I came to know Christ on September 16, 1995, I was a young man and before I came to know Christ I actually had two felonies on my record before the time I was 15 years old. I grew up in a small town where they let me fix the damage and do things to get that off my record. I thank God for that every time I fill out a job application. Before I came to know Christ I grew up in church, I grew up in a home, I had a family who loved me and grandma who prayed for me. I knew the Gospel, I knew who Jesus was, I knew what He had done for me, I just didn’t care. I didn’t see any need for Christ to cover my sins. I thought I could take care of life and had everything figured out on my own. Until I started having some major bad things happen in my life I didn’t see a need for Christ at all.
God was so good to me, I was surrounded by so many people who loved me and prayed for me that in order to see my best friend after I had gotten into all this trouble, I could only see him when I went to church. Well I didn’t go to church so I had to go back to church to in order to see him and while I was there they mentioned that there was a concert. Well I wasn’t a Christian and didn’t care about a concert but I lived in the middle of nowhere and knew that girls went to concerts. So if I wanted to meet some girls who didn’t know what a jerk I was, I should go to this concert. When I was at the concert, this man got up on stage and started singing about Jesus and telling me all the things I already knew and when he was done singing he started to share his own testimony just like I am doing with you now.
He started to share about how he had told people that if he went to hell he was going with all his friends and that’s the exact same thing I had said. If I go to hell, I’m just going to be there with my friends. He began to explain from the stage in an audience of a couple hundred people, not knowing me at all, that there is no friendship in hell. That anything we receive from God’s grace is present in this life not because of anything we’ve done, not because of anything we’ve done to earn it. None of us deserve the love, the fellowship and the friendship we have today. When we are separated from Christ for eternity we’re separated from everything that we would call love or fellowship or grace. He explained to us that we had to have our sins removed and put on Christ and Christ would give us His righteousness to be made new in Jesus. I did that that night, I submitted my life to Jesus Christ, my life was 180 degrees turned around. I scared a lot of people with how quickly I changed, especially my Christian friends who didn’t seem to follow Christ very well. You all have friends like that too but for me that was a long time ago, that was decades ago that I came to know Christ.
Since then I have struggled with sin, I have struggled with temptation and desires, lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, boastful pride of life just like 1 John 2 says. I still have sin in my life, I still struggle and need God’s grace every single day just like Ephesians 2 says we will. And in light of that, God has brought me through all kinds of things that I don’t deserve to be brought through and He continues to grow me and challenge me and show me my sin through His Word. That’s something that I want for you as well. I would love for you to know who Jesus Christ is, to know that He didn’t come to pay for his sin, He came to pay for your sins. And when you ask Him to forgive you He will take away your sin and wash you white as snow. He will bring you into right relationship with God because right now wherever you are, you are separated from God by your sin and you can’t earn forgiveness or take that sin away, only Jesus can do that. You’ve got to ask God for help and ask Jesus to take away that sin away.
So even today in my life as a Pastor, I still struggle with sin, I still struggle with temptation and God’s Word convicts me every single day and I need God’s grace to help me know more and more how to live for him. I hope this story has helped you to know that you are never too far from God’s grace no matter what you’ve done. It’s not about what you do that will bring you back to God, it’s about what Jesus Christ has already done. I’d love to pray for you and have you shoot me an email if you can.