The Background

To fully understand these events it is necessary to give some background on myself…  I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and attended an Assembly of God Church.  While I attended every week I was not the “model Christian” I tried to portray myself to be.  For the most part my faith was something I claimed, and occasionally used… but never something I lived.

I rarely if ever opened my Bible, and only prayed if I was in trouble or needed help.  For a brief period however, in 1996 when I was 16 years old, I spent some time honestly seeking the Lord’s will for my life, specifically in the area of dating.  Through some prayer and study, I was lead in my bible directly to the story of Isaac and Rebekah (Genesis, 24) and felt lead that this was to be a prophecy of sorts for my life.

That day I made a covenant with the Lord.  He was to give me an undeniable sign that would show me the woman He had chosen me to marry.  And it would be this woman that I would spend the rest of my life with.

In the years immediately following, I grew distressed and discouraged… it seems we always want God to keep His promises immediately if not sooner, and I decided on my own what this sign should be.

Without praying, or even seeking the Lord’s opinion I decided on my own that this woman, whoever she was would bring the subject of marriage to me, instead of my asking her… well it calmed my nerves and helped me to think it would be much harder for me to miss the sign He promised… but it was a poor decision on my part.

I continued to live pretty much as I had, only occasionally talking to the Lord, and still more rarely spending time in the Word.  Frankly I lived as though I was unsaved, and really saw no reason to do otherwise.  My life of secret sin, and sittin’ pretty on Sunday had served me fairly well to this point.

Through my hectic teenage years my mother remained faithful, she was one of the few steady Christian influences in my life, though my pastor at the time spent countless hours counseling me, and praying with and for me.

Sometime around ’98 my mother had invested in SkyAngel Christian satellite television, and one of the channels was PraiseTV, it was quite similar to MTV except all the songs it had were Christian rock.

One song in particular, Maire Brennan’s Perfect Time, had me spellbound.  I wasn’t too big on the Celtic thing, but the song gripped me from the beginning and I just had to find it.  Immediately I searched online for the CD, only to find that nobody had heard of it yet.  I looked in Christian bookstores, and nobody had heard of it.

So putting my search on the back burner for a while, I moved down to Green Bay Wisconsin looking for work.  Most of the time I spent in my first couple years in Green Bay was pretty well wasted on making and spending my money frivolously.  I worked, I played, I ate and slept… that was about it…

Well by 2002 I was working in a paper product warehouse, driving forklift and logging cases off the conveyor, etc.  I had a major problem with my mouth, and would joke, tell sick stories, swear and lie with the best of my co-workers.  One night in mid June I was listening to some music (about the only conviction I had was that my music should be Christian, and the job I was at let us bring our own stereo), I happened to be listening to the OC Supertones (my favorite band) and in particular the songs 20/20 and This Is What it Comes To.

That night in that warehouse I had to re-evaluate my life, and I reached the decision that while I went to church and said all the right things, I really was not a Christian.  All by myself in that warehouse, in the middle of June 2002, I asked Jesus to truly forgive me, and instead of just asking Him to save me, I truly gave my life to Him.  I dedicated myself to reading my Bible every day, to prayer, and living the life I was supposed to…  To becoming the man that He wanted me to be.