I was born-again five years ago and I would like to share with you my story:

I grew up in an American Christian home being taught the rudimentary facts of Christian belief: There is one, true God who made the universe and everything in it. He made man in His image and greatly desires a relationship with all. Because of sin, He sent Jesus, His only Begotten Son, to earth so that sins could be forgiven and people could begin a right relationship with Him. I was taught that the Holy Bible is His inspired Word, whose gospel is incorruptible and perfect. Because I grew up having been taught these foundational truths I accepted them as true and right… And for this upbringing I am grateful to God for having placed me in the family, church and environment that I grew up in. And I thank God that he put it in my parents to proclaim these truths to me.

However, the grievous state of this world and the American church kept me from readily seeing the truths of the Bible put into practice. It was not normal experience to be around those who sought after God with all of their heart, who treasured His Word from the depths of their soul and were devoted to pleasing Him no matter what the cost.

I was raised in an evangelical, contemporary church setting (as opposed to a traditional one) and I grew up believing that my church was perfect. I suppose God put this standard in me because of what He requires (Eph 3:10-11, Colossians 1:24-28). I never thought any of the adults in my church sinned…there were no outward signs. Sometimes I saw an adult smoking and this puzzled me? I thought it was sin, but since I thought the adults in the church were doing the things that God wanted them to do, I figured I was wrong; not the adults. I was ignorant of God’s Word and what God desires of His people. Therefore, I could not see or understand the sinfulness and depravity within the church. I didn’t understand that many flattered themselves too much to detect or hate sin (Psalm 36). I did not know how terrible the Bible said that latter days would be for those in churches. "People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God- having a form of godliness but denying its power, HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM" (2 Tim 3:2-5).

Even though most were outwardly clean, had many good words, talked about Jesus, prayed to God, read their Bibles, even sometimes evangelized the streets…I could not reject their practices because I could not discern truth. I was not able to recognize the simple truth of God’s Word that the person who does what is right is righteous and the person who does not do what is right and who does not walk in love is a child of the devil (1 John 3:6-9)…these concepts were foreign to me because, although I acknowledged and accepted that God’s Word was true, I did not know it, understand it, or even read it that much.

So, being ignorant to the Scriptures and possessing no understanding of true Christianity, I naturally believed that I was a Christian, since I acknowledged Jesus as God’s Son, believed that God raised Him from the dead, and had "accepted Him" into my heart. I thought I was fine…heavenbound… Besides the church told me I was ok.

When I was sixteen years old I began to wake up to my depravity. It was summer vacation, before my junior year, and there was a weekly high-school Bible study that took place at different people’s homes. That particular week one girl presented a Bible study on Hebrews chapter ten. It was the beginning of a long wake-up call…

Heb 10:26-31 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people." It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

This was the scariest passage I had ever read and it was the beginning of the hardest conviction my soul would face. Why? You might ask… The guilt of my soul was overwhelming because I was ashamed of my sin. I was ashamed of the sin that my conscience had convicted me of the day I started and became enslaved. I was so ashamed that I would not tell anyone for another four years of my secret sexually immoral sins. I was very afraid because I thought I was saved… I thought I was a Christian… I thought I had received the knowledge of the truth… and yet I was deliberately continuing to sin. I didn’t want to, but my slavery kept me from believing I could be truly forgiven with a "clean slate."

The wickedness of the wicked man will not cause him to fall when he turns from it (Ezek 33:12).

I could not accept that I was wicked because the subtle darkness of sin consumes and corrupts slowly.

The light shines in the darkness but the darkness has not understood it. John 1:5

Fear gripped me… It was not long after (maybe a year) when I read the next terrifying truth to confront me with reality.

Matt 5:27-30 "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell."

For the next three years (finishing high school into college) I moved back and forth from being very depressed to very confident in what I believed to be my salvation. At this point you might ask…how? On what basis did you have any belief to think that you were right with God and hearkening unto His voice pouring forth from His Word?

John 3:20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

Because I had no understanding of what God’s Word truly says, I could not acknowledge I was evil. Furthermore, I was afraid of my secret deeds being exposed. Why? … It was my Pride!!! A lot of people looked up to me, even many adults. I was one of the backbones of the youth group. I was fun. I was smart. I knew how to have a "good time". I often made people laugh. I was serious when it was time. I worshiped God when it was time. I played games when it was time… and I loved my friends.

But fear through pride made me reject God’s Word and believe I was ok. I was a spiritual kid and I didn’t want anyone to know about the unspirituality within… those struggles and defeats plaguing my life. (I think deep down I believed that people, especially peers, would lose hope in God if my testimony was rotten. Moreover, I thought that I was the only one struggling in my secret sins.)

Besides being very outwardly spiritual, I was very busy. I went to school, ran cross-country, sang in the school choir, sang in the church choir, participated on the student senate, and was the lead in school plays. I had girlfriends…not to mention all my other friends. I had music, friends, television, friends, movies, friends, telephone, friends, etc. I kept very busy so that my conscience would not convict me. God’s Word seemed so distant…I didn’t read it much because I didn’t have time and the only things I understood made me feel convicted and confused. Convicted because of my sin, but confused because I assumed I was a Christian and affirmed by many people, including my parents and friends, that I was o.k. … on the right track.

Matt 6:22-23 "The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

My depression reached an all-time low my freshman year of college at Michigan State University. My girlfriend was an hour away and I suddenly had a lot more time to be convicted by God’s Spirit that I was in sin. I still tried to cover it up by watching more TV than I ever had before…life became very hopeless as I sought fulfillment to cover up my shame and conviction, while still believing that I was a Christian.

You might be thinking, "You keep saying, ‘I thought I was right with God,’ ‘I thought I was a Christian!’ What made you think this?

I believed I was a Christian because I thought a Christian was someone who acknowledges God and His Son Jesus Christ and tries to live right for God. This may seem right, but what does the Bible say? Although the Bible discusses acknowledging and trying to live for God, its principle message and God’s ultimate justification toward someone is not if they believe in Him, but if they believe Him.

Here is the key! The confusion that plagued me was that I thought that by acknowledging the facts of Jesus life and resurrection and never denying those facts meant I was saved. I believed in Jesus. But this "belief" is no different than the demons. And everyone knows that demons do not experience God’s love and will not be with God in heaven. God is looking for those who will believe Jesus and the things that He says and entrust themselves to Him, the Way. Consequently, God promises that those who believe Him will experience His love and power to live radically different in this world.

So, my belief in Jesus was not bringing me closer to God to experience His love and receive His power to change my evil habits. I was trying really hard to fight against my sins but I always failed. I truthfully cannot remember one time fighting against a temptation and winning. I was so enslaved.

Eph 2:3 All of us also lived among (the darkness) at one time, gratifying the lusts of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

I moved back home after my freshman year of college and God brought me down as low as I would be. My girlfriend of nearly two years broke-up with me. I was crushed and utterly ruined. My hope had been in our marriage. I had justified what I had known to be an un-Biblical physical relationship assuming I would eventually marry her. I cried and wept because of my life’s sudden changes.

However, this crisis directed me to start seeking God. Although I was desperately depressed, my conscience continued to convict me. I still wanted victory over my secret and habitual sins. Although I thought I was under grace, my conscience confirmed I was still under the law. People who live under the law want to please God but their trust is in the law and the law cannot save them. God showed me that I fit the description of the man Paul describes in Romans chapter seven.

Romans 7:14-25 "We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!

God was so merciful to let me keep failing. For even if I had marshaled enough fleshly will power to stop my secret sins, I would have been proud of my accomplishment and would have established the law and commandments as able to save. I would have remained selfish and proud and would have continued to seek perfection through the law.

Heb 7:18-19 The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.

The more I sought God, the less I thought about the girl I hoped to marry. I was seeking to rid myself of sin and rally the mind power to be consumed with good thoughts. It is easy for me to see now that I was trying to make myself perfect. I was trying to empower myself to be passionate about God.

The summer after my sophomore year of college, July 1999, I went to a place called the Summit. It was there that God humbled me more to realize that I knew nothing. I was supposed to be this spiritual Christian, but I knew so little of the world or the Bible. I could not use the Bible as a tool to show people the Truth because I did not understand why the world did not believe that God’s Word was true.

Rom 1:21-22 For when they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools…

Certainly I boasted about the truths of God’s Word, the historical fact of Jesus Christ’s resurrection and the moral purity of God’s law to others. Remember, I was a "spiritual kid". I "witnessed" to people and boasted that they should follow God and keep His requirements. Without saying it, I hoped that people would have the same experience and convictions I had. I wanted them to live like me, thinking that this would confirm my faith and beliefs as true and right. They needed to go to church, read their Bibles, not go to parties, not have premarital sex, not go to the bar, not swear, not slander their neighbor, etc. Certainly they needed to lead the outwardly clean life that I did and believe in Jesus Christ. But as I witnessed and lived, I could not figure out why people would not want to believe in God or live for Jesus.

Rom 2:23-24 You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."

I was a Pharisee and a hypocrite testifying that people needed to bring God glory in everything and not doing it myself. You see, God had shown me that if Christians are to live as lights in the world, everything must be done for His glory. So, I stopped listening to most of my secular music, watching movies and television shows with outright evil, and playing video games that exalted violence and bloodshed. Yet again, I had a list of rules that made me outwardly clean and that my conscience could live by, but my heart was not surrendered to God. I was still selfish and did the things I wanted to do. I was more outwardly clean and now even more hypocritical.

Matt 23:27-28 Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

Although I did not receive this rebuke, a few months later I would receive one like it.

At the end of August 1999, the summer vacation of my sophomore year of college, Joe Garrity returned from inner-city missionary work in Chicago. On the night he returned he lead a Bible study that I went to. That night I came in contact with someone who had been touched by the living God. This outward hypocrite who I had known from school and church had been touched by the grace of God. We became very good friends and spent time reading the Bible and praying. I listened a lot as he spoke about Chicago and how God had opened his mind to understand the Scriptures.

In November he told me how he had been delivered from sexual sins and I could not believe it. When he told me that through God’s grace he did not lust anymore I almost thought he was lying…yet I knew he was telling the truth because I witnessed his life. Anyone can clean up his outside, but only God can clean the heart and enable one to walk in purity. So, I opened up to him and told him about my secret sins.

That day he told me there was freedom.

By Thanksgiving 1999, he had lost all of his friends. It was during November that God revealed to him that lukewarm Christians would not be saved unless they changed. He testified to the work of the Holy Spirit and that through faith in Christ, believers will walk free from sin. People came to Bible studies and I watched as no one could argue against the points he was making from the Scriptures. Kids who thought that they had been Christians ever since they prayed a prayer and began to take the Bible seriously were confronted with the possibility that the Bible says that they were not right with God. My heart both sympathized with them and yet yearned for the freedom and the Holy Spirit that Joe testified to.

Now Joe was not Jesus, nor did he claim to be. Rather, he testified to the freedom that Jesus spoke of. I witnessed the very people who were excited when Joe came back from Chicago and were excited by his passion for God turn against him because of this testimony. "If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed." He spoke the truth to them. But they maintained that they were children of God. But their hatred of him was easily seen.

1 John 2:9-11 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.

1 John 3:11-15 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

It was plain to me that I could believe what Joe testified to because I saw it in the Scriptures.

Acts 17:11 Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

I desperately wanted the truth and to be free from my sins. But I continued to walk in slavery. In December, I received the rebuke that God would use to save my life. In my shame, having fallen into temptation and sin, I wrote Joe in great earnestness to pray for me that I might walk in victory…that I might walk in faith. He wrote me back and said. "I say this in all love. The next time you think of sinning think of hell. Those who practice sin go to Hell."

I began to fear God more than I ever had because I realized that the statement was true. Even the Scriptures confirmed it.

1 Thess 4:7-8 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

Truly, it was not Joe writing me, but God calling me through this human interaction.

Rev 21:8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars-their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

I cried out to God for deliverance. I sought the face of God for forgiveness and for the first time I realized what a wretch I had been in His sight. I started to believe God’s promises and conquer the sins that enslaved my soul.

1 Cor 10:13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

1 John 4:4-5 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

I believed that God’s Spirit was more powerful than Satan and that He had the power to deliver me. I watched as He crushed Satan under my feet by grace through faith in Jesus.

Heb 2:14-15 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death-that is, the devil- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

God freed me and gave me confidence to cry out to Him for help and salvation!

Heb 4:16 Let us approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

I watched as he gave me the Holy Spirit…I could not believe it. I witnessed the fruits of my life change. I was now bearing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and SELF-CONTROL. I have walked with God enabled by His Holy Spirit and have pursued God for the last five years. His statues and precepts are my delight and I believe that He is ABLE to keep me from falling. I trust in Him because He and He alone delivered me from Death. I moved from under the law to under grace because I walked in the footsteps of the faith of my father Abraham (Romans 4).

Rom 4:5 "However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness."

I stand in awe of God and His mercy and I will continue to believe Him till the day I die. If I do not make this boast in my Lord, then I have no Faith. I shall overcome by Christ’s blood and the Word of the testimony He has given me.

1 Thess 5:23-24 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one calling you is faithful and He will do it.