How I Passed From Death to Life

Just as so many others, I was introduced to church at a very early age. I always thought that church was important, but I never really understood why. I did recognize that there was a difference between personalities and attitudes of those who regularly attended and those who did not.

As I grew up, I was allowed to make many choices on my own. My parents rarely tried to influence me in one way or another. One of the choices I made was whether or not I went to church. I always seemed to find something else that I felt was more important. They would sometimes mention to me that I needed to go to church, but they could not really say much since they rarely went themselves. When I entered into my mid teens without a solid Christ-centered background, I quickly fell into the wickedness of the world. The people I was drawn to, my so called “friends”, helped to drag me down to a level that was an abomination in God’s eyes. Even before the legal drinking age, I was a drunkard. This led me into many areas of sin such as, lust, stealing, hatred, disobedience to my parents, and much more. This sin in my life caused to me to move further and further away from God.

At the age of twenty-two, I met a girl named Misty. Two years later, we got married. She had lived a life that was patterned very close to mine. The pastor she wanted to perform our wedding ceremony was Bro. David Fortenberry. He required that we go through his pre-marriage counseling before he would marry us. During the counseling, I was convicted in so many ways that I almost asked him if the counseling was designed just for me. Shortly after getting married, Misty and I began to stray back into the wickedness of the world. I started drinking again when I was around certain people. I thought that I could handle it, and that it would not get out of control. My wife and I both started going to parties and hanging out with people that we knew we should not. We even talked bad about them behind their backs as if we were better than then. One night while I was working, my wife went partying with some friends. I got furious because I did not want her making a fool of herself while I was not there to tell her “okay, that is enough.” It took several days for me to cool off about that. Then, about two weeks later, I did the same thing. I just knew she would throw a fit, but she did not. She did not have to because she knew that I realized that I was nothing but a hypocrite.

It was at that moment that I realized that was exactly how God saw me. I knew right from wrong. I knew I had not turned from sin, but rather I had tried to defend myself by saying or at least thinking that I was a good person because I was not as bad as some people. It was not until I realized that God saw me as a wretched sinner, that I truly repented by turning away from sin and turning toward Him. Having a clear understanding of repentance, I cried out to God and asked Him to forgive me of my sins. I thank Jesus every day for His sacrifice by the shedding of His blood for the remission of my sins. I then followed through in obedience to God’s word by being baptized into Jesus death so that I could be born again into a newness of life!