Testimony

I grew up in a Christian home as a Lutheran. Baptized as a baby, I was pretty much religiously at church every single Sunday. Almost without fail. There are a lot of stories from the Bible that I don’t really remember learning. It’s almost like they’ve just always been there. Fast forward from childhood to middle school, I was in Sunday school and then confirmation. In 9th grade, I was confirmed and from there, not much happened. I thought I understood God pretty well and things made sense.

Beyond being raised around the church, in a middle school youth group environment, I also officially accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. I went to church camp and did all of the things. All the boxes were checked. However, there was still a problem. As I rose through the ranks of school and became progressively smarter, questions started to arise about the faith that didn’t have good answers.

You’re all probably familiar with them. Why are we here? What’s the point? Does any of this make sense? What if God is a lie? Why does science seem to contradict the Bible? The list could go on and on. My solution to these problems was simply to ignore them. This worked pretty well because life was going rather well for me. However, everything came crashing down rather spectacularly right before I graduated college.

During my senior year, two family members passed away and a long-term relationship ended rather suddenly. As a result, I lost nearly 40 pounds and my will to live along with it. That was my rock bottom and the point at which I couldn’t ignore the big questions anymore. I basically wanted to know why a loving God would do something like this to me. I was a good kid. I didn’t deserve to be betrayed by the person I loved the most in the world.

It was at this point that I started seeking out the water from the deep wells. I read and reread the Bible several times. I listened to sermons and religious podcasts every single day at work. I memorized Bible verses that I had to recite constantly to keep from breaking down. I read all the apologetics I could get my hands on.

After the first six months, things weren’t getting better, but they also weren’t getting worse. Then slowly, day by day, the next six months did actually get better. What I ultimately found was that there was in fact a rock at the bottom of it all. This was the rock that I built my life on going forward. When I emerged from the darkness and the depths, my faith was changed. It was transformed by the hand of God. I finally began to understand the true depth of the situation. I still don’t have all of the answers, but I do have some of them. I’m providing them here in the hopes that others might benefit from that which helped me.

~CCR