Fish Ministries [Blog]

I grew up in a Christian home and all of my family, immediate and extended, claimed Christian beliefs. I always thought myself to be a pretty good person, and when I was about eight or nine, my Sunday school teacher asked us to say the prayer with her and “ask Jesus into our hearts.” So I did. But it didn’t feel like I had imagined it to. Everything I had ever heard suggested that the feeling would be of joy, wonder, and a weight being taken off your shoulders. This didn’t worry me, however; like I said before, I thought I was a pretty good person. There was no doubt in my mind that I would go to heaven when I died.

I didn’t pay attention in church, or listen to the pastor talking about why we needed a savior, about how sinful we all were. It all rather bored me, and each Sunday, I found my attentiveness slipping in and out of focus. I started bringing a journal to doodle in so I wouldn’t get too bored.

But pretty soon I began to get a bit apprehensive. Everyone seemed to have this obsession with asking if I had “received Jesus” yet. So I asked Him into my heart again. I can’t tell you how many times I asked and still felt the same. But I never gave up; I thought that maybe I just wasn’t being sincere enough.

I don’t really know why I was so persistent and kept asking; I knew I wasn’t bad, that compared to some people I was an absolute angel. Yet something kept nagging at me, worrying me, and I felt that maybe, if I finally “received Jesus,” it would stop.

It wasn’t until the summer before I went to high school that I realized why I still felt empty. Like I have said before, I thought I was a good person. So obviously I wouldn’t need a Savior, because I didn’t think I had any sins to be saved from. Each time I had asked Him into my heart and didn’t feel something lifted from my shoulders was because I didn’t think there was anything there to be lifted. But that summer when I went to a Christian camp and actually listened to the pastor, I realized what a wretched and sinful person I was. I finally began to see how desperately I needed to be saved from my own flesh.

That one week is the most memorable in my entire life. It was the first time I had actually felt God move through me, and realized how awesome His love for me was. It was also the first time that I had asked Jesus to be my Savior and actually meant it; overwhelmed and in tears, I finally felt those sins I had been condemned of lifted off my shoulders. I was so excited and exhilarated that I felt lightheaded. I made a promise to myself and to God to strive to be worthy of His love and be more Christ-like.

When I got back home, however, that flame burning inside me died down to a low simmer. It wasn’t until a few months later, when my mother encouraged us to try out Faith Community Church, that the flame began burning bright once more. I delve into God’s Word much more often and learn about His amazing grace and power with reverence and wonder. Since then I am joyful to say that God has worked in my life in amazing ways

I was raised in the church. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t going to church. I went to Sunday School, AWANA, a Christian school. When I was four I accepted the Lord during the Easter story at school. I was so excited. But something never really clicked for me. I was a pretty good kid I thought and I even enjoyed going to church and learning from God’s Word. I learned a lot through those years. But as I entered high school things started to go wrong. Teenagers are typically rebellious and so was I. One way I rebelled against my parents was my disinterest in church. I started to resist going and made a point of showing my disdain for being there when I did go. One of my biggest problems was that I didn’t have friends who were any different. No one to encourage me in a different direction. We had all grown apathetic after being in completely Christian environment for so long and at that point I cared more about what my friends thought than what my parents thought. I got involved in a lot of things during high school, drinking and some drugs included. It had become apparent that I was no child of God to everyone but me. In the back of my mind I still believed there was a God and that He didn’t like how I was living, but somehow I was able to keep doing what I was doing, foolishly thinking I could just repent later, maybe in college. Looking back I know I wasn’t really a believer because of the direction my life had taken. I was not being sanctified, I was only getting worse, drifting further from the truth. Well college came and I didn’t change, my new freedom only gave me more opportunities for sin. I continued the way I was going for most of my first year. But then through a particularly frightening experience God woke me up. He had my attention and He humbled me in a big way. Completely broken I realized I needed a Savior. In tears I prayed for God to save me from myself. And He did. My heart was changed in an instant that night. I still had behaviors and other things I needed to cut out of my life and would continue to struggle with, but my desires had completely changed. I wanted those things out of my life and God enabled me to remove them. Sanctification is a lifelong process while we’re still in the flesh, but I can see that process taking place through God’s work in my life.

I had lived my life, since I could ever remember, assuming that I was a Christian, because I was raised in an American “Christian” home. My parents took my brother and I to church virtually every Sunday, surrounded us with Christian entertainment venues and Biblically didactic stories and cartoons of the likes of Veggitales [I absolutely loved Veggitales (and I still do ;) haha)], and did their best to instill us with a Christian world view and morals. I had heard the gospel message thousands of times before I finally realized that belief in Christ, and what He did on the cross, wasn’t the same as faith in Christ. I began to progress spiritually when the summer after my freshman year of high school came along and my family was blessed with the opportunity to travel to Gold Beach, Oregon to spend a few days with my cousins in a beach house they usually rent every summer. I had known that they were missionaries in Thailand and were very “religious” people, and didn’t think anything of it, but the days I spent with them in that beach house I noticed how different they truly were. I saw a love and respect they held for one another that was astounding. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, and when I thought about it I came to the conclusion that surely it must be from their love for God. I began to question my spiritual state after that, and a desire to know God more, and why I myself did not love Him or others in the way my cousins apparently do. Directly when I came back from Oregon, my behavior changed dramatically. I began to cuss much less, I began to respect others MUCH more and my outlook on life began to change dramatically. Then, that October, a friend of mine recommended that I go to Faith Community Church youth group, which I was very excited about. I came in with absolutely no idea what to expect. Pastor Paul was visiting from Russia and preaching a four part sermon series that was titled something like Living Extreme for Christ. I was only there for the last two sermons, but God used them to reveal to me that faith in Christ isn’t about believing that Christ died for your sins, but it is so much more. I finally realized that for the entirety of my life, up until that point, I was a luke-warm. I realized that I am truly a sinful wretched being deserving of an eternity in hell, and that it is by faith in Christ, given by the grace and love of God, that we are saved from eternal damnation. I finally realized that faith in Christ is a God given love for the beautiful truth that God came down to this puny little planet, fully God, fully man, perfect, blameless, and pure, to take our sins, our sufferings, and our iniquities and redeem us from them. Through Christ’s death, and his mastery over death in His resurrection, He gave us the opportunity to die ourselves and be born again as a new creation, through the dwelling of the Holy Spirit inside us. It is by His Spirit, which God so graciously gives us, that we have this faith and love in God. By His work in us He brings Himself glory, not by anything we are capable of doing, but by His love and grace alone. God, by His spirit, brought me to realize of all of this, and I began to progress and know God more and more each day.

• Romans 6:1-18

1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.