Spiritual Autobiography

(Minor revisions have been made - 2nd draft)

Thirteen and a half years ago I prayed to receive Christ into my heart. My father has been the senior pastor of my home church for the last fourteen years, so I was born and raised with an “all-you-can-eat buffet” of the Bible, Christianity and church. When I prayed to receive Christ, I knew with my head what Jesus had done for me. I knew being a Christian was something I was supposed to do, but the only reason I claimed faith in Christ was because of my parents’ beliefs. I was living their faith, not my own.
As a child, I did not see how much my sins hurt God. My life up through my early teenage years was marked by hypocrisy, vanity, and conceit. All along I thought I was doing the work of God, but I really was only serving myself.
The Lord convicted me of this when I was about fifteen. I then saw, for the first time, a small glimpse of the pain my sins were causing God. My heart was devastated when I realized that the whole time I thought I was serving God, it was really all in vain. I finally saw that I was in opposition to the One I claimed as Lord, Master, and King. This was my first true act of repentance. When I confessed all this to God, He filled my spirit with a love, joy and peace that I had never felt before.
People who have made a spiritual impact in my life include Jeremy Mavis and Loretta Sunderland, two ministers of youth in my home church. They were always there for me, challenging my current level of thinking and stimulating me to grow deeper in my walk with Christ (e.g. the change of thinking described in the last paragraph). I thank God constantly for such amazing youth pastors.
If anyone has had spiritual significance in my life, however, it definitely has to be my parents. What a godly example they both uniquely established for me to look up to and follow after! Even though my father has been known as a very busy man, he always had the time to talk with me whenever I had a question. He often would come to the dinner table with an inspiring thought for the day. Though they were little things, they made a big difference in my life. My mother also was there for me whenever I needed advice or simply a shoulder to lean on. Neither of them were superimposing, but both cared enough to be a large part of my growth in every area of my life.
The greatest amount of spiritual growth and change in my life has definitely happened over the last year and a half. Over that time-span, some of my most trying circumstances, and yet many of my greatest joys have come.
Last May, during a time when I was feeling especially stressed out, I felt like I should go fishing one night after I got off work. It had been a long, hard day at Subway, and as I was down in the river with my hip-waders on, I poured out my heart to God. I realized then that I had let my walk with the Lord slip, that I was hardly praying at all, rarely setting aside time for personal devotion and basically going through the motions of worship. As I repented of that and set my heart straight, the Lord challenged my heart with a new question: “Are you willing to change the world for me?”
At first I was dumbfounded! My initial response was, “Lord, how can I change the world? I am so small and insignificant! Who am I? I am nothing! There is no way I can change the world.”
The Lord answered me, “That is a good thing, because I can only use those who know they are nothing.”
“But Lord,” I said, “I’m so overwhelmed. How could I ever know where I should start?”
“Start by trusting Me. Start praying that lives will be changed. Ask those around you whom you respect as spiritual leaders what they would do in order to change the world for Me.”
“Lord, I am willing, but I don’t know how able I am.”
“Follow Me, and you will receive everything you need to fulfill My purpose for your life. Besides, I am able, and that is all that matters.”
As I began to pursue this perplexing issue, three answers seemed to keep reappearing. The answer I received first and foremost was prayer. This is key. If you or I are to change the world, our primary posture for battle must be on our knees.
Secondly, but of equal importance and as a prerequisite for praying that God will change the world, our lives must be changed. A world-wide revival starts in the hearts of a few individual men and women of God, whom He stirs with a passion to see humanity as a whole changed for Him.
Finally, the world can be reached relatively quickly if each person who has received this passion from God will pass the flame on to just two other people. If those two people each pass it on to two people, and the chain is not broken, it would only take 31 times of passing it on before the entire world is reached!
Now that God has given me a clear direction and mission, I can be very intentional about cultivating my life with Christ and completing these objectives. Ever since God gave me His eyes to see a lost and broken world, He has also opened my eyes to the needs of individuals around me, and has given me countless opportunities to be a witness for Him. Yet, so often I ignore many of those opportunities. This is definitely a part of my life that is short of the mark God has for me, but by His grace I am beginning to grow in this area.
Today my walk with God is very unique in comparison with the rest of my life. At no other time have I been surrounded by so many great men and women of God as here at BBC, and I have never read so many good and challenging books as I am reading for school now, but I often find it hard to set aside time to talk with God and learn from Him instead of learning and talking about Him.
My devotional time, when I make myself take time out, usually consists of 20 minutes of Scripture reading in the morning before I begin the day, 20 minutes of prayer time after lunch, and 20 minutes of reading a devotional book before going to sleep. This breaks it up some, and provokes me to think about reflective, devotional material throughout the day.
The Lord has already been doing great things here on campus. Even since I have arrived here, the Spirit has done a mighty work in my life. The prayer vigil the night before the ground breaking service was amazing. God showed me so many things throughout the night: the good and the bad in my life, the glory and majesty of Himself, the needs and hurts of the Bethany community and of the entire world, and so much else as well.
It is exciting and weighty at the same time to think that, based on the choices I make over the next four years, I’ll be molded into the man that I will probably end up being for the rest of my life. This compels me to give my very best, because Jesus does not deserve any less than that. I know that if I give Him my best, He will make me better than I could ever hope to be on my own. I cannot wait to see what God has in store for my life, here at Bethany and beyond!

Jargon

(This is the third draft for this essay)


I was born into a family with strong Christian beliefs and values. My father is the senior pastor of my home church, so I naturally grew up hearing all about the stories in the Bible and what it means to be a Christian. Being a Christian was something I knew I was supposed to do, but what I did not understand until later was that it is also something I need to be. I was about 15 years old when I first realized this.
Before that point my life had been marked by hollowness, conceit, and vanity, and there was a certain emptiness that I couldn’t explain. I had heard all my life that God would fill that void, but I had never experienced that for myself. I knew about God, but it was only a head knowledge; I did not know God from the core of my heart. It seemed that there was something separating me from God. When I took a closer look, I discovered that my own actions were putting me at odds with the God I claimed I loved. When I realized this, my heart was instantly broken as I began to discover just how offensive it was to God every time I messed up.
I remember sitting there, streams of tears running down my face, as I truly was ashamed of the way I had been before and resolved to begin living the way Christ exemplifies in the Bible. A peace, joy and love then filled my heart that I had never felt before. This feeling seemed so much deeper than the frivolous, superficial life I had been living up to that point. I had discovered something worth living for.
I was beginning to discover the true purpose of my life, and for the first time I felt complete, yet hungry for more of God. From that day I have been striving to find out what God would have me do next. This inner longing is at the center of my being. Now following Jesus is not merely something I do, it is something I am. It is who I was made to be, and there certainly is no turning back.

Adam Takes His First Step Into Blogger World

Hey everyone out there who happens to see my new blog!
I thought it would be cool to have a spot to just let you know what's going on in my life while I'm here at Bethany Bible College. The Lord's Presence is very strong here. He has shown me many things since I arrived here about three weeks ago.
Also, I'm wondering if you can help me out! As I'm sure you all know well, college requires a LOT of writing, and if you're like me, you really enjoy a good grade when you submit an essay or research paper. So here's what I'd like for you to do, if you so choose. I'm going to post essays and reports here on my blog, and I'd like as many readers as I can get to read them over, critique them, suggest better wordings, tell me if something doesn't make sense, etc. So the next two posts will be my first two essays due for the year (on the 19th and the 21st respectively). The first is a Spiritual Autobiography, basically describing my walk with the Lord throughout my life to this point.
The second is an interesting one called Jargon. It's supposed to be a one page summary of how I became a Christian without using any "Christian jargon." (Note, this one is already pretty well critiqued, but if you have any further suggestions, please feel free to speak up!)

Thanks guys, God bless and I hope you enjoy!

-Adam