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God saved me when I was an angry, resentful, disrespectful 13-year old from a broken home. My parents had separated when I was 9 years old, and my alcoholic father committed suicide when I was 10, which had left me in the depressed, angry, and low on hope. All of that, and yet the real issue was that I, much like yourself, had “exchanged the glory of the immortal God” to serve created things namely, myself. I had “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” and “did what ought not to be done”. I not only committed grievousness against the God of the universe, but gave approval to those who practiced such sins. All of that left me as one who deserved to die. (See Romans 1).

As a 7th grader attending a new school, I hadn’t met many friends, so when a neighborhood kid asked me to join him for a church ice skating event one Friday night, I graciously accepted. Little did I know, this was God’s way of pursuing a relationship with me. Attending the ice skating event, I connected relationally with a couple of the adults, and other students. Most importantly though, there were girls at church…and I was a 13 year-old boy.

I attended that church faithfully, both youth group and Sunday mornings, for nine months thanks to the graciousness of the Evancho family, who picked me up on their way to church each week. Praise God for sending this family into my life!

These days, churches are getting more cool and relevant and all that jazz, so we don’t talk about hell as much, but when I was 13 sitting at an Xtreme Youth Conference in Panama City, FL I got convicted one night that, hypothetically, I could walk across the street and get hit by a car and then be standing in front of God Almighty. And I really didn’t want to do that, because I knew I wasn’t a very good kid. In hindsight, with biblical understanding to support my experience, what was going on was the Holy Spirit convicting me of the weight and repercussions of my sin.

They asked that very uncool question: “If you died tonight, do you know that you would go to heaven? If you don’t know, then make it right with God tonight.” And then they said “Everyone turn to your neighbor and ask them ‘Are you sure?’ ”. At this point, my buddy on the right turned to his right, and my buddy on my left turned to his left, and I was sitting there in Holy Spirit-wrought terror thinking “Somebody ask me! Somebody ask me! I can’t go on my own…” when I got a tap on my shoulder from a guy behind me, the youth pastor’s son, Josh.
Did I know if I’d go to heaven or not? “No.” by which I meant “Yes, thank you, I do know. I’m quite sure I’ll burn for eternity.” Would I like to go pray to God? “Yes” by which I meant “Yes, I would… and if we could go a little bit faster that’d be great.”

All of this would be me going up to something like my 4th altar call in 6 months, and at that my youth pastor decided it was time to converse a little. We talked about how you really only needed to have the debt of your sin canceled once, and that once you became a Christian you really didn’t need to re-become a Christian because it doesn’t work like that.

Furthermore, sitting on a windy beach, he explained that the Holy Spirit is like the wind, and that you can’t see Him, but you can feel the effects of Him. That sounded totally weird, which was cool with me because I felt totally weird, and so I knew that I must feel totally weird because that totally weird Holy Spirit was messing me up.

At that moment in 2000, God took my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). “According to his great mercy, he caused [me] to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3)”

Since then God has confirmed the authenticity of that experience by proof of life. I have grown to hate when I stumble in the darkness, longing instead to walk all the more in the light (1 John). Also, His Spirit in me has given me a love for His people (1 John), and has produced fruit in my life (Matthew 7:15-20).

All of this was completely the work of God and His Holy Spirit. This is evident in the fact that all I wanted to do was hang out with girls, and what He wanted to do was change my life, and usher me into His Kingdom. Praise God who rescues His people!

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