Fellowship Memphis

My whole life, I was raised in the church. As a kid, I was the good kid that was involved with everything. I was in the choir, an usher for the church, and was at everything I could possibly go to. I was baptized at the age of 12 because everyone else was going up front so why not me. I remember getting baptized and thinking, nothing is different here. So, I went through life just doing good deeds from that point all the way into high school. I called myself Christian because I went to church one day out of the week, would go to the FCA meetings during school, see you at the pole, etc.

After graduating high school in 2003, I attended college at Murray State University. This is where my need for God was brought to me. I was the typical college student. Maybe go to class, party, party, party, sleep and then wake up and do it again. I was involved with a fraternity, athletics, intramurals, and SGA. This was the first 3.5 years I was at school. I still called myself Christian because when I would come home, I would go to my home church.

In the Fall of 2006, my life seemed to start drastically changing. Someone was sharing Christ with me and it was making me think about my life and what he was saying. At times, it was in one ear and out the other. I saw the bridge diagram over and over, heard different passages, and I would say I understood. During Christmas break, I was invited to go to a college conference where there would be over 500 students wanting to learn more about God in downtown Nashville over New Years. Well, I went not because I had a heart to learn more about God, but so I could be in downtown Nashville during New Years.

But little did I know, God was working on my heart the whole time. He grabbed me with two different talks; one was on the cross-centered life and other was the enemy within. Both of these talks made me realize that my life was not living eternally for him and that I was letting my sin kill me on the inside, but I was just trying to fill up with something else for the time being before it would let me down again. It was an ongoing process. During this time, God had been tugging on me to come into a true relationship with Him and at the conference in 2006, I surrendered everything to Him. The biggest thing that I had to cling to was to not be ashamed of who I now was because of who I used to be.