To be transparent: the idea of doing this gratitude series came about a half-week before Thanksgiving, but once I had completed the sketches for the prologue post (which aired on Thanksgiving), all those other memories I had disappeared. That, and I’m pretty sure that for some of the ideas, I’ve already dedicated a “memory stone” post to it anyway.
Then, this past Sunday happened. What happened, you might
ask? My church officially moved into its new building and now our services are
back to Sunday mornings, after meeting on Saturday evenings at a back-office
location over the last 4-plus years because the owners (another church) would
or could not allow us to gather on Sundays. This past Sunday was December 1st,
2024, but it was also an important anniversary of mine: it was 11 years to the
day since I was publicly baptized (full body dunked into the baptismal pool) at
my previous church, the Evanston Vineyard.
Growing up Episcopalian, I’m pretty sure I was sprinkled as
a very young child, had a few words spoken over me, and that was that. Other
than that, the only real faith-like experience that I had involved singing the
hymns, psalm chants, descants, and anthems every Sunday (and ensuring that I
did everything correctly), confessing my sins as part of the prescribed
confessional, and knowing that once I had done that, I was good for the week
until I had to come back and do it again the next week. Even as I moved to New
York and then back to the Chicago area, I had no inkling that anything
was ever wrong about what I had known. I knew about other denominations
(Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc), but I figured that the only real
differences had to do with what hymns we sang, or order of service, etc.
The what-ifs want to try to imagine what college (when I began
to awake to all the real differences across churches) would have been like if
my church hadn’t fallen apart first. But, that’s not what happened. Just like I
was, my parents were also both involved in the choir, and it was an expected
(and joyous) obligation that I was a committed part of it as well. But by my
senior year in high school, things had fallen apart so badly at my church that
both of my parents found reason to leave not only the choir but the church as
well. There I was, on a random November Sunday morning, having woken up and finally
really seen the writing on the wall. There’s no point in continuing. Other
people had left, not just my parents. Were my few remaining friends going to be
next?
Anyway, the next leg of my journey involved making that
difficult decision to just walk away. The risk was going churchless without a
plan. I knew church was important, but I couldn’t really quantify why. And it
would take a long time before I would begin to get it: we go to church to congregate
with the Lord and with other believers. I went to church to find friends and
socialize (and of course, hoped for a girlfriend somewhere in there), because it
had worked before (well, everything except the girlfriend part). Not only so, but it had worked better at church than
anywhere else. But what it took a long time for me to get was that it wasn’t
about the other people; it was about God and developing that personal
relationship with Him, through receiving Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
And it’s not just about spending time with God at church, although that is
important; it’s also about spending time with Him on all the other days
throughout the week.
In this post I chronicled
how I went from being on the cusp of being saved to being in a very low place
in a matter of just three years. Out of that place, God moved me back to Chicago from Minnesota and right
to a church that would be home for the next ten years. He arranged events so
that I couldn’t skip church for the next few weeks even if I wanted to. By the
time I had the opportunity to skip (if I wanted to), I had been plugged into a Bible
study group, was making new friends, and realized I didn’t want to skip. I
began to pray that my faith would stick this time where it had failed before.
Over the next three years from that point, I saw a rise (and
a fall) in the social circles with whom I fellowshipped, and despite that fall,
what began emerging out of those ashes was a faith growth that I had not ever
previously experienced. It involved reading through the entire Bible for the first
time ever, from cover to cover. It involved being asked (and saying yes) to
co-leading a ministry group I was already attending. This incident sparked
communication from leadership that I needed to be a member in order to do this.
So I attended the membership class and became a member. At that membership
meeting, the leader (who happened to be the senior pastor) mentioned about
anyone who wanted to get baptized could, and that there would be a service coming
up sometime in the next few months. I of course signed up. I had heard about college-aged
folks (including a few that I knew) who had come to faith in Jesus in college
and then had gotten water-baptized as an adult, which involved the full body
dunking in the pool. All I had gotten was sprinkled when I was a very small
child and unable to understand the significance of what was going on. Of course
I wanted to get baptized.
I want to be very careful to say this though, and I am aware
that this might offend many traditional church-goers: baptism does not equate
to salvation. You have to personally believe in your heart that Jesus is your
Lord and Savior, and publicly confess Him as such before others. Baptism is
merely an outward sign of that, that public confession. And I would dare say
that it is not enough to only publicly confess Jesus as your Lord and Savior
once. You have to do it again and again, and you have to mean it each time.
Prior to 2013, what bugged me when I would hear about other
folks’ coming-to-faith testimonies is that I couldn’t pinpoint a moment where I
officially and “first”-ly declared Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I had to come
to the realization that, despite knowing about God and Jesus my whole life,
attending church most of my life, being part of different faith-based groups in
college, I wasn’t actually saved. My baptism was the day that I publicly
confessed Jesus as my Lord and Savior. But privately, the day that I first said
“yes” to following him as Lord was in March 2013, on the day when my daily
Bible reading included the below verse:
Had I not feared the wrath of the enemy,
Lest their adversaries should misunderstand,
Lest they should say, “Our hand is high;
And it is not the Lord who has done all this.” ’
To be honest, this is not really a great testimony, because
it actually reveals how self-centered I was (and still am). This verse is from
the chapter titled “The Song of Moses,” and this particular section of the
chapter quotes God as speaking. As such, the verse above is from the perspective
of God, which means that He feared the wrath of the enemy, lest His people’s
adversaries should become full of themselves and exalt themselves over God,
declaring that it was they and not He who had done the marvelous deeds that He
in fact had done. At the time, though, I saw this verse, saw just a glimpse of what
I perceived as God being relatable. To be honest, seeing aspects of myself in
what I saw in Him was what drew me near to Him. At that time, I saw myself as a
passionate, fiercely loyal and faithful person, and those qualities of the Lord
drew me to Him. I had endured a lifetime of authority figures appearing so “high
and mighty” (and perfect, and all-powerful, etc) – and distant – that even when
those things were ascribed to God, that was a turn-off. After all, how could someone
so powerful and mighty be so good as to be able to understand me and understand
what I was going through? But He gave me the Vineyard, and He gave me the Place
(borrowing the fictitious name from the “A Faraway State of Mind” story series),
and for the first time in my life I was experiencing deep healing. God was good
to have given me all those. He also gave me real friends, the ones that would
see me at my worst and still didn’t reject me.
I saw that verse, with all of the above in the backdrop of
my mind, and said, “I’m in.”
I’d like to say that life has moved swimmingly after I got
baptized, but that wasn’t the case at all. In the approximately six months
leading up to my baptism date, I heard and received many prophetic words over
me (and I made sure to write them down!). Afterwards, nothing. It wasn’t until
another year later when I saw the Bible placed on my music stand as I came into
rehearsal one evening when the message was loud and clear: you need to get back
to reading this. God was convicting me; I had drifted. From then until 2020
when I changed churches, more ups and downs followed. I note that when I
returned to this blog in February 2019, I wrote a post where I attempted to
chronicle all the significant events I could think of from when I had last left
the blog, in February 2013. I neglected to mention my baptism. I did feel
terrible, but looking back I realize it was an indication yet again of what was
important to me. It was an indicator that I had drifted from God yet again, and
2019 was the year when almost everything in my life fell apart. I repented.
Now, in December 2024, with my wedding in the rearview
mirror, and in my own place with my wife, and both of us working jobs to pay
our bills, what lies before me is learning how to love God with my all. (And
then to love my neighbor as myself.) I confess that I have failed to do either
of these much at all in my life. Although I am reading the Bible to learn more,
I still don’t know how I’m going to be able to do either of these things. And I’ve
now been alive long enough to anticipate the answer: I’m going to learn through
fire.
I’ve also wrestled this year with my feelings about my fellow
church members. (I’m not going to link you to the posts detailing them.) But
two things stand out that I believe God was using to tell me that, yes, this is
your church. I want you here. First, a month ago when our pastor gathered us in
the overflow room at the old place after the service to tell us that we will
very soon be moving (and it’s certain), the chairs were arranged in a circle.
This was reminiscent of so many times we “circled up” on the weekend retreats
at the Place. Our pastor had us look around the room and look at each other in
the eyes, again reminiscent of what we would do while “circled up” on those
retreats. Then, the significance of our first Sunday at the new place on the 11th
anniversary of my baptism and proclamation of my faith.
I still struggle with many different things in my life still,
but here are some verses I’ve been learning to stand on in times like these:
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9, NKJV
Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. James 5:16, NKJV
For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. 1 John 3:20, NKJV
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9, NKJV
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