Spiritual Autobiography
Hello again. Well… it’s been too long since I have posted. Since we are in agriculture, work consumes enormous amounts of our time (”our” being my wife [oneflesh] and my time). I finally had enough time to do my application for Southern Theological Seminary for my M. Div. that God appears to be calling me to. I just got it in tin the nick of time… a LOT of spiritual warfare going on there seeming to mount up against me in the application process. Not to mention sin rearing it’s ugly head in my life and that whispering voice saying “God coudn’t possibly want a wretch like you.” I have to just agree with it and say “Yes… I am a wretch… but it ain’t my performance that counts… it’s Christ’s and Christ’s alone.”
Anyway… I just wrote my spiritual autobiography and thought I wanted to share it with you. God bless.
Timothy (the clay)
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I spent the first half of my life wandering through this world trying to figure “it” out. I never really knew what “it” was but I looked. I looked high and low. I was raised Catholic. If you asked me, I’d say I was a “Christian.” I saw “happy people” but I never really understood how they got that way. Sometimes they looked happy, but behind the scenes they were angry, bitter, sad, lonely and lost. Truly happy people and were way too “goody-goody” for me… I wanted to have some fun in my life. I had my morals… values my parents taught me, but one by one they fell by the wayside as I pursued the way of pleasure… of getting what I wanted. I thought pleasure would make me “happy.” I became a thief, drug addict, alcoholic, a liar and a cheat and a depraved pervert. God had no place in my life… not really.
1 Tim 1:15 (NASB) It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.
I got sober at nineteen years old and stayed sober in AA for 17 years. I came to know a “God as I understand Him” in AA. I worked all the steps, had a decent amount of “happiness” and success in sobriety. The problem was I did not know God as he SHOULD be understood. I had a God (an Idol) that was on my terms. Eventually my marriage deteriorated, ended in divorce and I returned to drinking for another couple of years. During that time I met my current wife.
As I “enjoyed” freedom from the “old ball and chain” and pursued “happiness,” I looked in dark corners… I looked in filthy places with filthy people. I spent my life doing what felt good and I denied myself nothing. If I wanted it I took it. If it felt good, I did it. I used material things to be happy.
Romans 1:28 (NASB) And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.
Ecc 2:10 (NASB) All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor.
I continued to work hard, very successful in my scientific field, holding down a good job and presenting a good front to the outside world. I convinced myself I was “basically a good person” and hoped that God would forgive me in the end. All the while, on the inside, I became more and more empty. Eventually worldly things failed to fill me… I couldn’t really make the screaming inside stop for long enough by getting high or drinking into oblivion. The times I felt “ok” were shorter and fewer far between. I was utterly and hopelessly lost.
One day I had nothing to make me feel better… and I came to the end of self. I sat there on a rainy day looking outside… I was done… my soul was bankrupt and I wept.
Ecc 2:11 (NASB) Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.
I looked across the room at the Bible my wife bought for me a year before. For the first time in my life, I put my pride aside. I wanted to know what was in that book for myself. Not what church folk told me, or what TV preachers told me was in there. I wanted to know the Truth; God was drawing me.
John 6:44(NASB) “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him…”
So I said a prayer to God… I said “God… if I am supposed to get something out of this, please show me… please remove any barriers that prevent me from hearing your word.” So I read… and I read… and I read. I read for the first time from the perspective of wanting to believe it. When I got to places I could not understand, I “put them on a shelf”… soon I was pulling them back down off the shelf. I got to the book of Mark and I read that Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well.” I kept reading. I read in Romans “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” I read John “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
I was watching a one-man presentation of the Gospel of John… word-for-word the man acted out the book. Then it happened… it was no longer and actor standing there but our Lord Jesus Christ.
Psalm 34:18 The LORD is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Isaiah 6:5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips
I began weeping and wept for hours on end. I understood that I was a sinner… I was born that way… hopelessly selfish. I had offended God and that if I was to die that day I would suffer His wrath because I broke His laws. I understood that Jesus was the Son of God… that he was crucified and suffered the full wrath of God for me… to pay MY debt. The “freight train” of the Holy Spirit ran through my soul. I wept for hours in gratitude that because of Jesus’ precious blood, I knew that God was mine… all His love, because my debt was paid and I was clean.
Today, I am in love with Christ. I understand Grace… that God saved me because He loves me, through no effort or work of my own but because of His merciful goodness, to bring Glory to His name. Through Christ’s victory on Calvary I have the power to overcome my sin. I am no longer a slave to sin… it no longer rules me. I am a slave to righteousness.
Gal 2:19-20 (NASB) For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Life long obsessions are lifted from me. I serve Him and obey His law not because I have to… but because I want to. My heart of stone has been removed and I have been given a heart of flesh. God made me a new creation and my life has never been the same since. I am set free. I am forever changed.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (KJV) Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
The Lord has burdened me with the lost within the church. I believe in the Doctrines of Grace and believe that Armenianism is, at the very least, a flawed theological position and has filled our churches with unregenerate masses that show no signs of biblical conversion. I believe that we need to get back to our historical Baptist roots that believed in a sovereign God. I am offended at pragmatism, “easy-believism” and the circuses that our churches have become with doing anything to appeal to man’s flesh in the interest of getting “decisions for Christ.” I think it makes a mockery of Christ. I believe that if you remove the offense from the Gospel, it is no longer the Gospel. We must preach on the Law and Sin and the holiness of God because if we don’t then people don’t really need a Savior, do they?
I am called to do this. God has become my great and sweet obsession. Many nights I lay awake preaching in my head to anyone that will listen. I have preached in my home church about true regeneration. I teach a class on the book of 1 John and the tests of true conversion. PLEASE… accept me… teach me… equip me to carry the Gospel to lost people. God has given me the burden, the charge and the unction… now I just need the education, discipline and perseverance.
A partial list of Authors/Teachers/Preachers I study and am influenced by: C.H. Spurgeon, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John Wesley, Martin Luther, D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Ernest Reisinger, Charles Leiter, Leonard Ravenhill, Horatius Bonar, John Piper, John MacArthur, Paul Washer, Jeff Noblit, James White, C.J Mahaney, Mark Dever, Al Mohler
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