Testimony Tuesday

[Stage Notes:: Almost done...]
[Music:: Energy | Skillet]

Last week, one of the pastors of my previous church, drew my attention to a challenge by another blog to call today Testimony Tuesday, and post our testimony's in our blogs and encourage others to do the same regardless of their faith. Simply give testimony to what you believe and why. Since many people have heard bits and pieces, but few have heard the whole story, I thought it would be a good time. Not to mention, I am leaving for a week and a half so it will give you ample time to read through what will no doubt be a long post. Here goes, and please feel free to do the same in the comments or on your own blog, but please let me know you are doing it so I can read it when I get back.

I was born into a Catholic family. Catholic Church on Sundays (even on vacation), and Catholic school all the way through high school. However, we were really just Sunday Catholics. It seemed that everyone loathed getting up on Sunday to go to church so we would go to the noon mass. The only incentive to going to 10:00 was the kids service which was more like story time and the donuts afterwards. Saturday night was far better though because it was a little more casual and meant I did not have to go on Sunday. As I grew up, I was involved in cub scouts and other such programs that got me interested in volunteer work. I was an honor roll student. I was probably referred to as a goody goody on more than one occasion.

Despite that, God was little more to me than a genie that rarely granted my wishes. I often told God that if he wanted me to believe in him then I wanted this or that. I was a rather smart kid so I thought I could stack the game in my favor.

I was always an overweight kid so when you combined that with the goody two shoes, I was a prime target for being picked on. By the end of eight grade it was merciless to the point of my parents almost transferring me to a different school months before graduation. It was then that my eighth grade religion teacher gave me a pocket rosary. Basically a metal disk with 10 bead-like protrusions around it and a cross used for saying the rosary. That rosary spent months in my pockets and when things were going bad, I would grab onto it and pray to the God I wasn't sure existed, but it still made me feel better.

While I was questioning God's existence, and the general distaste most Catholics had for their 'faith' I began to question the whole way of doing church. I figured that the God I heard about on Sundays would prefer we spent the one hour a week out doing work at a soup kitchen or something to that extent. He did not seem like he would be thrilled with a half empty building of barely awake people that were just punching the God clock. He could not be happy with the hypocrisy I saw everywhere among my friends. Naturally I also figured that if this God existed then the plethora of good stuff I was doing would be enough to keep him from being angry with me.

Then it happened.

On a Sunday morning, when I was in high school, Fr. Mike was giving the homily and he said I couldn't get to heaven by only doing good works. He said I also had to go to church. Then and there I was mentally done with the Catholic Church.

I say mentally because I kept going. I was even entirely certain that my higher education was going to be done at the Catholic University of Notre Dame. That is until the rejection letter came. With my options at MSU and Purdue, I opted to stay in state and go to the only campus where the people seemed genuinely friendly; Michigan State University.

Even when I went to college and there weren't parents breathing down my neck to make me go, I went to church. I would get up on Sunday morning when the dorms were still quiet with freshmen sleeping off hangovers, and walk 15 minutes to church. I would sit in agony until the service would be over and walk home as quickly as possible. Finally one Sunday I told myself how silly it was to keep going because my good works were still more than most Catholics I knew and therefore I was just fine.

A few weeks later, I was hanging out with my friend K.H. and she was telling my friend G.Q. about this house church thing she was going to on Sunday nights. Now, K.H. was the first Christian I encountered that read the bible for herself and seemed to know a different kind of God than I had heard about even though we knew a lot of the same stories. When she described house church she made it seem like a laid back place where college kids were hanging out, having fun, singing, and eating homemade food that someone prepared for free. Free food and K.H. (whom I kinda liked) there sounded like good enough reasons to go, especially since the dorms did not server dinner on Sundays!

This is the part in the story where I am supposed to say that I got saved and cried and sung songs with my new friends. That's not how it happened. I was freaked out by these people! The food and hanging out was great, then the singing started. Song sheets were passed out and the guitar player started strumming. I didn't know the song so I tried to figure it out, then I saw The Hands. People swaying back and forth with their hands in the air. The comfort zone was officially gone and I had no idea what I got myself into.

Once the discussion started things normalized again and I noticed the honesty with which these people shared and what was even crazier was that they were showing how they really felt. When things were good they were smiling and when things were bad they were crying. They did not hide it. I wondered what they believed and thought so I kept going. And I also started attending this crazy church called Riverview that met at 10:01 across the street in the Kellogg center, and I could wear jeans.

After the first sermon, I knew these guys were different. The person speaking actually knew the bible. Really knew it. The sermon could be applied directly to life. The music was rocking. This was what I didn't know I had been looking for. The hard part was trying to stay anonymous. Between house church and the small size of this church, you were instantly picked out as a new person. Once that happened, you were introduced to a dozen college students and swept off to have breakfast with a quarter of the church in the Brody Cafe. It was like being welcomed into a very bizarre, friendly, caring family.

After several weeks of this, Rob, the pastor that hosted house church, asked me to grab a Coke at the International Center. Honestly I did not really want to go, but since it was Rob's house and he was a 6 foot plus former hockey player, I didn't exactly know how to say no.

The day of 'The Coke' came and I found Rob waiting for me at the IC. We got some food and sat down. Rob started asking me about my background and what I thought about God. Then he asked me "If you were to die right now, do you think you would go to heaven?" I responded with "I don't know, I think so." Then said, "If you were at the gates and Jesus asked 'Why should I let you into my heaven?', what would you say?". Dumbfounded I told him that I was a pretty good person and hadn't really done a lot of bad stuff. Completely straight faced, Rob flat out told me, No!

No?!?!?!

What??? I was stunned to say the least. He then proceeded to tell me that I could actually know if I was going to heaven and he shared the gospel with me using something called the bridge diagram. He started connecting a bunch of random information that had been floating around in my head. I knew most of what he was saying, but it was suddenly starting to click. At the end of it all, he asked me if I wanted to pray to be saved. I was still very much in shock and a little weirded out so I told him I needed to think about it.

The next few years I kept going to Riverview and faded in and out of house church. I kept going through a cycle of thinking I was a Christian, then learning something knew that made me realize I had no idea what it meant to be a Christian. I would pray to be saved again and think I was certainly now a Christian, and the cycle would continue.

The summer after junior year, I found myself studying in Germany. I also found myself to be the only person claiming to be Christian in a group of 9 guys. Towards the end of my stay, I felt this burning need to go to church, so I got up early on Sunday and walked to the church I knew was Catholic and sat in the back for the whole service. Afterwards I walked around the city by myself praying and talking to God and for the first time really heard him start to speak back.

When the next school year started, God had laid it on my heart to move from being and attender to being involved in my church which at this point had nearly tripled in size and was meeting at 9:30ish and 11:30ish. I decided I needed a bible that I could actually read and highlight and underline in so I asked my friend C.L. Wynn to take my bible shopping. As the year progressed, I found myself in leadership positions in a bible study and a house church. In February I went to a conference called Ignite where I heard about this crazy summer program in Florida called Leadership Training or LT for short. From what I heard, the LT actually stood for lots of trials, but no one could officially confirm that information. Needless to say I said there was absolutely no friggen way I was going to spend a summer in Florida. I hate the heat.

At the end of may I found myself in Cowboy's car driving to Florida for LT.

When I got there, I met D.G. and the rest of the Texas A&M Aggies. There were six of us Spartans that spent our summer with the Aggies. I was also living with Two guys from Illinois, another guy from WVU and this off the wall Native American, Christian Pastor, from West Virginia that looked like a California surfer, name Billy.

Up to this point, I knew all of the answers to the questions of Christianity. I knew the stories inside out because I had heard them my entire life. I knew what the programmed responses were supposed to be, and my life really did not dramatically contradict the faith I was claiming I had. The first half of the summer was a battle between my head and my heart. What did I 'know' verses what did I actually believe. What was I actually willing to base my life on? Then I read Matthew 7:21-23 which says, ""Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'"

Things started to snap into focus. I realized that my problem with many of the Catholics I encountered had been living a life avoiding hell instead of living for heaven. These new Christians I met in college, on the other hand, where so in love with God that they were living for the heaven they knew they were going go. I started to understand the difference between having a religion and having an actual relationship with God. The God of the universe wanted to have a relationship with me."

I more or less equate those college year to spending a life building a house on a weak foundation. Then I discovered that the foundation was completely wrong and I had to build an new foundation and move the built house on top of it. The house itself creaked and groaned and took a long time to settle back into being a sturdy building.

Since then, a great many people have spoken into my life and taught me how to adopt Riverview's mission statement of "building sacrificial followers, who build sacrificial followers, who go.