Deeper Water

I suppose if I am ever to have faithful readers, I must become a faithful writer. With that in mind, allow me to offer the following introduction.

My spiritual journey began early in life. My parents are both believers, and church attendance was never optional in my family of origin. I grew up attending Sunday School in a Southern Baptist church, going to Vacation Bible Schools, and singing in children’s musicals with the children’s choirs. I was a thoroughly churched child.

When I was seven, a close family friend of mine sat down with me and shared the basics of the message of Jesus in a way that a child could understand. She knelt with me beside her couch, and I prayed and asked God to allow me to have a relationship with Him.

The next several years consisted of fairly typical Baptist education. I continued attending church regularly, and I learned all the stories and all the facts. I memorized verses and books of the Bible, and I learned all the things that good little Christian boys and girls were supposed to learn. By the time I was in my mid-teens, I found myself longing for something more. There simply had to be more to this called Christianity than what I was experiencing. I had a hard time accepting the idea that the God of the Old Testament had sent his Son to die a pretty horrible death just to make me a moral person.

At about that time, I found a student ministry that was truly thriving. By thriving, I don’t mean to say that it was simply activity-driven. Sure, there were all sorts of activities for the students, but there was much more. Over the next several years, I learned to pray, I learned to worship, I learned what it meant to truly seek to live a life surrendered to God. I grew tremendously… in ways both good and bad, for it was during this time I learned how to lie.

It was during this time that I learned to cover up my big sins and trade them in for smaller ones. I learned not to be honest about my own struggles and lack of desire to change. I learned how to wear the facade of a happy church-goer who had all his crap together. I carefully constructed myself a suit of fig leaves and lies, and I am still trying to untie the knots.

The journey continued, and my story will as well…. perhaps later tonight, perhaps tomorrow. I want to share where I am today and where I think I am headed for the future, but to understand all of that, you need to understand where I have been. After all, the road to the future runs through the past.