no
interest in doing; the decision had to be something that came from my heart.
Otherwise it would possess no value.

And so, at the tender age of eight, kneeling on some absolutely repugnant orange shag
carpet in the bedroom of my house in Louisiana, I prayed for the Lord to save me
and accepted salvation in Christ.

But as I grew older, I struggled with a particular area of sin in my life.
And that area was lust.
Now every young man (particularly as he approaches puberty), deals with a certain amount
of sexual curiosity and fascination with the topic.
This was heightened to a somewhat abnormal level in my case, however, and was compounded
by an unusual fixation.

Now a point that I would to make here, is that everyone has strongholds of sin in their life.
A stronghold can be any number of things.
Money, power, fame, sex, covetousness, materialistic desires, etc.
Anything that exalts itself into a position of reverence in your heart.

When someone is saved, they often bring baggage with them into their new life
as a Christian. Some things, God may free them from immediately.
When my mother came to the Lord, her desire to smoke departed completely.
This is just one example of miraculous intervention by God in the life of a newly saved person.

But there are often areas which are not miraculously removed from a new Christian's life.
This can be for a number of reasons, but often, it seems the Lord has plans to develop and grow
us through our struggling with a problem.
I continued to struggle to deal with the problem of lust in my life on my own power; and
in so doing, made a fundamental mistake. As I continued to fail to overcome this stronghold
with my own feeble ability to resist, I grew first discouraged, then discontent, then bitter.

How could a loving God allow me to continue to struggle with this area of sin in my life?
Why was He allowing this to happen to me? Were all the promises of His word meaningless?
I began to grow more detatched from the Lord, and drift away. I grew less and less concerned
with my failures.

Then in the winter of 1997, I encountered pornography on the internet, and my life was drastically
altered for the worse. I entered a downhill spiral of self-exclusion from social activities,
withdrawal from dealing with interaction with people apart from the electronic filter of the internet.
I allowed my somewhat single-minded personality to assert itself through addiction to online games.
This continued to worsen as I moved to North Carolina and got my first jobs there.

I met friends and began to reach out a bit more socially, but beneath it all, the same underlying
problems continued to grow. My first friends had distinctly anti-Christian attitudes and ideas, but when they
questioned me on my own beliefs, I put up a remarkably weak defense of uncoordinated thoughts
and moved on. Because I had no thoughts or beliefs of my own at the time.
I was floundering in a sea of self-loathing and depression. I could not develop any form of positive
self-esteem. I had given up on God, even though I had never truly admitted it to myself.

In July, 2005, I got married to a beautiful woman named Heather.
We had been dating for several years
prior to our engagement. I thought that I loved her. According to my thinking, I did.
But, once again, beneath all the layers of self-deceit, I still carried the same baggage of guilt,
self-loathing, and sin that I had been carrying since childhood.

Over the next several years, I ended up filing for bankruptcy,
dealing with numerous physical health issues, and various other trials.
But more importantly, I continued to do damage to this incredible woman who
had chosen to spend her life with me.
I pursued my addiction to online games and other types of videogames.
And I still carried around with me the sexual issues which had plagued me for years.
I was insensitive, insecure, abrasive, focused only on temporary electronic entertainment
that did not matter, and utterly devoid of proper priorities in my life.

Near Christmas of 2010, all of this came to a head.
My wife pulled the car into the parking lot of a local store and we just stared out the window for several minutes without speaking. Amazing.
We had been married for five years, and yet we could not think of two words to say to each other.
Our life together had devolved into a pattern of never seeing each other,
and me never seeming to care enough to change.
She had had enough. She wanted a divorce. And I could not blame her one bit.

Over the next few weeks, I was stricken by the realization of the train-wreck I had made my life
into through one bad decision after another.
This is what happens when we reject God.
When we allow ourselves to grow bitter without examining
the truth behind an issue. A life without God is meaningless.
Rather we spend years and years attempting to fill this massive void in our soul with any
temporary pleasures to satiate the gnawing hunger for a few moments.

One afternoon, I was particularly grieved by my own actions.
I was driving home from my job and sitting there in my car I prayed seriously,
for perhaps the first time in years, 'Lord I need your help.'
Almost immediately the answer came clearly to my mind, 'I'm here. I never left.'
For some reason, without even knowing why, I hurried home, walked down the hallway
to our small bedroom, and opened my dusty bible to the book of Matthew and began to read.

I read the entire book. By the time I reached the end of the book I could not hold back
the tears. The Holy Spirit had put the spotlight directly on the part of me I could not hide any longer.
Overcome by the power of true conviction, I re-dedicated my life to the Lord right then and there.
I can't lie and tell you that since then, life has been a joy-ride.
There are still consequences for years of sin. Sin always takes its toll.

Particularly on those we love. There is still damage in the relationship between my wife and I.
But we did not get divorced. And we are gradually working to build new structures over the
rubble of the old. The Lord has given me revelations in dealing with several problem areas in my life,
and is still in the process of doing so.

But I want to make a point to any young Christian who is struggling with a stronghold of
sin, or to any young man fighting a seemingly unwinnable battle of attrition versus
lust or sexual sin. You CAN win. But winning against these strongholds takes more than a passing
nod to a relationship with God. Winning is going to require a life of dedication.

James says (Jas 4:7)  Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Everybody remembers the 'resist the devil, and he will flee from you' bit.
But this is a two-part statement. Submitting yourself to God comes first.
Allow the power of the Holy Spirit to do His work in your life, by regenerating your mind.

Recall the verse for which this blog is named:
(2Co 3:17)  Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

I intend to make further entries regarding some of the things that the Lord has shown
me regarding making war against strongholds of sin in our lives, but I think this simple
testimony will suffice for the time being, and I pray that it reaches open hearts and minds.