My first post and the most important thing that has happened to me.

Well thanks to one of my good friends, I've been influenced to start a blog. I don't know how often I'll be posting things here, but I guess I'll add my random three cents about different topics as they come up or just to update people on some funny things that happen in the future.

So for my first blog post I want to tell about the best thing that has happened to me: my salvation.
I know people are a fan of huge posts, so I will try to keep your interest and keep this as short as I can. One random night when I was playing in my room with my G. I. Joe's, yes, I loved playing with those things as I was growing up, my parents called me into their room. They told me that they wanted to make sure I understood salvation. I was about five at the time. My interest was not in having a long talk with my parents, it was getting back to my room and playing with my awesome G. I. Joe's. I knew enough about salvation to answer most of my parents questions with "good enough" answers to satisfy them, but then they asked me to pray and ask the Lord into my heart. I was like, ughh! Prayer?! This will keep me from playing! So I said the shortest prayer I could think of to make my parents happy and then BAM I was back in my room playing with my toys. In case you didn't see my intentions, I had no genuine faith in that prayer what so ever.

About four years later when I was nine, my dad went to go get gas for the lawn mower and asked me if I wanted to come. Of course I wanted to go! That meant I got to sit in the front seat! And when you're nine, that's one of the best things in the world. So we drove to random gas station and yes, this was over a decade ago when you had to pay inside for your gas. When we went inside the gas station, I followed dad and watched him pay for the gas. As my dad always does, when he finished paying, he handed the lady a Gospel tract. She didn't even thank my dad or acknowledge the fact that he gave her something. As we were walking out of the gas station, I looked back and I saw the girl rip the tract in two and throw it into the trash can with an angry look on her face. As I got back into the car and buckled my seat belt from the front seat, I looked at dad and told him what I saw. He shrugged it off and said, "Mikey, I can't control how people react to the Gospel, I can only do my best to reach them for Christ." I remember that statement very clearly, what my dad said after that I sadly can't remember everything he said. I do remember that he used an illustration to show the difference of the unsaved man and the saved man. I don't know if it was guilt from four years earlier or if it was me truly understanding the Gospel, but I admitted to dad that when I had "prayed" with him and mom a few years earlier that I had said the prayer just to appease them and that I didn't really mean it. Dad pulled the car over into an empty parking lot and took me through the plan of salvation. In that parking lot, I prayed and asked God into my heart.

Thought I was done? So did I. Fast forward to 2008. March 7th, 2008 to be exact. I was 15 years old and in High School. I was cool. I was a High Schooler and I was at the top of the world, or thought I was as every young male High Schooler thought he was. I'll never forget an email that I got from a friend. I had known that friend for a couple years now and when I opened up his email, it went along the lines of this: My friend had "committed suicide" and his mom had got on his email was sending emails out to all his contacts to let them know. That scared me to death. I've never had someone that close to me "die" before. The entire afternoon and evening I was thinking about it and I was slightly depressed because of it. It gave me a lot of time to look over my life. I thought back to when I had first blown my parents off the first time that they wanted me to get saved back when I was small. I thought back to the time when me and my dad prayed a few years before. I know this sounds lame, but the thought of my friend dying made me really think: what would happen if I died? The thought scared me to death. I thought I was saved, I was pretty sure of it, but I wasn't 100% sure that I was saved. I laid in bed that night wrestling with myself. My brother was all ready asleep in his bed and it was just before midnight. I compared my life to someone very influential in my life: Matt Ashley, my sister's boyfriend. I looked at his life and the way he acted and compared it to the way I acted and the way I was and to get to the point: it did not add up. I got out of my bed that night and I bent down beside my bed and I prayed. I prayed. I prayed. I prayed. I cried. I pleaded with God to take my sin away, to come into my heart and to save me from my sin. When I was done, I got back into bed. Was I saved then? Was I saved when I prayed with my dad? I honestly don't know. But I do know by the grace of God that I am His child and that I am on the way to Heaven.

As of now, I am a Bible Major at Bob Jones University. God has called me to preach. I have answered His calling and will proudly serve my God. Believe it or not, this is the short version, even though this was rather lengthy and I apologize for that. I hope this will be an encouragement to you and I hope to blog more in the future. Until then!

1 Timothy 4:14-16 "Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee."