My life prior to my salvation

I basically grew up in a non-religious home and I was into sports, girls, partying, and drinking. College was a blur and I soon moved to Cedar Rapids and worked a job that I soon hated and lived in a city where I knew nobody. After several months, the company I was working for laid me off and I soon found myself moving home to live with my parents in Ankeny for a short period of time. I ended up finding an entry level job at a local company called Dee Zee. This was probably one of the lowest points of my life after going to college, losing my first job and then on top of everything having to move home to live with my parents.

I worked for Dee Zee for a few years and during this time, managed to get an apartment with a fellow co-worker. My life consisted of partying almost every weekend at the local bars and waking up to do it all over again the next weekend. I became a local at the gym in Ankeny where one day I started talking to a young woman named Crystal. She soon became my girl friend and later my wife. Its like God led me down a path from college, to lose my first job, moved me to Ankeny to start a new job and later meet my future wife.

We soon had our own place, we both had great jobs, and we seemed to be consumed with spending money. It was soon after we had dated for several months that Crystal soon learned of one of my sins which was credit card debt. I had managed to charge up one credit card after another before I was soon only able to make minimum payments on all of them with no place to turn. I took this problem upon myself and with Crystal’s help, we managed to pay everything off in a couple of years. The credit card problems were something that I am still not very proud of today, but I have learned from this so that I never make the same mistake again.

Crystal and I soon were married and happy as ever. It was at this time in my life that we started attending a local catholic church. My wife’s family was catholic and Sundays were spent going to church with the family. I guess that coming from my non-religious background, I was very uncomfortable with this and to top it all off the church was very regimented, boring, and I never felt any different when I left. We soon quit going to church altogether.

As everyone knows, marriage is work and I think Crystal and I soon drifted apart. It seemed that the only thing that ever made us happy was to spend money or buy something and as we later learned – money can’t buy happiness. My wife was depressed at times and turned to drinking which soon got out of control. She was diagnosed with alcoholism, didn’t know if she still loved me, and to top it all off – there was nothing that I could do to help her with her alcohol problem. I felt helpless, but the key to her treatments was that she had to want to help herself. I guess this was a point in my life where I made the decision to stick by her no matter what and I think God had a helping hand in getting us through the roughest point in our marriage.

The circumstances leading up to my salvation

I came to the realization that I need to be saved after listening to Dave at church one Sunday - It took me a long time to accept god into my life and to finally “get off the fence” as he put it one day and not want to be just “luke warm” about my faith in god and wanting to be forgiven for all of my sins. This really moved me to want to put my faith in God. I’ve seen what is has done for my wife and I’ve listened to powerful testimonies over the past few months and this has really been the turning point for me.

My salvation experience

On Thursday, September 16, 2007, Josh had helped me though my first bible study when I came to the realization that it was time for me to accept god for who he is and to confess my sins to Christ and become saved. Josh asked me if there was anything that I felt was keeping me from this and I said no and that I was ready! He said a small prayer and then I confessed to Christ that I wanted to be forgiven of my past sins.

Evidence of new life since my salvation

This past week after my salvation experience, I have been looking for evidence of being saved. I bought by very first bible and even started reading Genesis for the first time and you know what – its really fascinating. Now, I’m reading it every night before bedtime. I even realized at work that no matter how bad of a day that I have - god is always there for me and I should be thankful for having a good job, a wonderful wife, and a clean slate on life with all of my sins forgiven. I may not have known it in my past, but god has led me down this path-called life!