My Personal Story of Faith: Inspired – August 10, 2023
In order to tell this story, I need to lay the groundwork leading up to my Rock Bottom moment of searching and Growth.
Some of this may be a repeat if you read about my Mother.
I couldn’t have asked for a better Mother. I word it this way intentionally because I’m trying to avoid feelings of competition if I were to proclaim my Mom as the best Mom in the world. Knowing there are a lot of great Mother’s out there, I’ll just say my Mom was Perfect for me.
My Mom raised me with Christian Values and set out to take me to Sunday School, but I made it difficult on her and my Dad was Agnostic / Atheist and didn’t support her in this. So she quit trying to force Sunday school and then planted seeds about God and had support from my Dad in the Christian Values (Respect, Keep your word, Do unto others …)
My Dad taught me about the Solar System and Darwinism planting seeds of doubt. Those roots took hold in the forefront of my mind. In hindsight, these seeds had shallow roots but were visibly strong in my early years. While the seeds my Mom planted were not as visible in my early years, but they were creating strong deep roots.
I grew up a Doubting Thomas.
If the topic of God came up, I was always interested to hear others perspective and never tried to sway them away from God. Personally I wanted God to be real, but I just couldn’t get past some of the doubting questions.
Growing up I excelled in sports (Baseball, Hockey, Basketball and Golf). I received attention for athletic performance from My Dad and his Dad. I developed a sense of self worth through sports. I thought I was going to become a pro hockey player. My Dad lost his job and I grew late compared to my peers, that was the end of hockey. My Dad’s Dad announced just before I turned 16 that I was going to play golf. He was the kind of person you didn’t say no to. So I became a 2 handicap in 2 years, was All Area in high school and received a golf scholarship to a small college. Then I hit a ceiling on my Golf (I plan to do a separate Blog on handling pressure and performance).
At the age of 21, I finally gave up on Sports as a career and a friend from work said I should go into a science and technical career. I said ok and had to start over in college and pay my own way. I got it done, had a good career, married my girlfriend that I met at 18 years old and had children. Life is going pretty good and I’m feeling like I understand the world and the “universe”.
Then my Maternal Grandfather passed away. I was a mess. Never cried like that before and I couldn’t even comprehend why. Looking back, I realize that he was my best Male example of God’s Grace in my life. At this point in my life I didn’t believe in God, but I wouldn’t deny God either. I called myself an agnostic like my Dad. I never really processed my Grandpa’s passing, I just moved on.
A few years after my Grandpa’s passing, my Mom passes away from Cancer at way too young of an age, she was only 62. She always read, studied, followed “expert advice” and tried to take good care of herself. I was a complete mess when my Grandpa passed and this was exponentially worse. My Mom was my only source of unconditional Love and I couldn’t handle it.
I never processed my Grandpa’s “death”, so that is buried deep down inside. Now my Mom is “dead” and I don’t know how to process either one. Because I couldn’t process either of these losses I didn’t and just tried to move on again.
This put me into a deep depression that I hid from everyone. I went on with my life, still doing well at work. Still trying to show Love to my children. Things progressively got worse with my wife, then 6 years after my Mom passed I wound up in a nasty divorce. I’m not going to go into details here, but it was extremely bad. My world came crashing in on me. It was more than I could bear and I ultimately hit rock bottom. It felt hopeless.
I started searching on the internet for why believe in God. Three things / events happened to me that gave me an unshakable sense of knowing that God is absolutely real and I believe now that I was guided to these things. The more I learn, the more I know that I know that I know.
The First Event:
- I came across a video from Lee Strobel called the case for a creator
- I never heard of this or him, but there it is in my path and I’m driven to watch it.
- Lee Strobel earned a master of studies and law degree from Yale Law School and was the former legal Editor of the Chicago Tribune. He was an Atheist and set out to prove to his wife that there is no God. So he used journalistic skills and Science and instead proved that there must be a Creator / God.
- This is what I needed to answered many of my shallow rooted surface level “science” doubts. Lee proved with Science and Scientists that many of these so called science beliefs like Darwin’s theory of evolution are proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be False!
The Second Event:
- I continued my search for why believe in God
- I found several articles on this topic and many of them didn’t do anything to sway me
- Then I came across one that simply said that God puts in us the desire / need to seek him out. This resonated in my spirit. I have always wanted there to be a God in Heaven and a Heaven. I just couldn’t make the jump across the surface level “science” that my Dad and the schools taught me. The video above removed that block.
- I was finally able to hear this message and it resonated in my Spirit. I knew this to be True.
Mark 7:16
“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.”
The Third Event:
- In the same post from above, there was a prayer and a suggestion to read the prayer out loud and to allow yourself to give full attention to the prayer. (I wish I saved this prayer to share with you but I don’t have it, it was from 8 years ago)
- I was laying on my couch on my back.
- I calmed myself and said the prayer out loud with intention.
- I then felt the weight of a grown man standing on my Chest and a sense of knowing throughout my whole body that this was significant, spiritual and was done with intention.
- I felt that Jesus visited me.
- It felt calming, comforting and nice.
- God’s Love!
I am not without Sin, but Jesus was and God’s Love for us is unmeasurable.
We can all be made Flawless by the cross
God Bless You!
Wooww … a great and inspiring story ☺️