Part of My Testimony

This is part of my testimony and some of who i am.

I grew up in a Christian home and was saved at a young age. As i grew older i knew that God was real and working in my life.

When i was around 10 or 11 years old God came to me asking me if i loved Him more than something else that was very important in my life. It took me a moment to look at what I saw of the church and decide that if all of these rules, expectation, and lifelessness that is so prevalent was what it meant to be a Christian, i didn't want to love God more than anything else. So I told God that.

It was not long after that that God began taking all of those things away one at a time. Those next years were very difficult as my world completely fell apart. I continued to go to church and was very involved through my teen years. I worked very hard to be a good Christian and was very frustrated being the only person i knew around my age that was actually trying and feeling that instead of my life being better because of it, it was really only getting worse.

So for a while i began to turn my back on God in part. I was angry with Him for what seemed like His abandoning me. As time went by He drew me back and showed me that He was with me and that all that time He was removing those things that i had placed in my life ahead of Him until there was only Him. Since then He has been replacing those things one at a time.

One of the biggest things that had gotten me through those difficult years had been people that God had put into my life to reach me, like my high-school sunday school teacher. It was because God was working through those people and their influence that i even survived through those years.

This has been a huge factor in my life and has led me to be involved in ministering to youth & young adults and counseling with youth, families, and couples.