My Story Part 2

This post is a continuation of one of my earlier posts, which you can read here.

When I left off in my last post, I was detailing how I gave my life to Christ at Turkey Hill Ranch Bible Camp, and how I finally felt like I fit in somewhere.

After this experience, I decided that the church my parents were attending wasn't really for me, so I went looking elsewhere for a church home. My buddy Josh, the same guy that originally invited me to Turkey Hill, invited me to come along with him to his church's youth group. I was hesitant, but ultimately decided to go with him.

Youth group quickly became the center of my world. I loved every minute of it. I quickly became infatuated (sorry for the old person word) with a girl there, started playing music on the worship team, and hanging out with youth group kids as much as possible. I had become the stereotypical youth group Christian teen.

As I grew older and progressed into high school, music began to gain more and more of my focus. I started a band with Josh, either played bass or electric guitar or lead worship every Wednesday night at youth group, and played bass most Sunday mornings at the main adult church service. It was also around this time (probably senior year of high school), that I began to get frustrated with what I saw as a lack of motivation on the part of so many people at church. But I didn't really express that to anyone, at least not yet.

I started at Mizzou in the fall of 2009, and my life honestly started to quickly go downhill at that point. I got a really sweet job at a local bank, but this really just took my focus more off of God than it already was. My frustrations boiled over into full blown contempt during the summer after my freshman year, and I left the church without looking back.

I wasn't exactly done with God at that point, and I still considered myself a Christian, but I pretty much decided that if I was going to keep doing the whole "faith" thing, it was going to be on my own terms, without anyone else's input or help. Fall semester of my sophomore year became all about having fun and doing what I wanted to do. I was making ridiculously good money at the bank (especially for a 19 year old kid), and I started blowing it all on video games and other worthless pursuits. Around this time, I also started drinking on a fairly regular basis, something I had sworn I would never do just years before.

And that became my identity. I was all about music and hanging out and doing whatever seemed fun at the moment. Now I don't want to lead anyone on and act like I was partying all the time and just getting plastered. I drank as an escape, and it was at most once a week, even at its height. But I looked to that to feel better. I was broken, spiritually and emotionally, and I looked for acceptance and identity in everything and anything besides God.

But it was at that point, like it is in so many of these stories, that God started reeling me back in. He used a fight with a roommate to get me to try church again, even though it was only because of spite that I went (incidentally, I also chose the Rock spitefully because of a conversation I had with the leadership of my old church that painted it in a negative light, whether that's what this person meant to do or not). I immediately met Chris Swift and Travis, and joined their Canvas Group. A month or so after attending my first Rock service, I got drunk for the last time, and didn't drink again after that day until I turned 21 about a year later. I don't even really know why I stopped. I've never really even thought about it before. I guess God just took that desire away from me.

One of my favorite parts about Colorado LT: my band.

Anyways, I could not have been more blessed through these experiences. God showed me where He wanted me, and I have found a home in this church. I play bass on the worship team with 5 of my best friends every third Sunday. I am an Equipper (student leader) in the best Canvas Group on campus (Plaza, aka the "hipster" CG). I attended Colorado Leadership Training last summer, which is lead by my pastor at the Rock, John Drage. And I just absolutely love every second of growing and learning in the context of my church family.

Thanks for reading guys. If you would like to hear an unabridged version of this story, hit me up. And I'm always up for hearing your story as well. If there's one thing I learned last summer, it's that there is absolutely nothing as beautiful as the story of God's redemptive power and grace demonstrated through the saving of one of His children.