"Here I Am" - A Spiritual Biography

In high school, I would have told you that in some senses I’ve always been a Christian. I have spent most of my life in an almost exclusively Christian environment. It took me some time, however, before I began to take personal ownership of my faith, allowing God be at work in my life instead of me making my life perfect for God. Due to my personality and the way I grew up, my early spirituality was based a lot on theological knowledge and not much on religious experience.

One night in February of 2000 (age 9.5), our family read a devotional based on 1 Peter 2:24, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree.” I recognized for the first time the weight of my sin and the great cost of Christ’s redemption. I started crying. I had previously prayed a prayer of repentance, as many young Christian kids do (I don’t remember it), but that night my dad read Acts 2:38 to me. In that moment, I felt a call to respond by being baptized, which I did a couple months later.

In 2002, my life changed (age 12). Our family decided to teach at a Chinese university for a year. I loved our time in China. While there, I witnessed the other foreign teachers worshipping and experiencing God in a different way than I had ever known. Somehow, God became more real to me there, and I learned experientially that He wanted to be involved in our lives.

In September 2003 (age 13), we were starting to get settled back into our normal lives – new job, new house. But within a month that fairytale blew up in a complex explosion that is still painful to me. Long story short, there was an ugly church split. My dad also lost his job, and was severely under-employed for two years. I ended up holding onto bitterness and anger toward Dad and God.

Last night, as I was thinking about that period of my life, I realized I expected God to fix it all. I believed He could, and would. When things got worse instead of better, I unconsciously began to doubt and question God’s goodness, I guess. I had never before seen sin and evil so wreck a community of believers. I don’t know exactly how to explain the correlation, but it created some sort of break down in my relationship with God. That, combined with the need I’ve felt all my life to earn love and favor by making sure I meet people's expectations, developed in me a twisted picture of spirituality.

I had tons of head knowledge about God, and from the outside I looked like a really good Christian kid. But inside, I was a mess. I trusted no one, no one felt safe. I wasn’t willing to admit the brokenness inside. There were numerous nights when I would cry in my room, not understanding why I felt the way I did. I was so hungry for a relationship with God, like I had tasted in China. But I could never feel Him – He seemed distant and I knew that couldn’t be His fault, so it must be because of sin in my life. I just wanted to die and be done with having to fight to have a right relationship with Him. That is the overarching memory of my spiritual journey between 2003 and 2009 – pain and unfulfilled hunger.

Coming to JBU (August 2009) was the best thing that ever happened to me. God knew exactly where I needed to be for Him to do His work in my life. Through a variety of new worship experiences, He started breaking outside of the careful boxes I had packed Him into. Then on January 25, 2011, He changed everything. By His grace alone, I finally came to truly know that I didn’t need to earn His approval because He gave it freely as a gift. He revealed His overwhelming love, and He reoriented my whole life.

Since that day two years ago, there have still been plenty of ups and downs. But always underlying has been a deeper, more real knowledge God accepts me. That He loves me no matter what. That His call is to trust, not to understand; to accept grace, not to work to deserve it. And though my spiritual life is still very much a journey, I now know that He is at work and that He will not leave me alone. He is faithful, and He works in His time and His ways. Praise be to His name, Amen.

{To read more about my more recent spiritual learning, start here and read more at my spiritual blog.}