How I found it? A long journey
I wasn't always as you see me. 5th grade involved me being taken from my family and placed in a foster home. The next 6 years or so my parents weren't around, my dad was in prison and my mom splitting time between jail and an insane asylum. I was a ward of the state whose grades plummeted after the events started. I took up boxing and worked on a new martial art for 8 years that looked like a lot of judo/boxing moves with the footwork from karate, and used a new fist that I hit brick, concrete, fiberglass, and stainless steel with without breaking it. I used to enjoy pain since the adrenaline let me ride a high almost that blocked out for a while the pain within. My knuckles are still purplish even though it's been 3 years since giving up the boxing and weightlifting even as exercise. Everything turned around in 8th grade. I flunked, lost all my friends, my family was gone, I was a ward of the state to be moved from school to school, I was on multiple antidepressants that I now realize were making me suicidal (didn't know St. John's Wort with other stuff was bad back then). In my misery I became an avid observer of ironies and searched for God. I realized there were too many ironies, some of them very great, finally to pass off as mere coincidence. That summer on August 5, 1998, I heard the Gospel preached in its entirety, and it blew me away. I had no problem accepting the first part, that there was a problem. I had no problem accepting I needed to change and was an evil sinner, indeed I'd recently thought myself the most evil person on the planet because of my fights with my brothers who before all this had started I had cared for so much. I trusted in Jesus and no one else on the planet to save me, and trusted that He'd died for my sins on the cross and risen again. I asked Him into my heart that day to lead my life, to forgive me, to change me utterly... and all with sobs that I doubt anyone but God could interpret, for He sees not as men see, He sees the heart and not the outward appearance. Salvation isn't always experiential or involve what I felt that day, but I felt like the world had fallen off my shoulders, all my guilt and emptiness within me was gone. I couldn't have imagined life without it before that. And my nature was changed, I had a desire for God's will and an utter... will to obey Him and please Him that I still can't fully explain. Because I'd been saved in that Christian summer camp and was being moved from school to school I didn't affiliate with a church for several years (though I was able to attend one with some relatives once in a while) and wasn't baptized for even an even longer period. For a long time I didn't even know what a "denomination" was
But I loved God and told everyone around me of how He'd changed my life, I witnessed to my brothers constantly of the new life and heart I'd found. I was on fire!
Everything I've found of true meaning or value came from that one day, when I found God
When I found everything my heart, my soul, was searching for
And best of all? This isn't just a story, it's a reality of God constantly walking with me, the relationship I have with Him, and a daily interaction with Him as He works in my life through circumstances, other people, prayer, and His Word, the Bible
I can't say it's been easier, as 2 Timothy 3:12 says, all who'll live godly in Jesus will suffer persecution. But I wouldn't give it up for ANYTHING in this universe because it means life so full and free that I don't even like to think of life without it
-Jz
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