My Spiritual Journey

Here’s another paper I wrote for college.  I had to write about an event that was “emotionally significant” in my life.  I wrote about my Spiritual journey that led up to me getting saved.  This is something that I encourage everyone to do.  Write down how you got saved and share it with others.  Let your testimony reach out to both glorify Jesus and to let others hear what Jesus saved you from.

Be Blessed!

BIG SCOTT

My spiritual journey and my walk with God has been quite an adventure to say the least.  This journey started at a very early age.  After my parents brought me home from the hospital after I was born the first place my parents took me was to church.  When I was a child a do not remember a time when I was not in church.  In fact to this day I still remember not being able to sit still in church and my Mom taking me outside and lighting a fire on my bottom to get me to behave!  After I got into grade school I started to do better and I didn’t get near as many spankings on Sunday mornings!

As the years went on one that was always a constant in my life was going to church.  In fact when I was in the third or fourth grade my Dad was elected as a deacon of the church, a high honor at that time.  Only the most respected men of the community became deacons in the church.  Once my Dad became a deacon it meant that when the church doors were open we were there.  My Dad continued to serve as a deacon up until the time when he passed away when I was in the fifth grade.

After my Dad passed away the church was one of the few rocks in my life that I had left.  We lived a half block away from the church in the small town of Ingalls, KS.  Ingalls was so small that we only had one restaurant, one small grocery store, and one bar.  The restaurant and the bar both closed at six p.m. and I was too young for the bar so that meant the only thing to do on Sunday and Wednesday evenings was to go to church.  When your only choice is to sit at home and choose between three TV channels or church it makes the choice pretty easy.

I accepted Jesus as my savior and was baptized when I was twelve.  I stayed committed to Jesus up until I was about sixteen or so.  Somewhere around turning sixteen, getting my full drivers license, and having the freedom to run I started putting God on the back burner.  This continued for about three years.  Somewhere around when I was nineteen or so I forgot all about God.  I had a fast car, girlfriends, and plenty of money for beer.  What more could a guy ask for!  By the time I was twenty God was no where to be found in my life.  I was on the fast road to Hell.  

I may have known God at one time but in the early Eighties I was the definition of a heathen.  By the time I was twenty four I was drinking heavy and I had an addiction to pornography that was out of this world.  It was at about this time that I really started to have a hole in my heart.  I had a deep void inside of me.  This was a void that I could not explain.  

I started doing some searching trying to find an answer to this void.  Looking back I find it interesting some of the different people that God brought across my path in an effort to bring me back.  Two of the men that I had to see on a daily basis at work were both really awesome Christian guys.  Seeing these guys made that void worse.  I saw them and what they had and that hole inside of me got bigger and bigger.

Things came to a head in 1997 when I stopped by a buddy of mine, Tom’s place one Sunday afternoon.  I had been drinking and was starting to feel no pain so to say.  I asked Tom what he was up to and Tom told me that he was getting ready to go to a church with a cute girl for the first time.  Tom then said to me “You’re going with me.”  I don’t know why but without thinking I said “OK.”  I stopped and looked around at who had just agreed for me to go as I sure didn’t think it was me but there was no one else in the room.  I was stuck.  I said I would go so I was going!

Tom got me cleaned up and off to church we went.  We were late when we got there and the service had already started.  It didn’t matter to Tom, he grabbed me and we walked almost to the front and found a seat next to this cute girl he had told me about.  Keep in mind here that I had not been in church in quite some time and I had never before been in a church where people were really happy to be there.

These people were weird to me.  They were all singing praises, waving their arms in the air, and they were dancing!  Whoa!  I was blown away!  In fact I was awestruck!  My first thoughts were “Man, this is really, really kewl!”  I wasn’t sure what it was that they had but I knew they had something that I didn’t have!

After the service all kinds of people came up to me and shook my hand and said “Welcome!”  I never saw anything like this ever before in my life.  We finally headed on home and I knew in my heart that I wanted more of what I had experienced that evening!  During the next couple of days different people in the church made contact with me to encourage me to come again.  I thought “Wow, someone actually care about me!  This is really even more kewl now!

Wednesday evening came and I was found at the church once again with Tom of course.  After the service we all went out to get a bite and to talk.  Every evening after that for the rest of the week Tom and I would get together with some of the other young adults with the church and talk.  Sunday morning came and I knew that I had to do something, I had to have what these other people had!  I wanted it and the it was Jesus!

After a wonderful time of praise and worship and a powerful, powerful message the Pastor made an impassioned altar call.  Both Tom and I went forward.  All of a sudden that void in my life disappeared!  Right then and there I met the real Jesus and he met me and it was a joyful reunion!  I left that church that day knowing Jesus personally as my personal Savior.  That was something that never before had I had that in my life!

We went back to church that evening and about midway through the service Tom and I went forward for prayer.  It was at that point that I really and truly repented of my sins.  I laid my sins out and Jesus took them away!  I cried like a baby!  The weight of the world had been taken off of my shoulders!  It was at that point that I realized just what it was that Jesus saved me from and I was ecstatic!  I realized that I had been a condemned man and I was headed to hell for all eternity and at that moment Jesus stepped in and took my punishment and I was suddenly free!  That’s right, a man justly sentenced to death and all of a sudden freedom!  

It was the most exciting day of my life!  The story doesn’t just end there though.  In fact the story just begins there.  That was the first day of being born again.  It was the start of a new life for me.