Two Scoops of Vanilla

I am speaking to a group of about 500 high school students in a few weeks. I will be sharing my testimony. As always, it seems to go better when I write things out; it allows me to sort out my thoughts. So here is the dry run:




My sharing my testimony with this audience is about two years in the making. After hearing someone share a rather dramatic testimony with our students, I spoke to our spiritual life director about the need I saw for the kids to hear a very "vanilla" testimony. One without all the drugs and sex and violence. So many testimonies we hear go something like: "I really screwed up my life, but God fixed it, and now everything is great." I just thought that the kids should hear from someone who didn't screw up their life. Of course, whenever we get those thoughts, it usually means that God wants us to do something about it, not to wait for someone else to step up to the plate.

Back in July, Dale sent out an email to the teachers asking for recommendations for chapel speakers or guest musicians. That email haunted me and bugged me all summer long. I knew I needed to volunteer to share my "vanilla" testimony, I just didn't want to. But not wanting to end up in the belly of a fish the next time I go sailing, I caved in and replied that I thought God wanted me to share my story with the students. Dale was excited, and here I am.

Now my goal today, the reason I share my story, is to hopefully convince some of my listeners that they don't need to experience God's grace the hard way. We don't have to delve into the depths of depravity to know God's saving power. God saved me from all the sex and drugs and rock-n-roll by preventing me from ever experiencing it. He pulled a preemptive strike of sorts. And I am so glad he did.

I was born and raised in a Christian family that was always very active in church. Many of my earliest memories are of going to church with my family. I first accepted Jesus into my heart when I was about four years old. We were on our way to a church baptism/potluck. My brother was going to be baptized that day, and like any younger brother, I wanted to as well. I didn't know what baptism was, I just knew that Bobbie was doing it so I should do it to. From the back seat of our car, I asked my mom what a person has to do to be baptized. She said that they have to ask Jesus into their heart. So I did. In the back seat of the family car. We got to the baptism at the YMCA, and I realized that being baptized meant going into a very large, and very deep swimming pool. I couldn't swim, so I chickened out.

Later on, in about fifth grade, my family went to family camp with my church. It was at the same camp where the original Parent Trap film was shot. Every morning after the Bible study, the pastor offered an invitation for those who wanted to be baptized. While I was somewhat committed to my faith (about as much as your average ten-year-old), I didn't feel I was really ready to be baptized. Until my sister - my younger sister - went forward one morning. I suddenly felt like an outsider in my family. Everyone had been baptized but me. So I went forward to be baptized, but it wasn't for the right reasons.

Through the rest of my childhood, and as I grew into a teenager, my faith was always a part of my life, but not always an important part. It was just sort of something I did. I really knew no different. On several occasions, during a church service or while listening to a special speaker, I would feel convicted about my half-hearted faith. I would respond to the altar call and rededicate my life to Christ. There were probably several of these at Sunday School. I remember going forward at an altar call after a theater group presented a dramatic allegory of the gospel message. But none of these rededications really "stuck." I would read my Bible consistently for a few weeks, then just slip back into my normal ways.

As I got into middle school, I think God started working on me. I had this sense for quite some time that I needed to take my faith more seriously. I needed to either be totally on-fire for God, or just forget the whole thing. But I didn't ever take that step. I'm not sure I really knew how. I remember for quite some time having this feeling of, "I am a Christian, so now what do I do?" I went to a Christian school, I went to church every Sunday, but there seemed to be a piece of the puzzle missing. And someday, I would have to figure out what that was and do something about it.

At the beginning of my eighth grade year, I think God once again tried to get my attention. Four days into the school year, I stayed home from school with a bad cold. That bad cold turned into pneumonia with a whole host of other complications. I was out of school for four weeks, and it took several months to finally be back to full strength. I remember shortly after this ordeal thinking about the verse in Job that says, "The Lord gives and He takes away." I felt that God had taken almost everything away from me: my health, all my school and extra-curricular activities. He wanted my attention. He got my attention, but I didn't give Him my attention long enough to hear what He had to say. So I went back to old habits.

Well, finally the moment came for me to get serious about my faith. Apparently nearly dying of pneumonia wasn't enough. It was my sophomore year of high school. I was on the basketball team (notice I didn't say playing basketball. I wasn't very good, so I sat the bench most of the season.). We went undefeated in league, and had high hopes of a CIF championship. Well, at the same time, my youth group was also preparing to go to Winter Camp. My youth pastor kept bugging me about going, but I would always tell him that I couldn't go because we were going to be in playoffs. But he was persistent in asking, and I was persistent in giving him the same answer.

We made it easily through the first two rounds of playoffs, but faced a very tough opponent in the third round, which happened to be the Tuesday before my youth group was set to leave for winter camp. And we lost. Our playoff dreams were over, and my schedule was now suddenly very open. So when my youth pastor asked me again about going, I didn't have a good excuse anymore. I talked to my parents, and signed up to go.

That weekend, the speaker, who was an associate pastor at my church and also later on my dentist, talked about being a "spiritual champion." He challenged us to go all-out in our faith. Now I don't remember a real defining moment during that weekend; no altar call or anything like that. I just came home committed to my faith and committed to my Savior. Jesus had been my Savior for about ten years before this, but that weekend He became my Lord.

A few months later, during an impromptu hiking trip in Palm Springs on a Sunday afternoon, I was baptized again. A group from my church went hiking in Palm Canyon. We hiked along a dry river bed for quite awhile, then on the way back stopped at the pools formed by the large rocks in the creek. One of the guys in our group asked our youth pastor if he could be baptized, and the pastor obliged. I stood at a distance reflecting on the situation and on my own faith. Seeing me by myself, my youth pastor came up asked what I was thinking about. I told him I was thinking about baptism. He asked, not entirely seriously, if I wanted to be baptized. I said, "Yeah I do." So he walked with me back to the pool, and I was baptized. This time it wasn't because of a family member or anyone else. It was my making a statement as a follower of Christ.

Going to winter camp and being baptized a second time brought about quite a shift in my priorities. About that time I started hanging out with a new group of friends. Before all this I sort of hung out with the "cool kids" from basketball. They weren't really what I would consider friends, they just let me sit with them at lunch time. But one day, I decided to go have lunch with a new kid in my grade. A conversation about Christian rock music started a friendship with a guy named Shawn who is still one of my closest friends. Being friends with Shawn got me involved with doing sound. He played in the chapel band, and they needed a sound man. So even though I had no idea what I was doing, I volunteered. That got me doing sound for school, and for church and youth group.

I also took a year off from playing sports. My freshman and sophomore years I played three sports each year: volleyball, basketball, and baseball. But one night in youth group, I was kind of stressing out about some things. I had a tendency back then - and still do to an extent - to fill my plate too full. I was at a point where something had to give. And it seemed that sports was the thing to go. The thing is, I was actually really competitive when I was younger. Although I wasn't a good athlete, I still had a drive to win. I would lay awake at night after a game, going over play after play in my head. It drove me crazy; I was obsessing over how I played and how I could have done better. But I needed to take a step back from that. So I didn't play sports at all my junior year.

Then something really cool happened. I had a friend who went on a mission trip to Ukraine with a group called Christian Outreach International. They took sports teams and performing arts teams to different countries and used that as a way to connect with the people so that they can share the gospel. Hearing her stories really sparked my interest. So, after a long school year of fundraising, I was off to the Ukraine as part of the COI basketball team. We went to four cities, played some ball and shared Christ with the other teams and the spectators. In the process of all this, God took away that competitive drive. I was able to just enjoy the game for its own sake because we weren't there to win basketball games (and I don't think we won to many. Ukraine has some big basketball players). We were there to win souls. I decided to play basketball my senior year for our school team. We had a great season, but most importantly, my whole perspective on playing had changed.

The last significant change was that I got really involved in my church and youth group, and the spiritual life of my school. My entire junior year, some friends and I would get together at lunch and pray for our school. The school was not a very friendly environment for people who wanted to follow Jesus, even though it was a Christian school. So mostly for moral support, we got together to pray and encourage each other. And as a result, we saw God do mighty things the following year. Many students, even those with the hardest of hearts, turned around and started living for Christ. It was awesome to see. We saw similar things happen in the youth group. A group of us really devoted ourselves to prayer, and God did some amazing things.

Like I said at the beginning, my story is very different from most you hear in these situations because it's not full of the sex, drugs, drinking, and partying. I really didn't even date in high school, mostly because I was too afraid to ask a girl out. I almost dated a girl my senior year. We had the "I like you. Oh really, I like you too" talk, but hadn't officially started dating yet. Then I found out that she had recently gotten pregnant by some other guy before we started hanging out and miscarried very early in the pregnancy. That completely rocked my world. Needless to say, we never actually dated. The experience was sort of a wake up call in that I felt that God wanted me to take my relationships, especially dating ones, very seriously or there might be consequences that I wasn't ready to face.

The closest I ever came to drugs was a guy I hung out with in junior high showed me a joint once. I've never really cared for the taste of alcohol. In fact, I found recently that anything more than a Mike's Hard Lemonade will give me a migraine, so I tend to stay away from the stuff. And I wasn't cool enough in high school to get invited to the wild parties. My friends and I just hung out and watched X-Files. We were pretty lame, I guess.

I was just never exposed to much of this stuff. I mean I wasn't in a complete bubble, I just never got close to any of it. I went to a small Christian school, but that didn't mean I was sheltered from everything the world has to offer. I knew at least six or seven girls just from my high school who got pregnant. I remember some big scandal one time in high school where the principal made a bunch of kids take drug tests. I don't know what ever came of it, but he had to have reason for making them do it. I heard bits and pieces of stories of some of the things guys I played basketball with would do on the weekends. But I just never really had the opportunity to get involved in any of it. And I don't it's because I was some super Christian. In fact probably the opposite. The Bible says God won't let us be tempted beyond what we can handle. Maybe He knew that if I was tempted I would fall and really mess things up, perhaps beyond repair.

I did struggle with some things, however. I had a pretty bad relationhsip with my mom growing up. We just fought about everything, and had the same old fight over and over again. In my mind at the time, I thought it was pretty much hopeless. It just seemed like we would never reconcile things or move on. Fortunately, after I grew up a bit and as she saw that I had grown up, we were able to let go of the fights and we have a pretty decent relationship now. Of course being the first of her children to give her grandkids helped a lot, but that's another point.

I also really struggled with reading my Bible consistently. I still do. I have always been a veracious reader. I can sit down on a Saturday afternoon, bury my nose in a book, and not come up until 200-300 pages have gone by. But reading a page-and-a-half of the Bible takes so long and is so hard. I don't know what it is, it is just the hardest thing to do.

Looking back, though, I can see that there were things I did - and things God did - that prevented my story from becoming more dramatic. First, even though I didn't realize it at the time, my parents did a pretty good job with me. Like I said, I wasn't close to them and I fought all the time with my mom, but they gave me the right opportunities to grow spiritually. Even though it was a big sacrifice financially, they put me in Christian schools kindergarten through high school. They also greatly encouraged my involvement with youth group and with my friends from youth group. They drove me all over town to take me to events, and let me go to just about any youth group event I wanted to. I am very grateful for that support.

As you probably picked up on, I was very active in my youth group, which is a second key to success. I went to the weekly meetings every Tuesday. I went to summer and winter camps. I was involved in small-group discipleship. In addition, I really latched on to a couple of the youth leaders who were willing to invest a lot of time and effort into my life. I had several great Christian role models. They prayed with me and for me, and held me accountable in my faith. And they modeled good godly behavior for me.

Lastly, I had a small group of friends who were committed to each other's spiritual growth. We started hanging out in high school, and continued all through college. We got together weekly to study the Bible and pray for each other and encourage each other. We saw each other through break-ups, and were were all in each other's weddings. We were there for each other through thick and thin. We lived by Hebrews 10:25 that says, "Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another all the more as we see the Day of Christ Jesus approaching."

So, why do I share all this? I share my story because there are some out there who want to live a godly life. They want to live for God, but find it really hard to do. Hopefully by hearing my story of how I got through high school pretty much unscathed, they will find some encouragement in that they can make it too. And hopefully by sharing some of my secrets for success, they will find ways to keep themselves from having a "hard" tesimony. We don't have to experience God's grace the hard way. Yes God's grace is infinite. There is no whole too deep that we dig for ourselves that He can't pull us out of. But, that same grace can also prevent us from even picking up the shovel in the first place.