What’s going on?

I did not grow up in church. My closest relatives that I would have called religious were an aunt and uncle on my dad’s side that were Catholic. I went to church a few times as a child with them, but it sucked, I never wanted to go. I grew up with my mom and my sister. Dad left when I was six, he got remarried shortly thereafter and I saw him one weekend a month. Mom got remarried when I was fifteen and I really didn’t care for the guy. I was a band nerd in high school so I spent a lot of time in music.

I went to college right out of high school with a half scholarship in music for playing the trumpet. I was real good. That was where I was introduced to alcohol with no supervision. I liked getting drunk, I got real good at that too. I stopped going to most of my classes about half way through the semester and ended up getting a DUI during exam week and dropping out totally, not passing a single class. I moved in with dad and started working fast food, and that’s where I was introduced to Marijuana and LSD.

My next big step was to join the army. “Be all that you can be.” Besides this was the early 90’s, the Persian Gulf War had just ended, I could be a hero, somehow. Three years later, and even more drug use, I was thrown out of the army. Couldn’t finish my four year enlistment, lost my college fund, many fond memories of drunk nights crawling back to the barracks.

The next four years were a blur. Working as a convenience store assistant manager, living with friends, drinking large quantities of beer, sleeping wherever with whoever. Moving from Maryland, to Alabama, to New Mexico. Albuquerque, New Mexico. This is where God stepped in.

See in the early nineties my dad, living in Annapolis, Maryland, bought a lot of land in Anderson, South Carolina on Lake Hartwell to build his vacation home. (How does one find a perfect vacation spot 1,000 miles away in a town unheard of?) He had the home built and one day during a phone conversation in May of 2000 asked me if I would like to come and live in his vacation home for free, for a fresh start in a new place. I agreed, and drove 26 hours stopping only for gas from Albuquerque to Anderson.

I got a job, quit, then got another job as an entry level cashier working at Office Depot in Anderson. I started on August 2^nd, 2000, during tax free weekend. I moved up quickly there, within three months I was promoted to lead cashier.

About two weeks after I started working there, a girl named Amanda was hired to work in the copy and print center. She was hot. (Still is, but now she’s married. Anyway…) She started telling me about a “cool” church in town that she went to, and I started telling her about all the drunk nights I had at bars. I liked hanging out with her at work, because no matter what I said, she never looked down at me. I cussed around her – not at her, but around her, I had a lot of respect for her, she was different than any girl that I had ever met. She had obvious morals, and talked about this Jesus guy a lot – not throwing it in my face, or telling me much about how I needed him, or that I was going to go to hell without him, just talking about him. I remember us standing in the copy and print center and her telling me the story of Jonah, she had no preconceived motive behind it, it was just a book that she was studying at that time.

Over the course of seven months, she kept inviting me to her church, and I kept telling her that I didn’t need God. I remember saying that, “I am not in the hospital, my world is not falling apart, why do I need God?” She never debated me. I really felt like she respected me. The only people that I had ever had contact with that went to church were people that I was out drinking with on Saturday night. They got up for church the next morning, I slept in. I figured that I had it better. Amanda was not like them.

In February of 2001, I finally gave in and told her that I would go and check out her church. I remember that I did so for two reasons, #1 so she would quit asking me – I would go and hate it and be able to tell her I tried it, and #2 if there were ever a chance of her and I going out I would have to go try her church. My first Sunday at NewSpring was February 11^th, 2001. I remember going to her apartment that morning and then I rode with her to church. I remember the discussion we had walking up to the Sullivan Building at Anderson College, that this would be the first time in about fifteen years that I had willingly walked into a church for a normal Sunday – not a wedding or a funeral. I was twenty-seven years old.

People were nice. I wasn’t. They smiled. I didn’t. They smiled anyway. I didn’t say a word to anyone. We went in and sat down. (Dang, why do we have to sit in the third row?) I had my Alabama Baseball hat pulled down tight and pretty much defied anyone to tell me to take it off. I would have, but I don’t think that I would have ever come back. Amanda always told me that how I dressed didn’t matter, that it was not an issue at this cool church. No one said anything to me about my hat.

I remember Perry that day. When he spoke, I remember feeling that he had that same thing that I saw in Amanda. Whatever it was that made her different from every other “Christian” that I had met in my life, he had it too. He spoke on Discipleship that day. I still remember the sermon.

After church we went to lunch and had some small talk. I said that it wasn’t that bad. She asked me if I would go back next week and I said that I would. That week I went to Lifeway and bought an $8.00 bible. I wanted to learn more about this Jesus guy that Amanda and Perry had been telling me about. I started in Matthew.

The next week Perry spoke on Fellowship and it was just as electrifying as the previous week. I found out that there was an evening service as well. At lunch with Amanda, I remember asking her if the evening service was just for members, or could anyone go. She invited me to go back with her that night.

The night service on February 18^th, 2001 is a night that I will never forget. We came in, got her normal seat on the third row. The band started playing, and worship started. I didn’t really get into the music, but the people around me did. The music kept going, and going, and going. People were singing, getting down on their knees, laying on the floor in the aisles, and the band kept on playing and singing. I remember sitting in my seat, staring at the carpet, trying to understand these voices in my head. One voice was saying, “You know what you need to do, this is real.” The other saying, “It is not real, they will all turn on you, they know that you are not like them, they are all staring at you.” The first, “You have found what you have been looking for.” I remember thinking, that I didn’t even know that I was looking for anything. The second voice, “Just stand up, walk out the back door, get in your truck and leave. Everything will be back to normal.” The first, “This is different than anything you have ever experienced. You know what you need to do…..Give your life up, totally.” Between these voices I remember sitting there in the chair, staring at the carpet in front of me. I remember looking around and seeing everyone with their eyes closed singing or, like Amanda, on their knees. I remember catching eye contact for a brief moment with a guy on stage playing the bongos, I looked away quickly. I just wanted this to be over. Like I said, after about an hour Perry came up to the mic and said a few words, that the night had not been planned that way, but that it was what they had felt the Spirit wanted. The last thing that he said was that, “before you leave, give someone a hug.” At the dismissal I bolted for the door, and as I was working through the crowd, I looked up and saw the bongo player dude in front of me, he politely grabbed me and gave me a hug, and I continued to bolt for my truck. I got out to the “safety” of my truck and just sat there, kinda waiting for Amanda to come out so that I could say goodbye and apologize for bolting so fast. After a few minutes, she came out and talked to me at my truck. I apologized and remember trying to explain the conversation that was going on in my head to her. She looked like she understood and asked me if I was ready to “give my life up, totally” right now. I told her that I was not, that it was too much of an emotional experience in there, that if I ever did give it all up, I wanted to know that it was completely real and not just an emotional driven experience. (This blows me away that I remember thinking like this when I was completely lost.) (I knew somewhere inside of me that the “Christians” that I drank with probably had an emotional experience somewhere along their lives, but I didn’t want what they had. I wanted what Perry and Amanda had.) She gave me some bible stuff to look at, I don’t remember exactly what it was, pretty sure that it was in Romans, and I left. I went home. But I couldn’t erase the impact of that experience, especially the battle that was going on in my head.

I don’t remember the ride home or much else about that evening with the exception of at about 10 o’clock that night I was laying in bed. I remember giving it all up. I remember praying by myself with no one leading me, “God, I have messed it up. If you are real, I believe that you can do a better job with my life than I can. Please come into my life you can have complete control.” As I was praying I started crying and I felt a feeling that I have never felt before. A full body physical tingling inside my skin starting from head to toe.

That is my story. Everyone’s got a story. What is your story?