Living for Jesus is better!
Posted
by
JasonP on
4/21/2008 2:06:12 PM
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I am 32. My family and I attended a Southern Pentecostal church in Oklahoma for many years as a child. I was baptized into the church and I suppose I was saved back then, but I don't really remember the day, it was just something I learned by osmosis I suppose...
We moved to Oregon when I was in the seventh grade, and this turned out to be a culture shock for me. We had lived in a city with a population in the high 100,000's, and we moved to a town of about 10,000 people. Also, before the move out west, we had stopped going to our Pentecostal church regularly. This continued after the move to Oregon, eventually culminating in not going to any sort of church at all. I look at this part of my life as beneficial. Looking back at it, God has always been there for me, but because of the strict, conservative Pentecostal background I had lived under, I never really crossed the line to where God could become starkly visible.
I was extremely shy as a child and adolescent, possibly due in part to my very strict background, though I tend to think it was just who I was. After high school I joined the Navy, and it was there I begin to break out of my shell. In boot camp I was forced to be part of a group, which is opposite to my school years where my shyness had forced me to choose not to be a part of any group. So the Navy was very beneficial for me in that respect. The dark side of this period began when I had finished my required Navy schooling and was at my permanent duty station in San Diego. I found the partying world, and discovered that this was a place I enjoyed. I could get a buzz and not really be myself, I could be loud, funny, crazy, a party animal. I could be the guy I had never been. This was very liberating for me. But it also got me into trouble eventually. I did some illegal drugs one night for the first time while out partying, and the very next morning, when I was back on board, my number got pulled to take a urinalysis. Of course I failed and was kicked out of the Navy. This was not what I had planned, and after a few months of wandering around looking for something to do, I wound up finding a job in Alaska working for a fishing company.
At that point I had sworn off drugs, but not partying. This didn't work very well. Most of my newfound friends used all kinds of drugs, and I finally slipped into habitual drug use, even though I knew full well that I was where I was at in my life because of that exact thing! Well, after four years of fishing, I finally decided that was not for me, and I went home to Oregon.
I wound up working in reforestation, delivering furniture, picking and selling brush for seasonal decorations, and even fighting forest fires at one point. I went through a whole slough of jobs, and during this whole time I was not doing drugs on a regular basis, but it was definitely a part of my life to be sure. At that point I don't think it was the drugs that were my biggest problem, they were just a part of the larger problem which was indifference about my life. I really did not care what happened to me, I was just floating along, not a care in the world, living one day to the next. The drugs were just some spice that got thrown into the mix every now and then.
Eventually, I found work at a print shop running a little printing press, and during this time I met somebody whom I dated for a few months. We wound up having a child together. We never stayed together, and during her pregnancy I met another girl, whom I wound up moving to live with in a town a few hours away. Me and her are now married, and have a child together.
Now I am in school working on my bachelors degree, am on the honors list at the university I am attending, have a wife and two boys who I love dearly (my oldest I have every other weekend as well as during the summertime for a few weeks), and most importantly I have allowed Jesus to have an active part in my life. I say "allowed him" because before this part of my life, I knew who he was and that he loved me and had an eternal life for me after this one, but I had blinders on and was living my life for myself. I am proof that a life lived for self-satisfaction will never be self-satisfying. I guess that would be my testimony. My life was not a violent one, it wasn't peppered with crazy stories or unbelievable escapes from death or anything like that. It was one that started out with my saviour as an active part of my life, then moving into a period of loneliness, searching, and longing for something better, then finally the present when I have come back to my Lord and saviour Jesus Christ along with the full knowledge that he is the ONLY one who has the water that will actually quench my thirst! Now I am living a life that still has struggles, joys, heartaches and happiness, but the difference is Jesus is in it. Now my life consists of loving and trying to please the Lord, loving my family, looking forward to how God is going to bless my life, and spreading his message of Love and Grace to my friends and family and whoever else I meet.
