I came to college thinking that I was an overall good kid. I had always listened to my parents, done well in school and never really gotten into any big trouble. I also thought that I had a fairly strong belief in god and thought of myself as a religious person. It was not until I got to know my next door neighbor in my dorms though that I really put my faith into question and started asking myself questions about my faith and beliefs. She was a Christian and would question my beliefs and it would make me question myself. When I really thought about it though, I had no understanding of who God was or what was going to happen to me when I died. That’s when I began to want to know more about Christianity. I found out about Grace Alive because of a ministry called REAL (Runners Excited About Life) which I am now starting up this fall.

I then was invited to Grace Alive and when I met some of the people, I was struck at how they worshiped God and just lived out a life that was worth living because they were walking with Christ. I then started going to church and was a regular at Grace Alive. I was complacent with where I was in my beliefs and my life, although in reality I was really not a Christian or living a Christian life. I was living a half-hearted life; I had one foot in the world and one foot in Christianity. God had to crumble my life and shut every door possible for me to see the wickedness of my sin and how empty a life that I was living. I describe it to people as if I were in a deep pit and the only way that I could have gotten out was to grab hold of God and put my whole life in his hands. I had to see the reality of what the consequences of my sin were, because before I was living as if God was not a just and holy God. When I did see the wickedness of my sin and the emptiness of this half hearted Christian life though, my whole life changed. I put my whole trust in God and started to try to seek his will in everything that I did.

It was a dramatic change in my life. It is something that I have to look to God daily and be in his word so that I may have the wisdom to make the decisions that are necessary for me to make to become a man of God. I tell people how this past year has been one of the most difficult years that I have gone through because of facing temptation in my everyday life, seeing my sin, and religiously seeking God’s will, but at the same time it has been the most rewarding. I can say that I live a life of peace and have daily joy. I have the peace of knowing that my life is in the hands of an awesome god who has a plan that is much better than anything that I could think of. It’s not an easy life, that of a Christian, but it is the most rewarding and it’s something that I don’t think is worth trading for. I also see how I could not have gone through all of this without a church that preaches the whole gospel, the amazing Christian fellowship from Grace Alive, and the leadership of the elders from my church and Grace Alive.