Finding God

About a month ago one of my good friends followed the call of God and moved to Austin, TX to begin a new chapter in his life. He used to serve as the worship leader and associate pastor of the church that I currently attend. He also started a high school youth ministry while he was here. I had volunteered to be a part of the team back in late September, simply to help out where I could and possibly gain some experience in the field of ministry. I had never lead a group of high school teens before, and would never claim to be well-versed in the area of ministry by any means.  I would consider myself to be a fairly "new" Christian, considering that I spent the first nineteen years of my life faking my way through religion. I have never read the entire Bible, I don't have many verses memorized, and I haven't lead anyone to Christ since I was in the second grade. It's clear that I don't have the experience or the expertise anywhere near what is required of ...

You might think that I have it all together. You may have seen me do a few nice things here and there, – volunteer at church, pay for an elderly woman’s bus pass, give lunch to a homeless man – but the fact that I may have done a few good deeds in my life is not going to save me. If you truly knew me, I don’t think you would consider me to be a ‘good’ person, certainly not anywhere on the spectrum close to “perfect”. I am a broken human being and the mess that I’ve created in my wake is something that I can never repair. I lie, I cheat, I steal. I remember being called a “goody two-shoes”, but I spent nearly an entire school-year’s worth of Sundays looking at pornography in my dorm room rather than going to church. I’ve jumped out of the back window of a house because I was afraid of being caught by the police at an underage drinking party. I’ve spent countless hours of my life lusting after other women and I’ve struggled with greed, envy, bitterness, anger, and self-worth. I hav...