​I became a Christian late in 1979 and immediately wanted to follow Jesus, and all the ways He said we should seek to think, feel, and act to be a Christian who is fellowshipping with Him and His Father. I then became an evangelical Christian in the fall of 1980 and found out that, upon being saved, it was not necessary and certainly not required to think, feel, and act according to Jesus’ ways. This is because He saved me, His work was a finished work so that I don’t have to work, any of my works were like filthy rags compared to His work, when God saw me He didn’t see sinful me but righteous Jesus, and that God loved me just the way I am. Like a spoiled child who has been given everything, I lost my purpose, drive, reason for living truth, and hope of anything in this life being meaningful. I just needed to have faith and wait to be raptured. I became depressed and frustrated with God that He wasn’t blessing my aspirations in this life for how I wanted to live. Then I became angry with God over the same things. Didn’t He see that I had faith to be part of His church and wanted to have Him be part of my life? After about ten years, I fell away and stopped going to church, altogether. There was even a time when I told Him I didn’t want Him in my life. But thankfully, I knew, even then, that He said, “no” and that I’d just have to wait.

​So I waited (well, I just moved on) and He did bless me with a career and a number of useful hobbies, but I only minutely acknowledged Him in it, and I took most of the credit for myself. He allowed me to walk in the darkness for 15 years and to experience the life that it had for me, and it was, in retrospect, a very dangerous time when He could have let me go or taken me out of it. But at His right time, He called me back to Himself. Shortly after that, I was faced with making a decision on which church to go back to - a decision about which church would guide me in my Christian walk. At the same time, however, Jesus told me that He was the One who would guide me in my Christian walk and that I would then be led to a church in which to walk with Him. So I picked up His words, in all His red-letter teachings, commandments, warnings and judgements in His gospels and Revelation, and started listening. After 25 years, I was finally given, again, all the ways He told us to be a Christian who is fellowshipping with Him and His Father. 

​And 20 years after that, I can testify that I had been given my purpose, drive, reason for living truth, and hope of anything in this life being meaningful. I found Him to be the only Theologian necessary for a Christian life leading to eternity. I found that He saved me for His good works that My father had prepared for me to walk in (Eph 2:10), that Jesus’ finished work on the cross was for me to continue His work (in my smallest ways) as His light in the world (John 14:12), that His works through me (His clothing of righteousness for me - Rev 19:8) did, indeed, become filthy when I sinned and that I needed His blood to clean them (1 John 1:5-10) and my Father’s discipline to change me (Rev 3:19), and that God doesn’t love sinful me but faithful me in my willingness to persist in seeking His Son’s holiness and righteousness in my life at the costs which He said would come (Luke 14:25-35). He did not die on the cross to supplement our lives, but so we could die to our lives in order to supplement His (Col 1:24).