Experiencing God

I did not really believe God existed until I was 20 years old. I grew up seeing mostly hypocrisy in the church. I remember hearing the gossip about a leading women in the church who everyone knew was committing adultery and the kids in the youth group weren't very friendly. I'd had enough of religion by the time I was a teenager.

But in college I met some friends who made me rethink my conclusions. They told me about God, but I maintained that only weak people needed a crutch to believe in something outside of themselves. I grew up as an only child and was teased by the bullies in grade school. As a result I did not trust many people except myself and kept my peers at a safe distance. But I did not want to be alone, I wanted friends. By college I learned how to blend in and get along with most people. Going to college parties was a very superficial scene that often left me feeling more alone afterwards and hung over. Yet the Christians I had met at college had great friendships and were enjoying life without drinking. So I began to spend my Friday nights hanging out with the Christian Fellowship group.

The more I saw the difference in my friends life, the more I wanted what they had. The love, joy and peace were very real and Christians were experiencing these things much more than anybody else I knew. I took philosophy and ethics classes ... everybody had opinions but there never were any conclusions that helped people.

But when I finally decided to read the bible with my friends, I found that there were answers that worked and God spoke to me for the first time in my life. My friends invited me to a discussion on Faith verses Positive Thinking. I considered myself the latter. I had just been home to visit my Dad and he was going through a really difficult time in his life. I loved him, but I had no answers. During this discussion with my friends, a thought came to me that God could help my Dad. If he turned to God, God could help him overcome his problems. I realized I would have to believe God existed myself first and it scared me to think about changing everything I believed. Then this tremendous and unexplainable inner peace filled me. This was the first time I encountered God. This began a seven month journey of thinking more seriously about God.

So at the beginning of my senior year of college, I decided to explore this more thoroughly. I visited church with my friends and was struck by the love and acceptance there. I heard that you don't get to heaven by being a good person but that God had come from heaven to earth as a man, Jesus Christ, in order to bring people who weren't good to heaven if they would simply enter into a relationship with him. The longer I watched, the more I found that was positive. People who were genuine in their love and were growing in their relationships with each other. I started to believe that God might really exist. So in September of 1988 I decided to ask God to come into my life. Once again, I experienced peace and God immediately began to speak to me in a quiet but clear way in my mind and heart about things that would have to change in my life.

I began going to the East Providence Christian Fellowship and reading the bible for the first time in my life. I discovered that the bible teaches people about what God has said and how relate to each other in the best way possible. Jesus said the greatest commandment was "To love God and to love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus promised his followers he would send the Holy Spirit to be a Counselor and Comforter. Once you enter into a relationship with God, the Spirit of God comes into your life to teach you (speak to you) in everyday practical ways on how to improve your relationships and overcome problems in life. The Spirit of God is with you every moment of the day, knows the answers to every problem and gives you strength and encouragement when you are discouraged or hopeless. Problems happen in life to everyone, the only difference is whether you are facing them alone, or have God's help.

For almost two decades I have been getting to know God. He is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, overflowing in love and forgiveness towards those who choose to be His friends. He has helped me to heal in areas of fear and mistrust that I struggled with from my childhood. I now have many close friends. He has helped me find freedom from things that used to control me, and brought me into a growing community of people who help each other. He has helped me overcome selfishness in order to have a wonderful loving relationship with my wife. There have been times when I have struggled in my relationship with God as I tried to do things my way, but even then His mercy has turned my mistakes into good things. He has never once failed to lead me in the best direction when I have followed Him.

I am always amazed that things work out better than I anticipated when I do what he tells me. In 1995 I asked God for direction in changing careers, and He lead me into web design the following year. I had no idea at the time how good a career that would be for the next 10 years of my life. I asked God to give me a soul mate who I could share the joys and sorrows of life, and in 1997 he brought my wife into my life. In the seven years we have been married, He has helped us overcome our selfish tendencies and grow in deeper trust when almost all of our friends who don't know God have already been divorced at least once. I have continually seen Gods hand of blessing in my career and personal life as I have done what He has told me.

Because I have experienced Gods love in such great life changing ways I want to share with everyone who Jesus is and help them encounter God in a real and personal way. I have committed the rest of my life to telling people about Jesus. It is a historical fact that he rose from the dead. He is alive today and working with millions of his followers building a worldwide Kingdom where people love and help each other. I encourage anyone to read one of the gospel accounts (Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John) in the bible to find out who he is and what he is like.