Why Jesus? - My Story

PREFACE

As I was studying at the University of Wisconsin- LaCrosse for my communication degree we did a lot of self-reflection and self-realization tests. The more you know about yourself, the easier it is to understand your faults and weaknesses, and the easier it is to understand your strengths. During those years, I started to learn about myself, and really learned about why other people act the way that they do.

Personally, I realized that I learn the most from experience. It bothers me that our society has moved so far away from the idea of apprenticeships, when you can learn more about almost anything by doing it than you can by merely talking about it. I travel because everywhere I go, I see new things and meet new people. allowing me to learn something new every time. I can learn by just observing something, or I can learn by experiencing something or being a part of something. Regardless of when and where I learn things, I know one thing for sure - I learn the most from the things around me. I could sit in seclusion all day, every day, and learn some stuff, but not nearly as much as I can learn by just experiencing the things around me.

During all the time I've spent traveling, living in different areas, and meeting new people, I've learned a ton from the people I've encountered. Everyone has a story, and the awesome things is, every story is different! I learn about why people react the way they do when certain things happen in life. I learn about what makes people happy and sad. I learn about what in people's pasts may've caused them to become who they are now. Learning doesn't end after school. The reason I write these blogs is for two reasons. Firstly, so that those people who are in my life who I love dearly, but don't have the time to talk to very often can be a part of my life without needing direct communication. Secondly, I'm often told that I'm a very unique individual, and I hope that the experiences I have had in the past and continue to have now can encourage you, and also give you the opportunity to learn, whether it's about me or something you can bring into your own life.

Everyone that reads my blog posts knows where I'm at now and that my heart is on God, but very few probably know why I made that choice. This is going to be an extended background of why I chose Jesus and how I know I'm going to Heaven. Hopefully you can relate, or even find a place in the story where you played a role!

THE STORY

The Beginning

One of the earlier things I can remember in life are times where I'd be lying in my bed at night thinking about Heaven and Hell. I have no idea how old I was, but I know that I was scared. I had just started to understand the idea of eternity, and it freaked me out. Somewhere along the line I had heard that I was going to either live forever in Hell or live forever in Heaven. I didn't want to live forever, but then I would think of the ultimatum... dying forever, and that seemed like a pretty horrible option as well. The idea of forever completely freaked me out, and I'd be in tears every time I thought about it. I knew I didn't want to be in the Hell that I had been taught about in my private school (which I'll talk about shortly), but even living forever in Heaven was a scary thought. It took me a couple years to grow out of this, but I'll come back to that in a little while.

My dad was raised in a Christian home and attended church with my grandparents for the beginning of his life. My mom was raised in a strong Catholic home and attended church with my other grandparents for the beginning of her life. When they got married, they had to make the decision of which church to be a part of, so they compared their beliefs to what they knew the Bible taught. There were certain things the Catholic Church teaches and believes in that my parents found to be unBiblical, so they decided to be a part of Racine Christian Reformed Church - the church my dad had grown up in, which was started in the basement of my Great Great Uncle. The church was "connected" to a private school which my dad had attended for 1st-9th grade. The same school that my sister and I would attend for K-8th - Racine Christian School.

I remember be confused by the troublesome students and why they would want to act in the way that they did... until 4th grade. In 4th grade, I became that student. I was a smart kid and I often got bored in school, so I resorted to messing around and getting in trouble. At first, it was just little things here and there, but by the time I reached middle school I was hanging out with the wrong crowd. I WAS the wrong crowd. The things we were doing weren't horrible, but they were things that weren't okay, such as throwing snowballs at recess, throwing our extra lunch food at the playground equipment to watch it explode, and playing pranks on each other during class. We'd sneak out of class and see how long it took the teacher to notice we were gone, just for the thrill of it. I guess I must not have been one of the worst, since I stayed out of trouble for the most part, but I definitely remember that I wasn't one of the best.

The whole time I was attending this school, I was also attending the same church. I was baptized there as a baby. I went to church every week with my family, and usually Sunday school the morning of church. Starting in 2nd or 3rd grade I was involved with a group of boys called Cadets, which I attended weekly. We went through Bible studies, but other than that it was very similar to Boy Scouts. We earned badges and had outings for camping, bowling, pinewood derbies, etc. I was hearing a lot about God and a lot about the Bible, but all I was doing was hearing it.

In 8th grade I attended a middle school day camp put on by a few churches in Racine. At the camp, I had seen people talk about Jesus in a way I had never seen before. The leaders were open and honest with us. I had enough time to gather that something was different, but not enough time to understand what it was. I told my dad I wanted to go to a different church: a church where I could hear people talking about Jesus the way they did at this camp. He told me that once I was old enough to drive, he would give me the freedom to go to church wherever I wanted to go.

Back to my fear of eternity. Eventually, after what seems like forever, I finally understood Heaven enough that I could calm myself down. I had to repeatedly remind myself that if God tells me Heaven is perfect, then it is. And, if Heaven is perfect, then spending eternity there can't be bad. I'd still get scared pretty often, but I just always reminded me of that truth. If our great, loving God created it, then I would just have to believe that I would enjoy it... for eternity. The idea of forever is still scaring me a little even as I type this right now, but I just hold fast to the promise God has given me that I'll be with Him some day in a perfect Heaven.

Freedom, and its Choices

High school. I had hoped to go to high school to a private school most of my friends were going to be going to - Racine Lutheran High, but, my parents wanted me to go to a public school closer to where we lived. I had been playing soccer since I could run, and I had really hoped to play in high school. Lutheran had a decent team, and the school I was going to - Union Grove High School, was launching their first year as a club team. I wanted to play real soccer, and from what I had gathered, a club team sounded like recess-type soccer. Nevertheless, my parents made the decision to send me to Union Grove High School (UG).

UG is on the country side of the interstate from Racine. The high school is comprised of 3 main middle schools. My middle school was not one of those 3, and I only knew a handful of people at the school. My neighbor Rem, and my friend Tyler who had gone to the same middle school as me, were the only two people I had any sort of relationship with. I was the new kid to everyone else. Even though they had gone to different middle schools, lots of the students knew each other from playing sports together or against each other growing up. Although I had been shy until now, I had to do something different, or I knew I was never going to have any friends.

Soccer season started before school, so I quickly got to know some of the guys on the team. Only myself and a couple other players had ever played before, and with my experience, I stood out from all but a couple guys. I was one of the best on the team, and I had a lot of the girls attention, because I was the new kid. I took advantage of this situation in as many ways as I could. I became a huge flirt, and tried to be as cool as I could figure how to be. It may've just been a skewed view of myself, but I recall being a little more mature than those people around me, so rather than finding friends my own age, I started hanging out with an older crowd. Lots of my friends at school were seniors and juniors. I quickly went downhill. I was attracted to the party scene. I was attracted to all the things I was hearing about high school girls. I was attracted to whatever fame I could get on the soccer field. I was attracted to the good grades I could easily pull off in my classes. Everything seemed like it was going great, but my life was becoming quite different than it had ever been before.

The things I'm about to write I am in no way proud of. I hope for forgiveness from everyone that was negatively effected by my actions. I ask forgiveness from those people in my life who were close to me at this time but may not have known my actions, especially my family. Also, some details will remain untold for the privacy of the other people involved.

Girls are attractive. God gave us women for companionship, and I wanted any, and all the companions I could get. It's pretty easy to kiss a high school girl. I was the new kid, remember? They were intrigued by what they didn't know. Fairly quickly that intrigue wore off, but I took full advantage of it while it was there. I dated girls for the first time. My older friends convinced me that although kissing was cool, there was a whole box of options that I hadn't even opened up yet. I started trying them out. Originally, just with girls I had a "romantic" relationship with, then quickly realized that I didn't need to be in a relationship with a girl to do some of the things I wanted to do. I went to parties, hoping to hook up with girls, and it worked. I would sneak out of my house and go to parties, or spend the night at the location of a party so that I wouldn't have to tell my parents what I was doing. Other parents didn't care if their kids were out partying and drinking, so my friends and I would just lie as to where we were staying or who we were hanging out with, then go to the other kid's houses.

Somehow, through all of these activities, I stayed true to three morals. I never got drunk. I never tried drugs. And I never had sex. I have no idea what kept me from doing those things, but I'm so glad that I was able to abstain from them!

Slowly, I began to realize that the party scene wasn't it. The alcohol wasn't it. The fame wasn't it. The girls, well... they were still an option for now. I like to think of this part of my life as the book of Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon, the richest man to ever live (even with the conversion factor!), tells us over and over that everything under the sun is a waste. He had the money. He had the power. He had more concubines than there are days in the year. If he lived today, he'd probably own a state. He'd have multiple luxury car lots on his land. The people living on his land with him would be mostly family, and any others would be personal slaves. He could buy anything he wanted to buy and he would have anything anyone could ever dream of having. Bill Gates has nothing on Solomon. Although I didn't have everything, I did experience things, and everything I experienced seemed to be missing something. Nothing satisfied.

During my junior year of high school a lot started to change. The friends I had hung out with for the first two years had all graduated, so I started forming better relationships with people my own age. Instead of going to parties to partake in the festivities, I was going and telling myself I was doing it to share Jesus with the people there. I'm pretty sure I was lying to myself and I just wanted to spend time with whatever girls were there. Regardless, I did actually have a few conversations about Jesus during that time. I was starting to act like the guy I was raised to be, rather than who I had been trying to pretend to be.

I finally had my license! That means, I was finally able to explore different churches. I'm pretty sure I started looking as soon as I got my license. My friend Rem came with me, and we checked out any church we had heard of. We visited almost every church that any of our friends had attended, and finally found separate church homes a few months after the initial visit. I found my home at Grace Church, one of the main churches involved with putting on Middle School Madness, the group I had opened my eyes a few years earlier. At first, I was just going by myself. I was trying to get friends to come with, but if they came, they'd only come once or twice. After a while my mom came and checked it out. I think she must've noticed something different with the way I talked about it. She started coming with as my dad and sister continued to go to our old church. After a little longer, they started coming as well. My whole family was being changed by the truth that was being preached in this church. It wasn't that our old church hadn't spoke the truth, but they weren't preaching it in a way that we could easily understand. Grace frequently preached a Gospel message, which was something we had heard, but not something that had ever been given as much importance as it was receiving at Grace. The Gospel message is pretty much part of the sermon devoted to explaining that we all sin and do things God has asked us not to, which according to the Bible is deserving of Hell, we are saved from Hell by God sending His Son to die on a cross in our place. The fact that Jesus died so that we didn't have to is the Gospel message.

Everything I had been hearing and learning took a little time to grow on me, but the summer before my junior year I spent three weeks straight in ministry positions. First, I had volunteered to be a leader at the middle school camp that had opened my eyes a few years before. The week after I had been asked to lead a group of students at vacation Bible school. Then, for week number three I went down to Mexico with some other high school students on a mission's trip. I had never really read the Bible much, but I was in it for three weeks straight, and God showed me during that three weeks who He truly was.

This is the "point of salvation". I was "saved". I became "born again". I had realized how much God loved me. I had realized how sinful I was as a person. I had read about who I was created to be, and realized I was nothing close to it. I prayed to God and told Him that I had messed up. I knew I wanted to go to Heaven, but I didn't understand what that meant. I didn't understand that that meant I had to reach out my hand and accept some of the blood that Jesus bled out while He was dying for my sins. I understood now, and I was overjoyed about what Jesus had done for me, but deeply saddened by the fact that my sins had to be paid for by someone else because I was inadequate. My biggest fear all of my life has been being inadequate, and I finally found an area where it was the only option. I prayed and told God that He gave His Son for me, so I would give my life for Him. I'd be willing to go anywhere. I'd be willing to do anything. My life was no longer my own, but I laid it out before God and told Him that I'm rightfully His, and that I want Him to use me in any way He desires. Death doesn't scare me, because I know that if it comes, it comes because my time here was done. God is in full control, and it is a daily prayer of mine that if there is anything in my life that is keeping me from fully serving God, that He would rid me of those things so I can clearly see His will and be fully utilized by Him. I'm His vessel, nothing more.

If you read this far, I hope that God is speaking to your heart through my story. I will post Part 2 in a day or two. Thank you to those people who have stuck by through all the battles of life. Thank you mom and dad for giving me the freedom to make mistakes, and I'm sorry that you may've learned some new things about me through this. Thank you all for the love and support you give me. Love you all!